[Vigkey]

Originally Posted by Gannu_1

The Punto Evo has LED tail lights.

Oh Yes Gannu sir. Somehow while thinking of premium hatchbacks only i20, Polo and Swift to an extent comes to my mind. Punto somehow skips my head. In fact even Micra has LED tail lights but I considered it to be a segment below the premium hatchback

[heavenlybull]

Very disappointed that a 'Premium Brand' like Honda has started emulating Maruti and Hyundai as far as safety features are concerned, even in their so called premium cars.

Very regressive step, when manufacturers like Toyota and VW are moving ahead in this respect. Only the proposed government regulation/crash testing can teach car makers like these a lesson now.

Coming to the variants, the bare bones E variant is redundant and will hardly sell. Like someone already said its there just to paste a starting price on the car, which I now think, will be around 5.5L.

Any decent variant will be 6L and above and S and SV will sell the most. For petrol buyers wanting safety, they need to go for SV at least, which will probably be 7L and up

[prithvibelli]

Originally Posted by Vigkey

Coming back to Jazz Honda should have done the below IMO.

• Given Driver Airbag to E and S variants
• ABS + EBD on all variants
• Magic seats in SV and above

Bang on. The most important point being that Magic seats will surely be missed and biggest grouse for those buying SV. The Jazz would have got a lot of original character with those.

As far as safety features go, it is good to have them. But most people do not see it that way, but see them as pricey. I guess most people are more self-confident on their super-hero driving skills or on our bumper to bumper traffic conditions. Depending on their usage, hoping the people will make rational trade-offs for their own extra safety.

[adimicra]

I don't blame Honda for skimping on safety.
If they would have made airbags, ABS etc standard, it would have jacked up the price and the market would have labelled it as expensive.

I am disappointed that Honda had taken away the magic seats from all variants except the top. Jazz is characterized by the Magic seats. It is difficult for me to think of the Jazz without those. At least, they should have given the 60:40 split and the flat folding rear seats.

Otherwise, I don't see much to complaint.

[RavenAvi]

Originally Posted by manishkapadia

@RavenAvi - Are you sure that the Jazz base given on your brochure was just 5.5 lacs ex showroom at Delhi . Ours purchased in aprox 2009/2010 was more pricey. The one that does not have USB.

Yes. The previous-generation Jazz was a slashed-price generation, launched in August 2011.

I think the one before that was the pricey Jazz - the one which you, adimicra, selfdrive and a few others had bought. That Jazz saw a price cut of over 1.5 lakhs back in 2010, before the facelifted Jazz with revised prices was launched in August 2011.

Originally Posted by Aaron:)

The thing is that the previous Jazz, after the price cut had very low (almost nil ) profit margins.
Honda had been restricting it's volumes because there was no money to be made at that price.

Back then, Honda was actually losing money on every Jazz sold! (LINK) The company as a whole wasn't losing much, because they were recovering their margins through the best-selling Honda City.

At it's pricing range and just for the features/practicality on offer, the Jazz made a tremendous case for itself. I envy all those who bought their Jazzes in that period - a non-paralleled VFM deal, a STEAL, I dare say!

Originally Posted by prithvibelli

As a middle variant, S also holds great value feature-wise on diesel(with ABS).

For an in-city commuter, yes. The S MT looks decent enough, with ABS for those sudden braking situations.

But I would think twice before hitting the highways with the 2015 Jazz S MT. Others might, but I certainly won't!

Originally Posted by Vigkey

When the Jazz was launched and even after price correction, the price difference in variants was very less - they had 3 variants all well loaded but the higher variants getting few more features. This is not the case now.

And this was four years ago. Even at a price difference of 50K for this period, the Jazz Base (of then) STILL makes sense at 6 lacs, ex-showroom Delhi (now).

Too bad our market was (back then) and still is, in honest terms, pretty stupid.

Originally Posted by Vigkey

Did the market embrace such a car initially?? No - it was too pricey. Did the market embrace such a car after price cut?? No - it was a flop model.

It went the Ford Fiesta way.

And yes, we are yet to see how this new 2015 Jazz will perform. It's got all the goodies from Honda + combine that with a competitive pricing + diesel option, and it should be a great seller. BUT, it is still to be seen how the Indian market (and public) perceive the Jazz. Agreed that the market has shown signs of maturity, with the Elite i20 raking up one lakh sales in ~11 months despite premium pricing, but the real picture will be seen in the coming months in our monthly sales charts.

I hope it's a bestseller, because it's still a very practical and smart choice in the 6L-9L bracket.

But some of the decisions of the Honda management in recent times have my eyes rolling (and watering too). I am not complaining - just like all the 2008-2009 Jazz owners who paid over 9 lacs for their cars, only to face the price cut 2 years later!

Originally Posted by Vigkey

The market does not want safety - Reason why VXi and VDi are the most seen variants in Swift and Dzire. Market never wants extra safety - Reason why Asta (O) was not introduced in Elite i20. Basically we get what we demand - we demand creature comforts and useless features and we are getting the same from all manufacturers. We never demanded safety - did we. By We - it is not the BHP-ians - it is the common car buying public.

There is a growing call for safety in recent times - as judged by the recent crash tests of cars not equipped with airbags+ABS, and companies like Toyota and Volkswagen coming forward and equipping their volume-range cars (Polo, Liva) with full safety features.

Also, safety features are supposed to become mandatory for ALL cars from 2017, right? Honda could have put a positive step forward by offering at least a driver's airbag in it's lowest 2 variants!

When the paying customer will be paying over 6 lacs OTR for the Jazz E MT, he deserves a driver's airbag at least. This way, he could have been educated about the airbags as well!

Also, arguments can be made about the customers in Tier-III cities and rural areas about how most of them dont even bother to wear their seatbelts while driving. Does that mean car manufacturers stop providing even seatbelts on their cars?!

Originally Posted by crisscross

The only way to change is if the government mandates safety features.

OFF-TOPIC:

The government is slowly but surely coming forward in this path. Crash-test venues are being constructed, and full mandatory safety features are coming by 2017. Few car companies have taken positive steps towards this - but it's sad to see Honda not being a pioneer in this regard as well. They had such a tremendous chance with this 2015 Jazz to show that they didn't disregard safety as well, but they snuffed it.

Either way, they had announced back in 2013 that they were going to take Honda "mainstream" in India. Today, 2 years later, we are seeing this changed, new, shining Honda - fully mainstream-ed!

[thehighwayman]

The CVT V variant looks interesting however Honda needs to price it carefully.Also ARAI claims a FE of 19 KMPL for the CVT version, however in one of the reviews it was mentioned the MT and AT were returning a FE in the range of 10-11 KMPL. Not sure if there was a problem with the test model.

If Honda gets the pricing right, I am inclined towards the AT version.

[Vigkey]

Originally Posted by RavenAvi

Also, safety features are supposed to become mandatory for ALL cars from 2017, right? Honda could have put a positive step forward by offering at least a driver's airbag in it's lowest 2 variants!

When the paying customer will be paying over 6 lacs OTR for the Jazz E MT, he deserves a driver's airbag at least. This way, he could have been educated about the airbags as well!

This is something I have mentioned in my post as well - Honda should have provided, but cannot blame them entirely for not. The market is less demanding and it is not mandated by law, and very importantly, the market leaders do not provide them.

Originally Posted by RavenAvi

Also, arguments can be made about the customers in Tier-III cities and rural areas about how most of them dont even bother to wear their seatbelts while driving. Does that mean car manufacturers stop providing even seatbelts on their cars?!

You bet RavenAvi, if seat-belts were not mandated by law, you will find a lot of base models without them - simply because VERY FEW would use them and FEWER like to use them. Not only in Tier 3 cities, even in Tier 1, I see a LOT of drivers cribbing and cursing while wearing seat belts. Same goes with helmet as well. Hope I do not need to remind you of cars that did not have left side ORVM in base models because people rarely used them and it was not compulsory by law.

Two ways to make manufacturers provide safety options in cars as a mandatory feature.

• Create awareness in public and make outright rejections to cars without safety features
• Mandate them through laws and enforce them strictly

Even though I appreciate VW and Toyota for providing mandatory airbags in their cars, we would be naive to consider them as saints by doing so. Why have they provided it now? To create differentiation from market leaders and be first-movers when the awareness about crash tests increased and when some cars failed miserably in the tests. Now they have an extra marketing point to sell their cars. Maruti and Hyundai does not need this extra bit and hence they are waiting for the law to come out before they implement. Sadly, Honda is going the Hyundai way.

I would argue - if VW / Toyota were REALLY concerned about the safety of Indian buyers, they would have given them from Day 1 - like they do for most overseas markets.

[jetti]

Originally Posted by heavenlybull

Very disappointed that a 'Premium Brand' like Honda has started emulating Maruti and Hyundai as far as safety features are concerned, even in their so called premium cars.

Yes its disappointing but they learnt this the hard way. When they did give airbags and ABS in all variants how many people did buy? Probably more than half of those who bought are on Team-BHP

Like others said already, they should have offered a driver airbag on the lower variants. I'd say at least on the S Variant, if not E. As of now, SV is the minimum I'd consider.

[ashua]

Who is the target market for the S AT? Is it fair to assume most AT variants are bought by the 'informed' buyers who also look for safety in the car.
At least a driver airbag in S AT would have increased its target market considerably (as many have pointed out).

[ashwin.terminat]

I remember back when we were looking to buy a car in 2012, we saw the Jazz and were happy to see that all the models of the Jazz had safety features like ABS and airbags. Each variant of the Jazz just added very little to the next. As such, the base model of the Jazz was very expensive compared to the base models of the other hatchbacks in India and the model failed.

But in comparison, even the base model Jazz was a brilliant buy at the time.

Honda has learnt from their mistakes. The market is not going to look at the features of a car and the VFM it offers before calling it a failure model based purely on sales numbers. And call a model a failure model once and the car is done for, forever. Honda has rectified this by introducing a bare bones variant at the lowest possible cost.

This way, people will at least walk into Honda showrooms looking to buy a Jazz. Once they are in the showroom, Honda has a chance to convince them why paying more for safety is totally worth it. Scare them with a price tag for the base variant only because it has all your safety features and the Jazz is doomed, again.

In my opinion, good ploy by Honda in doing what they're doing. It is pure business, nothing else.

[Latheesh]

SV variant looks nice, but they could have added rear washer wiper and adjustable rear head rest to it.

I have a 3.5 lakh rupee Chevy Spark - It has rear washer and wiper, 60:40 split seat, rear spoiler, rear windshield defoger, front and rear fog lamps, front and rear mud guards etc. All these are standardd fitment.

When it comes to Jazz you will be missing most of these unless you opt for top variant.

My friend has Jazz and I have driven it couple of times. Low end performance is below average, but overall it is a nice car. I suggested him to buy it over Swift and he is one happy customer. It clocked 60K+ KM without any issue.

[damager21]

Jazz Vs. Elite i20 variant-wise comparison.

Hyundai has been more generous with features but Honda is not too far behind as it can also claim many segment first features. The only pity is that some of these features like magic seat is reserved only for top variant while in case of i20 it is more spread out.

However Jazz scores big time on space, space and more space. So it will all boil down to pricing. If Honda undercuts i20 pricing then expect huge sales. Even if pricing is on par or slightly higher, then sales will still flow. Honda definitely has a winner on its hand.

[BeantownThinker]

Originally Posted by thehighwayman

The CVT V variant looks interesting however Honda needs to price it carefully.Also ARAI claims a FE of 19 KMPL for the CVT version, however in one of the reviews it was mentioned the MT and AT were returning a FE in the range of 10-11 KMPL. Not sure if there was a problem with the test model.

Always take the ARAI economy figures not with a pinch of salt but with a tablespoon of salt. In reality and in our daily commute in bumper to bumper traffic of the major metros it is close to impossible get the "claimed" FE. And am sure the FE returned in the reviews are what you will achieve in reality.

[ckranjan]

Originally Posted by damager21

Jazz Vs. Elite i20 variant-wise comparison

Some Mistakes in your comparison :

ABS is present in i20 from Sportz onwards.

Tyre size is 185/70/14 upto Sportz.

Speed Volume Compensation is very much present in i20.

1 GB storage is not mentioned.

Power windows(Driver only) Pinch guard is available from Sportz onwards.

[Vigkey]

Honda launches pre-launch TVC for the All New Jazz. What do i want? Nothing. Unless, It's everything! seems to be the tagline.

Youtube link - All New Jazz TVC