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-   -   Honda Brio (Automatic) : Official Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/127657-honda-brio-automatic-official-review-10.html)

Just got a call from the Sales Manager of the dealer that my car is being dispatched tomorrow. As Saturday is Eid I will get the pay order tomorrow, and then pay the balance of about 50k at the time of delivery expected on Monday. Expect a thread on the car soon!

Just handed over a draft for 6l. Leaves only under 50k to be paid incl. about 30k of accessories.

UP road tax is up from 7% to 8% another 6k into the black hole.

Why automatic cars are not popular in India? I think there can be 2 reasons:

1. Good cars with automatic transmission were/are not available in the market. Even today one will find hardly few of these cars.

2. Automatic versions of any car is more expensive than its manual sister.

3. In the country of "Kitna Deti Hai", people think that cars with automatic transmission give less mileage.

4. Cars with automatic transmission will not be able to perform well in ghats/hilly terrain.

I always wanted to have an automatic car and I think I will try this Brioauto.

One other major reason is that there is no car in the alto range which supports Automatic. A/T is positioned as a premium offering. If the entry level A & B segment cars had A/T with not too much of a difference between MT & AT. During the scooters era, Kinetic Honda was the first mass market scooter to come up with auto-gears. Initially it was targeted towards women but quickly caught on.

We need Alto, Nano, Eon etc to be available in AT and ads targeted touting its benefits especially in city driving conditions.

the latest autocar india has a comparison of the i10 AT with Brio AT. No mention of 3+1. Just 4 speed and 5 speed.

They picked the Brio as their choice for the same reasons that makes them pick the MT brio over the AT brio.

I am disappointed actually. The i10 AT is a quicker car than the brio AT both in standing start acceleration (0-xxkm/h) and 20-80 and 40-100. This is deeply disappointing. The two things that disappoint me about our i10 AT are its extreme shortage of legroom for my 6'3" frame and its sluggishness compared to the manual. The torque converter has a lot of slip in it, so you get lots of engine revving so lots of NVH, but very leisurely acceleration. So lots of racket and exertion and not much result. I had hoped that the Brio, with its more modern transmission, closer ratios, and 10hp advantage would not just easily outperform the i10 AT, it would also accelerate more in proportion with the engine's NVH and exertion than the i10 AT.

That the Brio AT is in fact ever slower than the i10 AT is a very serious blow to my desire for this car as our next urban runabout.

I'll have to think of something else.

@Harbir; What else do you expect out of a decade old AT. May have been around even earlier. AT technology have moved quite fast. I am sure you have checked and found it having the OD button - ie it is a 3+1.

In her review of the Brio AT Renuka did comment that the Brio has a a lag in D, and to get over it use the D3 setting in town. Also,the iVTEC is very sluggish below 3000rpm. I have a feeling they have optimised the transmission for economy so the shifts may be as low as 2000rpm. What I did read was that the Brio does have tons of headroom.

In any case, Gods (and Honda) willing I should have my paws on mine on Monday, so the facts will be known. Of course I do not have a Kappa in my Santro, just the old Epsilon motor.

better performance than hyundai's old 4 speeder.

Nothing to do with the AT, simply a matter of the torque curve and gearing. Another thing, if you go into kickdown, many ATs, incl Honda take a short pause before they step down and go. This is why Renuka preferred D3 in town.

Mind you 0-100, 20-80 etc are not the end of the world. Let me get my Brio and then can do a 1:1 comparison with the Santro (and also the Civic). I suspect the Santro may do some of the 0-xx better than the Kappa (i10) as the engine has good torque lower down, even though it is quite a bit down on ponies. I will not comment further until I have tried out the beast.

These are the test figures from AUTOCAR India for the MT and AT versions of the Brio and i10

i10 1.2 AT
0-60: 5.71s
0-100: 14.08s

Brio AT
0-60: 6.29s
0-100:15.09s

i10 1.2 MT
0-60:4.99s
0-100: 12.04s

Brio MT
0-60: 5.14
0-100: 12.47s

We note a few things here:
The i10 1.2 MT is a fairly quick car in its class, quicker than the Brio MT.
The i10 takes a big performance hit when fitted with the AT instead of the MT
The Brio loses even more performance with the AT than the i10 does (this is really bad part)
Result: The Brio AT is quite a bit slower than the i10 AT. (where the Brio MT takes 0.4 seconds more than the i10 MT in the 0-100, the Brio AT takes 1 second more than the i10 AT)
This is confusing. Since the Brio AT has a 5 speed transmission instead of the i10's 4 speed, the gap from MT to AT should be smaller for the Brio, but it is in fact larger.

How is this possible? Either the torque converter in the brio is even more crappy than the one in the i10, with even poorer torque transfer, or the ECU programming causes the transmission to shift well short of the power peak, or the AT has tall ratios (or a very tall final drive ratio), or some combination of those three factors or the Honda's engine is peaky, or some combination of those factors.

But whether its due to the engine torque characteristics, the torque converter efficiency, gear ratios, or shift programming logic, the result is that the Brio AT is a weaker performer than the i10 AT. Since the i10 AT is a pretty weak performer to begin with, this is most disappointing. The Brio AT is slower than all the hatchbacks in the market, except the 800cc class cars. The 1.0 litre class cars (spark, k10, Santro 1.1) are all quicker than the Brio AT to 60km/h, though slightly slower to 100 (due to their lack of power to overcome aerodynamic drag at higher speeds).

The Brio AT is a disappointly slow car. the i10 AT is slow, and the Brio AT is slower still. There is just no getting around the fact that a car that goes 0-62mph in 14 or 15 seconds is a SLOW car.

That issue of Autocar also mentions that VW is bringing in an AT Polo with a 1.2 TSI engine and a 7-speed DSG transmission. You could wait for that, although at an estimated 8 lakhs, it ain't runabout money.

At that price, I'd just go a little further and buy a City AT.

I don't care for the Vento 1.6 relative to the City, so there is little chance I would go for a 1.2 litre polo priced in City Territory, DSG or not.

I have hardly ever found my Santro slow in town either. The shifter does leave a lot to desire, esp. hunting on the highway. It shifts to 4 i.e. OD only at 60kph or so. Yes, the earlier Zen (carb - 50 bhp with a three speed AT) did feel a bit sluggish.

These are town cars and not highway cruisers. When I compare with the carb cars,incl the Esteem VX (Carb with 65 ponies) these figures are pretty good.

My highway car is the Civic V AT with 134 bhp!

I find the i10 AT frustratingly sluggish around Delhi. Lots of moaning and straining and buzziness to get anything above very moderate acceleration.

apart from giving a fake 'performance driver' perspective of oneself, is there any real fact that might have prompted such a remark from the host?

really cant understand the reason why one should have their car restricted to the third gear, only because of city factor.
Except for very extreme scenarios ,these ATs are more than efficient in getting done in D itself.

ATs are meant to make life easier, so just slot to D and enjoy the drive.

Looking forward to hear from people like you(guess one more day to go) than the ones from those tv shows just because of the above reason, unnecessarily misleading people.

Thats really disappointing and frankly a little befuddling. Brio has one of THE most powerful 1.2s out there and the only one with 5 speed. One can only presume that it has been tuned for maximum economy.

My mom has an i-10 auto and like I mentioned there, the transmission sucks the life out of the punchy and eager engine. I found that mashing the gas pedal sends the T/C into full unlock with the resulting revving and buzzing. Squeezing the throttle seems to yield better results

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-d...automatic.html