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-   -   4th-gen Honda City : Official Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/145656-4th-gen-honda-city-official-review-100.html)

The area looks prone to scratches, but polish chipping off is new!! Not expected from a Honda, specially when regarding quality of the interiors.


+1. Excellent suggestion. One of my good friends owns a mobile shop and is an expert in cutting out perfect screen guard films for touchscreen phones. I'll ask him to cover up all the shiny black interior bits of my Empress, if he could. Will post pics of the same after the job is done.


Tyre dimensions are the same as the 3rd gen City. In the interest of FE only, Honda has stuck to these puny-sized tyres. The OEMs will last some distance no doubt (depending on the quality), but skinny sections don't provide enough grip on the road, compromise a bit on ground clearance, and riding comfort is not optimum. The latter two can be lived with, but gripping can result in a life-or-death situation.

The reason for going wider and bigger is to improve grip levels (considering the state of the roads we drive in, plus the incessant rains) at a cost of marginal drop in FE, although owners have reported that Michelins usually retain nearly the same FE figures. Riding comfort gets a much-needed bolster too, and ground clearance levels improve drastically as well.


Congratulations, Adarsh.

The 185/60 upgrade is definitely NOT recommended, as vsrivatsa said it lowers ground clearance slightly. The 195/60 tyre upgrade is the best one out of the lot, and with Michelins there is no substantial drop in FE figures either.

The best upgrade is 185/55/16, but tyre options are limited in that profile plus you would have to change your rims to 16" as well. No telling how effective that would be in the long run, plus what impact it would have on the ABS and tyre life.

Don't worry, and just go for the 195/60 upgrade. If you want long tyre life, Bridgestones are your best bet. For all other criteria, Michelins come as recommended.

Did a U turn yesterday night. I am going for the VX CVT instead of SV. Paddle Shifts being the primary reason and my son (just 6 years but already a Junior BHPian :)) is insisting on Sunroof. That will cause a slighter less headroom but with seat adjustments I guess it should be fine. Also, the large console screens are definitely a good looker which is not there in SV, plus the other bells and whistles.

It's a 6 month waiting period for VX, but I'm going to use this car for a long time (minimum 6 years), so thought of not missing those extra features. In addition, within this waiting period, some new cars might come as well.

Seen many comments on the scratch issues of the piano black finish. The SA told me he can definitely enquire on some protective coating directly with Honda through the service manager. Will keep informed once I get an info.

I absolutely love the Michelins and the ride quality with primacy LC on our Cruze is outstanding , even after running 40k Kilometers they look good for another 10-15 k kilometers , the problem is that if i go for Michelins i'll have to get a 15 inch rim but if i go for Yokohama i'll get a much better looking rim and a sporty looking tyre but will have to compromise on ride quality and noise.Really confused right now.

I contemplated a lot on 16" but lack of good tyre options made me choose 15".
Yokohama is your only option and their tyres are average at best (having used 3 sets). Both the options, S-Drive and A-Drive R1 are very noisy.
And the noise starts from 30kmph, it would have been still livable if the noise was there in triple digits.
I chose 205/55-R15.

Yesterday, I noticed 2 scratches as well and when your piano black dashboard is exposed to sunlight, I could see 2-3 more though very small and fine. One scratch is on the audio display and I'm so frustrated with Honda designers choosing this material. They should have at least picked a good quality scratch resistant panel :Frustrati. Based on initial reviews, I thought they had taken care of this issue but probably not. I've been using Jopasu mini duster and MF cloth only but still it ended up developing fine scratches. Also, because its a finger print magnet and dust easily shows up on the piano black console, you end up cleaning it all more frequently.

The chip off problem may be isolated as I've not noticed it yet but again I've not clocked 900kms.

I'm planning to first put protection for the 3.5" screen. Here, I would recommend to not go with the usual mobile screen protectors kind of material. I've been using protectors for my cell phones and tablets from a company called Gadget Shieldz: http://www.gadgetshieldz.in/ and they are so tough and easy to apply. The material looks similar to the ones that 3M applies as part of paint protection film on bumpers and door edges. I have one for my Note2 lying around so if it fits properly, will get it done today itself and post some pictures and see if it affects the display view. The rest of piano black console is something I have to figure out how to protect.

Note: I'm no where connected to above company but have been using their products for couple of years and completely swear by quality.

Congratulations and wishing you many miles of driving the beauty

I think, it'll turn out to be a good revenue for screen protector companies . Do post how it comes out to be and maybe I can partner with him for an all India delivery of these protectors :D

Tyres wise, I would totally recommend to upsize them if you have budget. I don't push my car that hard as most of time travel with 2 kids, but I and my wife can feel a difference in the ride quality even in city driving when we go over some uneven roads. Even at higher speeds, I did find the car more grounded to roads with amazing grip levels.

Congratulations. Very true with respect to speaker. I captured the same thing on my SV CVT ownership thread. Speaker change is on cards but probably next month or so.

Congrats on your new acquisition deevilslair. Wish you happy mile munching. :)

+1 I agree that Gadget Shieldz screen protectors are very tough and highly durable but the only grouse with them is application. They need to be dipped in soap solution and applied when wet and hence the gadgets have to be powered off for >24hours. Anyway keep us posted about this.

Sumit is correct, Just checked and Michelin only has 205/60R16 for both XM2and Primacy 3ST and there isn't a 205/50R16 or a 205/55R16. I guess Michelin options wont work for your spec.

I think i have to make this little compromise on the looks and go with Primacy 3ST tyres , there's another reason apart from all these very valid reasons and that's longevity ,having driven Primacy LC in the past i expect the 3STs to last atleast 45k Kilometers whereas owners report that S Drives don't last more than 30k kilometers , so compromising on ride quality (partly because of tyres and partly because of the bigger rim size) ,overall noise & longevity just for an inch of rim size (which do look significantly better though) has started to make little sense to me and most probably i'll be going with 15 inch Michelin 3STs. :)

Apparently speaker upgrade won't be enough as the OEM HU's amplifier seems to be too weak to drive the better speakers (my i20's OEM H.U had the same problem) , so i highly recommend adding a 4 channel amplifier as well which would make a night and day difference in the audio quality.

In other news, Honda shipped 9,518 units of the City in March 2014! Their total domestic sales for the month stand at a whopping 18,500 units. Wait for our full sales thread to follow.

Ford should learn how to clear the order backlog. They love the EcoSport so much they're unwilling to give it away to customers :Frustrati

Wow. 9500+ should be more than the sales of all the other C2 sedans put together.

In fact, City should be more than any manufacturer outside Top 5. Blistering performance and a definite lesson for all those manufacturers who purposefully delay deliveries to boast of high waiting periods. clap:

Wow , that must be some sort of a record! I don't remember seeing any car costing 10 lakhs plus to have been sold in such numbers (or even close for that matter)! I had a little idea when our dealership claimed to sell 70 cars in one day (yesterday) that this must be a great month for Honda but 9500 is a astonishing number!

agree:

Somebody from Ford working level should go up to their Senior Management and show them what horrible management skills these guys have.

Look at Honda. With their first ever Diesel engine combined with City, without even having a proven track record of the Diesel engine, they have managed such sales. This is majorly based on the customer satisfaction point that Honda has driven it sales from an average of around 6-7K last year to an average of over 12K this calender year.

In our line of business (consultancy) there is some called as Client Satisfaction survey we do right at the start of a project. One of the points in that is "What would Delight the Customer?"

Please bear in mind the word is 'DELIGHT' and not 'SATISFACTION'. There is a huge difference between these two words. We always say in our organisation that a customer who is satisfied would tell another potential customer to look at our organisation as an option too for serving them but a customer who is delighted would recommend our organisation to another potential customer over other organisation. :OT

While FORD was able to satisfy the potential customers in choosing Ecosport over other competitors but could not keep up with the deliveries which surely would have delighted the customers whereas, Honda with the 'City' has been able to achieve just that not just satisfy the customer into choosing and booking the City but also delivering them pretty much in the anticipated time and in turn ensuring that these people who have been delivered the vehicle do recommend others to follow suite,

That's quite an impressive figure. 18,426 cars in a span of one month is a great way to go. This would definitely bring a substantial rise in Honda's market share in India. I'm surprised why Ford has failed to sort out production constraints yet. Let them take their own sweet time while others grab a considerable chunk of sales and outgrow them.

Thanks for the Update - I had been seeing HondaCarsIndia website since morning but dint see any updates there.

Here are some threads which give more details on the same:
1. Unprecedented City sales take Honda cars to best year in India ever: URL
2. Honda Cars India 83% sales growth for FY 2013-14, Mobilio and all-new Jazz launch nears: URL