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-   -   Honda Amaze 1.5L Diesel : Driven (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-drives-initial-ownership-reports/129439-honda-amaze-1-5l-diesel-driven-21.html)

Any idea when advance booking begins for the amaze? :)

See march is when the petrol version will be brought as per the latest reports that I have got and April will mark the oncoming of the diesel engine. So a month in advance would be when Honda could start the bookings to help people lay their hands earliest on this compact sedan wonder :)

Absolutely correct mate. And with the Chevy Sail getting launched at a pricetag lesser than Dzire which is the leader as of now, Honda pretty much as their work cut out. So they surely wont venture into the Rapid territory. They ll pose more competition to the SAIL i believe as the car is priced aggressively, and if you can get a Honda sedan at a price slighttly lesser than SAIL, the Amaze might just be the car people have been waiting for.

Chevrolet has priced the sail sedan just over Rs 55000 above the Sail hatch for petrol, going by that trend brio entry level is Rs 4.10 lacs , Amaze petrol should start around Rs 4.7 lacs to be competitive and Amaze diesel should start from Rs 6 lacs if they want to shake things up in the entry level sedan segment. Otherwise, Maruti can breathe easy and after the initial hype sales for Amaze will fall.

Bang on. No more than 60-70 thousand over BRIO hatch. 4.8 to 6.79 for petrol base to petrol top variant automatic ... that should also help keep Diesel variants waiting under check! ! :-)
Delhi dealers are still not taking bookings yet.

Honda has much better brand recall than GM and I am sure they would NOT bother about a cut-throat price. I believe the ONLY feature where Sail probably trump Amaze will be on the ride quality (going by Brio standards). I do NOT see a need for Amaze to be priced lower than Sail.

My expectation would be a 20K lesser than Dzire as Amaze top end will NOT come with certain features that ZDi has. But then they are supposedly coming with a more powerful engine, supposedly better FE, huge boot, spacious interiors compared to Dzire. People with insider contacts posted that even Honda is working hard to price the car at par with Dzire. I am sure, even if they command a 20K premium over Dzire, it will have it's share of customers.

The times when Honda could charge a premium for their brand name is long gone! Jazz is having lower sales than even punto, City is struggling and brio is just around 2300 in sales. When brio is priced at lowest end of petrol premium hatches category there is no way Amaze, which is based on it, could be priced above Dzire, even with diesel engine.

Remember Brio and Amaze launches are a climb down for Honda, still smarting from loss of sales for Honda City. City used to be a leader when there was no competition. Sedans themselves are losing to SUVs. Chevrolet has upped the ante for Honda by pricing the sail sedan competitively. The success of Amaze is critical to Honda's future plans and they can not afford to go wrong here.

For petrol ONLY options like Brio / City, I say they are doing well, by industry standards. If we look at a 80-20 split for diesel-petrol, that becomes more obvious. Compared to the other options in the same segment as City, it outsells some with even a diesel option.

With respect to Jazz, there are still problems in the pricing - may be due to high import content and with that, it's destined to fail.

If they choose to price Amaze better than Sail, it's good for the customers. But am pretty sure they will NOT take the route. :)

what "features" do u think will be missing in the indian model??the thailand launched VD MT top end version has most of the kit of the d'zire.

Steering mounted controls, ACC etc. This is the basic most I can think of now, looking at the Brio top end model.

Well the preview on ndtv confirms the presence of steering mounted controls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnOvefdNSM

Some things are obviously missing in Amaze vs zdi : I think it has 14 inch alloys vs 15 of Dzire, fixed headrests vs adjustable, manual ac vs.ACC, no rear fog lamp & no tweeters / cd player in music system. At least 25k worth features all put together.

Wel,, Chevrolet Sedan is above 4.2 Meter length and would be paying for more Excise duty as compared to Hatch (atleast 50K Extra)... to me i do not see any price difference between Chevy Sail Hatch and Sedan.

By that yardstick, Honda should price the Sedan to almost same price as Hatch... Afterall How much can that boot cost ..less than 5000 Rs max :)

Well, it sounds like just 30 kg of additional metal, but trust me, it is much more than that.
- A fully functional metal boot lid with springs and mechanisms to operate.
- Additional carpeting and plastic claddings
-New body side panel, which has to be tested again
-New / modified exhausts and testing for them.
-Updated dmapeners taking into account the load in the overhang (boot)
-In this case - new rear doors, modification on the chassis ( longer wheel base) testing for that.
- Homologation testings, new dies for the extra body panels.

And many more, so we just can quantify it into 5000 buck can we? ;)

Actually you are right @arvind.anand. If we take in to account the excise component, Sail sedan and sail UVA are priced similarly. Theoretically, making a sedan version of a hatch shouldn't cost more than an incremental Rs 20000. Still, in the real world, car makers charge a markup of atleast Rs 60,000 upwards to differentiate the two versions otherwise who would buy a hatch if you are getting the sedan version at the same price!

Honda have an opportunity to start the Amaze petrol at Rs 4.75 lacs and shake things up. It could kill I20, swift and lots of petrol hatchback's sales! Moreover they don't have brio diesel (Brio D will be priced lower obviously)so they don't necessarily have to price Amaze diesel above Rs 6 lacs.