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2 years with my 4th-gen Honda City SV MT: 6 Likes & 7 Dislikes

25th May 2024, 16:02 by Brij Gawde

The price difference between the 4th gen SV MT and the 5th gen V MT was 3.5L and since we did not want any of the fancy features, the 4th gen ticked all the necessary boxes for us.

BHPian revvingbeast recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hi Team BHPians! This is my first proper post on this forum. I'm delighted to be part of this amazing community and I've been an avid reader of all the posts of our forum members. Not sure what inspired me to write a post all of a sudden while sitting at my office, but here I am. We got a brand new Honda City SV MT 2 years ago and I wanted to give my shot at writing an ownership review.

A little background of our City:

We got the car on May 3rd, 2022. A dark Grey Honda City standing in the front of the showroom glistening with the sunshine reflecting off its body. I was thrilled as I had steered the whole car-buying process of my family. We had visited multiple brand showrooms, and I test-drove all the cars in the price range of 8 to 15 Lakhs (which was our extended budget from 6L because I wanted a proper sedan) My dad asked me to test-drive all the cars since I had more attention to detail while test driving. All he cared about was the steering position and the comfort of the driver's seat. I had test-driven Nexon, i20, Taigun, Kushaq, Amaze, Creta, Venue, and the 5th gen City. Verna was low to the ground, and Vento and Rapid had the tunnel running in between the back seats hence making it uncomfortable for the 3rd passenger in the back seat.
City ticked all the boxes for me and we finalized on the 5th gen V MT (manual transmission because of "vtec just kicked in yo!")
The price difference between the 4th gen SV MT and the 5th gen V MT was 3.5L and since we did not want any of the fancy features, the 4th gen ticked all the necessary boxes for us, and hence we went ahead with the SV MT variant of the 4th gen City.

Experience after 2 years of its ownership:

Overall Experience has been great. The car has been a great companion on multiple long drives and has been amazing to drive. It is a perfect balance between a driver's car and a chauffeur-driven car. With spacious and comfortable back seats and a 1.5L i-VTEC peppy engine, why would I deny buying it at an amazing deal? Yes, we got this car at a price of 10.5L on the road, which I see as an amazing deal! Coming to the good and bad experiences -

The good:

The engine is as good as new, didn't give any problems in this tenure of 2 years. Looking at my username you'd have understood I drive it on full throttle when I'm given a chance. I love the grunt it makes at higher RPMs and absolutely love the way the engine handles lower RPMs as well. I have loved every second of driving this car since the day I brought it home and foresee no purchase of a new car for the next 7 to 8 years at least. A tiny niggle, there wasn't any bonnet insulation, hence I got one on Boodmo and installed it.
The car has excellent maneuverability and is a gem to drive on the highways. Delivers power easily to overtake vehicles. If not, then shift down a gear and you fly. Man oh man does it feel good to shift down a gear on this car
Coming to the "Kitna deti hai" question, the car gives around 14kmpl on average. When driven around 80 to 90 kmph on the highways, it gives 18 to 19kmpl mileage whereas it gives 12 or 13kmpl in the city which I think is a very decent mileage.
Personally I prefer the looks of the 4th Gen City over the 5th Gen. I feel the 4th Gen is a bit more aggressive compared to the humble-looking 5th Gen. I prefer dark colors and dark Grey is the closest colour to black. It looks stunning during the night as well as in bright sunlight.
My dad and I prefer to have halogen headlights to avoid blinding the other vehicles since we are daily victims of being blinded by cars coming with bright LED headlamps somehow always on high beams as well. Also, the halogen lamps on the car were good and gave good visibility in both low and high beams.
The car is well insulated and we can barely hear the engine or wind noise (maybe we feel like this because we came from a 11-year-old i10), but at high speeds, there is a lot of road noise that comes in, which is pretty uncomfortable.

The bad:

The car has run nearly 57,000 kms in its 2-year tenure and hence has got its fair share of wounds over its body including 2 major bumps because of idiots on the road, one being a school bus and the other being a car. The bus dealt a heavy blow on the bonnet, fender, and the headlights cracking open the headlight and disfiguring the front of our car. (The sad part is our insurance had expired a year ago and we had no intimation from the insurance company whatsoever and my dad had forgotten to pay it). There are a lot of minor scratches as well and I need to convince my dad to get it worked on by a good service shop.
The suspension is a bit hard to my liking and at low speeds, the back seat becomes a tad bit uncomfortable. The car goes unscathed over most of the speed breakers and has not been a problem for me
The car's air conditioning seems to have a problem, the car doesn't cool the interiors as well as our previous i10, and it takes a very long time to cool the cabin. This complaint was given to the service centre last time, but the issue was only temporarily solved and is back now. Need suggestions on what the issue could be, and how it can be resolved.
The aftermarket infotainment system that we installed is very bad considering the price we paid for it and the problems it gives us. The GPS doesn't work well and the service centre told us that they cannot rectify it for us since it is not Honda's product. The reason we installed the aftermarket system was because even if we got the higher variant, it did not have Android Auto or Apple Carplay. The rearview camera tilts often and every time the service centre keeps fixing it for us. Not sure why they've fitted a microphone when it cannot capture any audio as well. Absolute waste of money.
The shift from 1st to 2nd gear is hard and the gear gets stuck midway from neutral to 2nd gear very often. When we complained about this issue to the service centre, we were told that all 4th gen City have this issue (whereas I never came across this issue in all the reviews that I read and saw).
The clutch plate seems to be wearing out and might need a replacement soon and the front windshield wipers are begging to be replaced.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to giving subsequent reviews. Below are some photos I've clicked of our beautiful machine.