Honda Jazz Review (2011)

The new Honda Jazz went on sale in the UK in February 2011.

To date over 3.5 million Honda Jazz’s have been sold worldwide - 220,000 of those have been sold in the UK since its first launch in 2002.  The production of the Jazz for the UK market is at the Honda manufacturing plant in Swindon, Wiltshire - so the Jazz is a truly British built car (the hybrid model is made in Japan).

The new Jazz not only brings back the CVT transmission which has been sorely missed by the loyal fan base but now there is a Hybrid model, which is only available with Continuous Variable Transmission (CVT). In simple terms the CVT is an automatic transmission with an infinite range of gears.

The Jazz has proven to be a big seller to the over 40’s with the average buyer being 56 years old. Whilst wanting to retain these loyal customers, Honda has aimed the new Jazz at a younger audience.

Honda is looking to sell around 22,000 vehicles in 2011 which is roughly the same figure that they sold in 2009. They believe that the new Hybrid model will account for around 10 per cent of all Jazz sales.

Currently prices for the Jazz start at £11,995 and rise to £19,305 for the Hybrid HX-T model.

We tested the Honda Jazz 1.4 EXL with the CVT transmission, the on the road price when tested was £17,685.

The Honda Jazz is available with either a 1.2 or 1.3 litre petrol engine, currently there is not a diesel variant (coming soon) but there is a 1.4 litre Hybrid which utilizes Honda’s IMA technology.

We drove the 1.4 EXL model which is fitted with a 1339 cc petrol engine which produces 98 bhp and 127 Nm of torque, this equates to a 0-62mph time of 13.1 seconds (with the CVT transmission) and a top speed of 109 mph. The CVT system adds around 1.3 seconds to the 0-62mph time over the equivalent manual version, which is pretty much academic, as it far easier for most drivers to use the CVT box over a manual gearbox. The top speed also suffers but as you would be breaking the UK speed limits, we are sure that you are not going to worry about losing 4 mph to the manual car.

The 1.4 EX is not particularly quick but around town it is nippy especially with the CVT transmission – although in some ways the IMA version feels livelier to drive.

Overall we were impressed by the smoothness of the CVT transmission, you can even change gear by using the paddle shifts on the steering wheel. In Sport Mode you have full control over the gear changes via the steering wheel mounted paddles.

Honda’s official fuel consumption figures are 51.4 mpg on the combined cycle which is around 1 mpg better than the manual 1.4 EX. We achieved 39.2 mpg on our mixed test route of ‘A’ and ‘B’ roads and some town use. We recently drove an IMA version and returned around 48 mpg, so the Hybrid version might be worth looking at, if fuel consumption is a priority.

CO2 emissions are rated at 128 g/km which is not that great by today’s standards, ideally we would like to see this under 100 g/km, which the Hybrid version nearly achieves at 104 g/km.