Honda’s maiden small car, named Jazz, will be rolled out in India by mid-June 2009. Honda Siel Cars India has decided on the tentative date following the realization that the small car segment in the domestic automobile sector has been seeing an unprecedented boom. The company is expected to price the vehicle at around Rs 5.5 lakh.
Honda has already started displaying the Honda Jazz at select showrooms. It would be difficult to decide which class the car belongs to size-wise - Jazz is quite bigger than a Skoda Fabia externally, almost the same size as one would expect a Honda City hatchback to be. Now that the new third generation Honda City has been officially launched in India at the very top end of the mid-size class, the Jazz may take its place which the current Honda City would vacate in Honda’s line-up in India.
Engine, mileage and torque
Honda Jazz will come with a 1.2 L i-VTEC engine which has been specially developed for the Indian Market. It reflects the company's commitment towards India and its continued focus on bringing in the latest global technology into the country.
The engine has been exclusively researched and developed at the Honda R&D centre in Tochigi, Japan to suit Indian road & safety conditions. The revolutionary “Made for India” discovery offers a dual advantage of superior power and low fuel consumption. The future ready E10 compatible engine even ensures environment responsibility by matching Euro IV emission levels.
The new powertrain is a four - cylinder, 1198 cc engine featuring Programmed Fuel Injection delivering class-leading Power of 90 PS (66 kW) @ 6,200 rpm and Torque of 110 Nm (11.2 kg-m) @ 4800 rpm while giving an impressive fuel economy of 16.1 km/l as per ARAI test data.
No clear idea for anyone there. AutoCar magazine recently carried a road test of the Jazz abroad - no one here in India have published anything yet. The car they test-drove had a different engine to this one. So nothing much could be gleaned from that.
Guess we will just have to hold our horses till the launch.
