The underdogs
Nearly a decade later, Volkswagen still holds faith in the Vento. Toyota thinks the third generation Yaris is good enough for India in 2021 but do they really stand a chance against the king, the all-new Honda City?
If you’re flipping through pages and screens to find the solution then you already know that it is a difficult question to answer. A brand new generation of a Honda sedan with a string of memories attached with its loyalists, being compared to two cars that have stubbornly been nearly the same as when they had arrived. This made for a compelling reason to find out if VW’s and Toyota’s formula for success can actually compete with a rewritten success story. Petrol, manuals were the choice back then and we’re sticking to the same choices in this test.
Nearly two decades ago, the sedan was the most aspirational car that one looked forward to owning as a sign of stepping up in life. Come 2021, that aspiration has taken other four-wheeled forms based on a variety of factors that the years of technological development and choices of cars has brought along. Does that mean we’ve forgotten the affable mid-size sedan? Well, as much as we’ve moved on, the sedans in this segment have too and still remain an important part of a manufacturer’s product portfolio even if the all-enticing SUV becomes more mainstream than ever before.
Honda is so deep into this game that despite a line-up of very competitive cars, the City takes centre stage whenever a new version is announced. Being a former owner of the first-gen Honda City, there are many aspects in which the car trumped its rivals even as far back as 2003 and Honda hasn’t failed in the past four generations of the car since then. The fifth generation City is no different, especially now more than ever.
Forever changing times are way different than that era and analogue anything in automobiles is only appreciated on a sunny Sunday brunch of a vintage car rally. The sedan now has to not only excite the enthusiast in you, it will also have to make the daily grind comfortable, keep your phones charged, connect to the outside world and still be able to keep the accountant happy with its price tag and pennies to a litre.
I even found myself already setting expectations of benchmark standards as I approached the car to start this road test and the new City didn’t disappoint. It looks very similar to the latest generation of the Civic, sharp, classy, a hint of sporty and unmistakably Honda. LED lighting is the norm now and the City has them glittering at both the front and back with both ends now stretched between a longer, wider body. Against the other two in this test, you could visually tell that it will pack the most space.