Honda Jazz could be the small car for India from Honda Motor. Honda does not currently have a small car for India. In India, it currently sells the Honda City, Honda Civic, Honda CR-V and the Honda Accord. Honda sees its long term future in India dependent on the small car mass market, which is why it is now planning to bring a small car to the Indian market, after ten years of successful run on Indian roads.
The 3.8 meter Jazz can be tweaked to fit the small car norms for India. In India, to be eligible for duty concessions available for small cars, the car has to have an engine below 1200 cc and should be less than four meters in length. Since the existing Honda Jazz has a 1200 cc engine, Honda is planning to tweak the engine to bring down the cubic capacity. It has also been speculated that Honda may even introduce an all-new small car for India apart from the Honda Jazz.
The existing Honda Jazz engine has 1246 cc capacity with an i-DSI motor. As against this, both Honda Civic and Honda Accord have i-VTEC engines, while the upper variant of the Honda City comes with a patented VTEC engine.
There are also reports that Honda is developing a supermini of the size of Suzuki Swift on the Global A Platform. The car may be rolled out in India next year or in 2009.
Honda has already declared its intention to sell 1.5 lakh units a year in India by year 2010. To attain this market size, Honda will need a car like the Honda Jazz, which will be positioned as a premium hatchback and bring in the volumes. By time Honda rolls out the Jazz, Skoda is expected to launch the Skoda Fabia in India, which will pit the two new cars in direct competition to each other.
In India, a premium hatchback car has to be priced around the Rs 5 lakh range to attract enough number of customers and still bring in margins.
The Honda Jazz, whenever it rolls out in India, will also face competition from the Suzuki Swift and the Hyundai Getz Prime. Hyundai has just introduced the diesel variant of the Getz Prime model, while Swift too has a diesel model.
The Honda Jazz is known some markets as the Honda Fit. The car is more a particle runabout. It is not a style icon, but has lots of utility value. The Honda Jazz has a dashboard which looks like the Civic, but the speedometer is not digital. There are no steering mounted controls as in the Civic either. The Honda Jazz sold in European markets hosts the VTEC engine, which is unlikely to be used whenever the Jazz is introduced in India.
Honda has not confirmed which small car it would bring to India, but some reports speculate that Honda Life will be car for India. However, opinion seems to be in favour of the Jazz. The Jazz is currently a large selling model for Honda, which marketed in over 60 countries. After 10 years in India, it may be time for Honda to bring the Honda Jazz to India. Let's Jazz it up!
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