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-   -   Honda BR-V : Official Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/176456-honda-br-v-official-review-20.html)

I am taking back some of my words after I saw two BR-Vs on road today. The car did not look bad at all (as I thought earlier). In fact, I was surprised how cool it looked in the rear view mirror. May be I will go to the showroom to take a look before I book my Duster AMT!

Honda has dispatched only 2,344 units of BR-V during May '16. This figure when seen in isolation may look like a lower figure but even City, Jazz, Amaze have also been hit, may due to some production constraints.

But even then this number does not give confidence that BR-V will be a winner, since Mobilio clocked 3365, 5530, 5329, 2985, 3588, 2098 units in its first 6 months of the launch and now sold 126 units in May '16.:Shockked:

We need wait and see the sales pattern of BR-V for atleast 6 months to come to any conclusion on the sales figures.

While waiting to pick up my Jazz after its service, I decided to quickly check out the BRV and I was quite disappointed. The interior designers were probably serving their notice period while half heartedly putting it together, the bonet's panel gaps were huge enough to directly inspect the engine without popping the hood and the pricing appears to be wildly ambitious. OK so maybe I added a little masala :D I ended up talking to another existing Honda customer about the BRV and he shared the exact same sentiments. When I showed him the pricing sheet he was astonished!


One thing I noticed in both display vehicles was this black plastic piece was fit poorly and I could actually move it left and right with my finger. The sales guy didnt know where to look when I gave poor feedback overall on the BRV and mumbled something about no PDIs being done on display vehicles which is why the plastic was like this. Anyone else noticed this?

I cant help but think that Honda is going overboard with taking Indian customers for granted. Then again, thats exactly what I thought about Hyundai when I checked the Creta and look where they are at.

OFF-TOPIC:

No production constraint issues with Honda. The market has shifted to petrol big-time (72:28 in favor of the City petrol in Q4 2015) and Honda is simply having problems re-aligning their production schedules between diesel & petrol. (Link)

The waiting period for petrols has gone up, while unsold diesel Hondas stand in dealer stockyards.

A minimum of 3 months is needed for this change and adjustment, as they have to shift their entire production and component supply chains according to the shift (and rise) in demand.

They need to churn out more i-VTECs, instead of i-DTECs.

June-end/early-July is when things will start normalising again.

This is easy to explain. The reason why you feel this way is that you are probably very satisfied with your Jazz. Cars in this segment will start making sense to you only when -

1) You are bored of your Jazz or it doesn't meet some of your car requirements
2) You have a budget of around Rs. 15 Lacs.

Only then you will see what extra these cars have over your Jazz. Till then, you will be like "What? I don't need that. My Jazz does 95% of that"

Think of it this way - a 100% satisfied Wagon R owner will look at a Jazz and wonder "Why on earth do people pay Rs. 8-9 Lacs for this when my Wagon R can do 95% of what the Jazz does, at half the price!"

I wonder why this affected only Honda and Toyota (has seen a large fall too). How could Maruti/Hyundai & all others get around the sudden shift in consumer sentiments? Only possible reason is larger inventory of parts.

Finally got a chance to read the complete review of the BR-V, phew!
Multiple earlier attempts failed and I ended up reading just parts of the review, but dedicated couple of hours today and completed the review.

Aditya, Rehaan and the team - wonderful review, deserve more than 5 stars for this clap: Though Honda's eye for detail was found wanting in a few places, as reviewers your eye for detail is microscopic and very evident, thanks for sharing.

I also got a chance to test drive the BR-V today though it was unplanned. I accompanied a friend who wanted to see the car but realised at the dealership that his drivers license had recently expired, so yours truly had to do the honours :D
(Luckily/coincidentally I picked him up en route to the dealership today).

We barely beat the crowd that was building up to TD the car so it had to be short drives of 4-5Km in total. First TD was of the Petrol CVT (V variant) followed by the Petrol MT VX variant.
My first impressions (good and bad included):
1. 210mm GC is good but on looking at the car you don't get the feeling that GC is so high, is it the plastic cladding on the lower potions, I don't know!

2. Interiors are decent but I prefer the dark black, this is more of dark grey than Black except for the middle piano black fascia.

3. I think the ICE in the new Jazz with touchscreen and navigation is much better than this simple one in the BR-V (with all the part sharing with other Honda cars that should have made it here as well for something that can go > 1 million rupees).

4. Archaic manual slider from the 80's for air-circulation modes.

5. Nice door pockets with ample space for water/beverage bottles and other stuff.

6. Wafer thin third row seats - ideal for kids and small frame adults. Height is lesser in the third row so ideal for shorter folk.

7. Driver seating position is more sedan-like than SUVish.

8. CVT is nice and smooth, loved the paddle shifters and "S" mode.

9. Missing cruise control. The sales person heard the "Hill Hold" term for the first time so could not respond to our query!

10. Looks are very much MPVish/like mini-van from the sides, only front has the SUVish look, albeit in a smaller way compared to the Duster (maybe the width being lesser gives this feeling ?)

Clicked a few pictures but the review itself and other posts on this thread have covered them all with so many pictures that it'd become redundant!
So just posting a couple of them here:
210mm GC gets prominence


Wafer thin third-row seats


Bangalore pricing

While I agree that your observations would be applicable to a very large number of car buyers, I dont feel it was necessarily the same in my case. I wasnt comparing (consciously at least) the BRV with the Jazz, I was just trying to get a first impression of the BRV without getting too much into the details. The poor interiors and huge panel gaps certainly arent worthy of the high price tag which is apparently feedback that many people echo. There are several cars that are priced far below the BRV that get these basics (for me at least) right. No doubt the BRV has its strengths which have been listed on this thread, its just that it has a few very obvious weaknesses.

Well this thread has become really interesting of late with arguments and counter-arguments.

Here is my take on the pricing /over-pricing of the BR-V

• In our market, there is a significant premium charged for SUV or SUV-is looking vehicles. Just look at the Creta/Duster/Terrano etc. And Honda is marketing BR-V as a SUV. So, it's no surprise that they are going to charge a premium for it.
• Now, given that all the vehicles in this class are overpriced, next comes the question of relative overpricing compared to its competitors. Here, I think the Creta is clearly more overpriced than the BR-V. If you read the review of Creta, you will notice that it doesn't even have all the features present in the I20 at nearly half the price. BR-V also lacks in lots of features but at least it provides an additional row of seats and good flexibility with the 2nd and 3rd row of seats.The Duster has such spartan interiors for a vehicle costing so much (in spite of numerous efforts from Renault to spruce it up)

Some of the missing features in BR-V like touchscreen HU with navigation/reverse camera and reverse sensors can easily be fixed outside or at a Honda dealer within 30-40K and you will probably get a better HU than the stock ones provided in most cars.
To summarize, I don't feel that the BRV is any more overpriced than the others in the segment. That does not mean it will sell like the Creta. Creta seems to have struck the right chord with the buyers who think of it as an aspirational vehicle and a segment higher than the City/Verna though I fail to understand why.
My biggest gripe with Honda about the BRV is not the missing touchscreen HU with navigation and camera but the noisy 1.5 diesel and the premium Honda is asking for it. Clearly, the 1.5 diesel is the weakest in the segment when it comes to either refinement or performance. So, Honda needed to provide a higher powered diesel engine with better refinement (same applies for the City). And if they are providing the current 1.5 IDTEC, then the premium charged for it over the 1.5 IVTEC should have been kept to a minimum. With the current pricing, I don't see many people opting for the BR-V diesel. The petrol and the CVT though makes a strong case for itself

Surprisingly, the SA I met at the showroom said the opposite. After checking the BRV, I just casually asked him about Jazz. He said it's a much better choice if the 6th seat is not so important. Seats five in better comfort and has all features from city, while being a full five lakhs cheaper.

He then went on to add- 'Sir, Jazz is based on City, while these three (Brio, Amaze, BRV) are the same vehicle'!

The guy either was unhappy with BRV or has extra targets to meet for Jazz. :D

Actually agree with him on the Diesel Jazz for sure since they both share the same engine and 6 speed gearbox with similar power outputs.

However the petrol Jazz doesn't come close to the 1.5 City's engine. The B-RV's USP is that petrol engine and the CVT. The 1.5L i-VTEC is possibly the best motor in that category.

Its always fun to learn from these SAs :). Nothing against them, but we all very well know how knowledge equipped they are. I think Jazz stock with that dealer mixed with the waiting period of BR-V might be playing a trick. I still get calls from the dealer with whom I had inquired for Jazz about 5 months back, even after saying I have booked another vehicle.

While his point of Jazz based on City and BR-V based on Brio is not wrong. But that does not mean Jazz is better in every way if you don't want a 6 seater. I was looking for an AT petrol and Jazz was the first car I checked. Three of my friends have the new Jazz AT, I really like it. But 1.2 engine is under powered for this car and it clearly showed with the CVT. Plus the points I mentioned still stand of BR-V being one up on any of the current Honda offerings except CR-V.

I always tend to forget to mention the fuel preference.

As Vidyut has already guessed, yes- I was only looking at the diesel option since my current car is running at a pace of about 30k kms per year. His (Honda SA) comments should also have been only about the diesel versions which I was referring to!

I was mostly referring to you not finding value in Hyundai Creta too. But hey, I felt the same way when Hyundai first came out with the price list. :)

The reason for this I feel is -> how much the top end model costs gets imprinted in our minds, and that is what we consider as the "price" of Creta. Example: One would think that Creta costs Rs. 16 to 18 Lacs, but its actual price starts from Rs. 11.2 Lacs (for petrol). Not too far away from how much top end Jazz diesel costs. That's why I think some manufactures do NOT -

1) Equip their diesels with automatics
2) Equip with automatics in their top spec

Till a few years back, Maruti never had Z variants for their diesels. All this, so as to not appear overpriced.

This dude needs to go back to training. He should have tried to push the Honda City down your throat, if you appeared not impressed by BR-V.

BRV seems like a very interesting option for someone like me who wants to replace a diesel hatch with a petrol crossover or sedan this side of 10-12 lakhs. I am thinking of S variant of petrol manual which is about 10 lakh ex-showroom in Delhi. It has ABS, EBD, Projector headlamp, rear wash and wiper, music system, 6 gears, premium fabric seats, rear AC vents, electronically adustable outside mirrors (you hardly need any accessories), and last but certainly not the least - flexible space for people and luggage - which can never be bought as accessory.

I have wished for 6 seats on occasions or more luggage space when a family of 4 arrives at the airport or railway station with big suitcases. It would be nice to accommodate two 3 member families for transport withing the city or for weekend trips. Just for that extra one person we have had to take two cars on some trips. And sometimes because of extra luggage. BRV will be just right for such occasions. Otherwise four people with good amount of gear can travel in great comfort. Flexible space is the USP of BRV and a really useful one.

And one can use it for one's daily drive. At first I thought I would look like a sole driver pulling an empty train behind. But I think it will look okay. And it is easy to drive too in city. On the highway we know the pros and cons of ivtec. It is certainly a decent engine.

By definition, crossover is supposed to have some elements of SUVs and some elements of sedan/hatch. BRV has the space and GC of a SUV and engine power and dynamics of a mid-range sedan. This particular combination of SUV and sedan features along with the flexible space for people and cargo does fulfill the need for a decent petrol crossover in the affordable range.

Come to think of it we do not have that many choices if you want an affordable petrol crossover in this range. Creta is there, but more expensive and less space. Avventura Abarth would be good, but even Fiat seems uninterested in selling it. Ecosport is severely cramped for space. An S Cross variant with a torqey petrol engine would also be interesting to imagine.

Hey swiftdiesel, on my way back to home from office today I saw a Honda Mobilio and suddenly I realised that it does have the number plate housing just below the rear glass area (Pic attached). The BR-V and the Mobilio have roughly the same glass area at the back. So, going back to what I said earlier, don't you think its a new design element?

Mobilio rear



BR-V rear with roughly the same glass area




The edited BR-V rear just like the Moblio