Key in the pocket and I press the request button on the driver’s door handle. A small ‘tak’ and car unlocks; I opened the door which is actually built on a lighter side but was impressed with the ease of ingress and egress it offers. The door opens wide in a three stage action and seats are placed near perfect. But grass isn’t all green; God is my witness that I am not exaggerating on how much disappointed I was when all my hopes got shattered and how. Honda, where are your values? Where is that premium and sporty feel that Honda always stood for in Indian market? I mean why move towards the ‘famous’ Vitara Brezza quality when you have Creta for benchmarking? The ugly weld joints on the doors are an eyesore for sure, in fact on inspecting a bit closer I found that there are panel gaps, exposed bolts and uncovered holes too. Oh why Honda? This isn’t the place where you needed to do cost cutting.
Enough of brickbats, it isn’t all bad after all. The first impression for us was of the driver’s seat and it was a good one (we would have preferred to have seats from City though). Legroom and headroom is good and cabin width is also acceptable going by the segment, the cabin could have been broad however. Driver’s seat, like all other seats looks thin but is perfectly shaped, sized and cushioned. In fact the seat is so well shaped that any medium sized adult like me is never going to complain of any kind of support on this seat, everything seems to be just perfect. The seat height adjustment along with the rake adjustable steering wheel makes it very easy to find the perfect driving position and ergonomics, like any Honda are just perfect. The position of everything is simply perfect and everything is in easy reach for the driver. But where is the armrest? Err, no armrest in BR-V CVT while we get one in City. Omission of front middle armrest or even a dedicated driver armrest (even an idiotic one like of Duster and Ecosport) is something unacceptable in a car of this price and segment.
There was that old and odd Brio based dashboard in the Mobilio which has finally given way to this new, appealing and a bit more functional unit. Honda has decided not to use the beige and black design theme like it’s in Amaze and instead went for a full black treatment with a touch of silver inserts at places. Silver inserts are very tastefully placed and work quite well in breaking the monotony of cabin along with a grey panel finished in minute hexagonal texture just above the glovebox. This panel looks like a perforated surface but it isn’t. There are disappointments, Honda has decided to use the similar dash design and we accepted but why use the similar plastic quality? These shiny plastics are acceptable on compact sedans but on a car that costs north of 10 lakh, they are simply out of place. There is one saving grace though, there are no rough edges and everything is screwed together quite well too.
The already familiar steering wheel is a direct lift from the third generation Honda City and this isn’t something we appreciate. The wheel is well-shaped, nice to hold and is thoughtfully designed too considering the fact that buttons for ICE controls never foul with your fingers and horn is easy to reach with slight stretch of thumb. The rim thickness is also fine but still this wheel looks old. When Honda already has a way better looking multi function and leather wrapped steering wheel doing duty on the new gen City as well as Jazz. Honda, you won’t be forgiven for this I tell you, at least you could have provided the leather wrapping on the steering wheel like you have done on the VX variant. On the name of steering mounted controls; we have the same old school source, channel and volume controls. Many will miss the button with a ‘phone symbol’ as well as one with ‘cruise’ written over it. Oh c’mon Honda, this is an auto and it needs cruise control – don’t be so greedy. Now adding more salt on the wound; this steering wheel isn’t reach adjustable too and there is a saving grace that seat height adjustment and overall adjustment will not make you want the reach adjustment very badly. Anyhow the steering responsiveness is on a better side which we will discuss later.
What we particularly appreciate is the instrument panel, taken from City, Jazz and Amaze; it has three dials distinct for tacho, speedo and MID. First of all I thank Honda for doing away from those blue lights and giving us the white + black combo. The fonts on the speedo and the tacho are just the perfect size and the all time backlit nature makes them look simplistically pleasing. On the right is the MID which gives you all the information like time in 12/24 hour format, odometer reading, twin trips with separate fuel economy readings for them, a distance to empty counter and outside temperature display. Additionally there are two graphical bars; the one on the top displays the instantaneous fuel economy while the one at the lower end displays the fuel level. There is an ‘Eco’ indicator on the tacho section which lights up when the car is being driven in an economical manner. There is this ugly stalk for toggling through the MID data (why can’t others adopt the VW style toggling buttons either on left stalk or on the wheel itself?) the lower variants gets the steering wheel from Amaze as well as a really low rent looking instrument panel. Honda; I tell you, this isn’t the right place to run the cost cutting knife at. Compare the following pics for reference; the upper one is the console of BR-V V, V CVT or VX variants while the lower one is from lower trims:
Image Source: Team-BHP
The center console is a direct lift from Amaze and we aren’t particularly impressed with anything in it. The piano black finish looks good but the ICE is having a really low rent monochrome display (and that is also tough to read while driving under sunlight). Oh c’mon Honda, even if you have omitted the touch screen, you still could have provided a bit premium looking head unit at least; this looks like a straight lift from Amaze and is definitely not going to impress anyone paying upwards of 13 lac for getting this car on the road. Wait wait wait!! There is a saving grace; this system has 4-speakers (2 in front doors and 2 near third row) and 2 tweeters (poorly fit on A-pillar) but sound quality is its talking point which is actually good and will keep non audioholics quite satisfied. Automatic climate control console looks acceptable and has better fonts too as compared with what is there in the screen of the ICE. The performance of the AC is appreciable, be it dash mounted ones or the roof mounted vents, they work really well in cooling the cabin and managed to keep us comfortable even when the outside temperature was soaring at 40 degree Celsius. In fact the better part is that blower speed didn’t go into full blast for bringing temperature down in auto mode and it selected to keep things calm but cool even after the car was parked under direct sunlight for around half hour. Although Honda has decided to stick to the old school sliding type fresh air/re-circulation mode selector but we appreciate it; these are old but reliable as compared to our button type mode selectors.
The gear selector lever is again in the list of things which look out of place. This lever is fine for a car costing 6-7 lac but looks completely out of place in this car. Well, there is another glaring omission, the gear position indicator is no backlit and you will have to rely completely on either the display in instrument cluster or on your instincts by making counts of P R N D S to know where you have slotted into while driving in dark. This can pose a problem for the drivers coming from budget end of market and opting for automatic. Well, Honda has made an another omission here; it’s with the entire power window and mirror control console on the driver side armrest; well, nothing is illuminated there and it is damn annoying when I had to figure out which button is for front or rear window by moving my fingers over them. Numerous times I ended up opening wrong window during the night time just because there is not even a single button that is illuminated/backlit on the console; this isn’t where cost cutting knife is supposed to be used.
In terms of storage space in the cabin, we have a shallow glovebox which is good enough for small to medium sized items only (my diary couldn’t be placed in it with papers and minor knick knacks). There is a deep storage area under the climate control unit which can be used to place your smart phone, but phone slides out easily under hard acceleration That means either the storage area isn’t smart or the phone isn’t smart or none of the two is smart; or maybe the designing team didn’t had smart phones. Under this deep storage space is another cubbyhole (hold on, there is a good 1.5-2 cm wide panel gap at the dash and this lower section joint, pic attached under ‘poor fit and finish’ section) which also houses the AUX and USB slots. Don’t think of keeping your 5.5” phone here too; it will slip while cornering even at moderate speeds. There are bottle holders which can actually easily hold 600 ml cold drink bottles but wait, you can’t put your 5.5” smart phone here too; we wish Honda had joined these bottle holders and this could have worked well for even placing tablets. There are 1-liter bottle holders on doorpads too and that’s the place I used for storing my smartphone (yay, I finally got a place for it). Although all these holders are meant for 1-liter bottles but actually none of them holds it conveniently. It’s the larger cubbyhole behind the handbrake or the bottle holders on rear doors where one can easily fit 1-liter water bottles. Additionally, there’s a small ‘Nokia’ cubby right behind the right hand side front AC vent which can be used to store the old, durable and reliable Nokia basic phone.
With the driver seat adjusted at my driving position and middle row in a position that I can fit myself into third row too; still I had around 2 inches of legroom and that is more than enough for me. In other words, there is enough space inside to fit three 5’10” guys one behind another with very less compromises made. These pictures can give a thorough idea of how much space to expect in middle row with minimum and maximum legroom:
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