Thread Starter
#1
Please refer to my first post here to know a little bit of history behind the purchase
Got my "urban titanium" Brio SMT delivered on the 19th. I've driven around 70 Kms over the week and I love the car and cherish every moment driving it. I am very proud and happy that I took a wonderful decision with the purchase and I am sure, I will continue cherishing the ownership of the car for several years to come.
Quite a lot of Brio owners here have written their positive ownership reviews and experiences with their car and thus all of us know what the Brio excels in and what everybody loves in the car. Such reviews greatly influenced my buying decision.
And so, I thought, for a change, that I would wear a critique's hat and place a few interesting (may be already known) facts that I discovered during the first week with the car.
Huge gap in the glove compartment cover: The rest of the car's fit and finish is exceptional. Best in class. But there is a huge gap in the glove compartment cover. This is a big eye-sore. Now that I have noticed it, I keep seeing it :(
Badly finished wiper stalks: The rear of the wiper stalks where your fingers gets in contact is unfinished and very rough.
Cheeky door handles: I understand the "V" model gets a different handle. But the lower models have inside handles which are much lower quality, shiny and cheap looking compared to the plastics in the rest of the car.
Steering wheel design and horn: The steering wheel has a nice feel to it but it’s badly designed I feel. It’s very difficult to sound the horn with the hand on the steer. Am barely able to reach the horn with the thumb and unless you have a super powerful thumb, you need to take your hand off the steering to sound the horn. The design is as such, the steer spokes are also very thick so holding the spokes and driving also is not possible. This is a big issue for me. Views?
Steering audio controls not illuminated: In the first week of ownership, when driving at night, I always kept confused between the volume and track + / - switches. These switches are kept very close to each other and it’s very easy to press the wrong switch without any illumination
Illuminated power windows: Same case as the steering control they are not illuminated. It’s so easy and cheap to illuminate these switches since they are receiving power (current) already, all that's needed are some cheap LEDs to be shoved in. This is a must have which is missing.
OE music system button illumination: When the headlights are switched off, the illumination for the music system buttons goes off, the LCD display however remains illuminated. The buttons need to stay on permanently like that of the dash or just fade off after sometime. The first few days, when I wanted to switch off the music system after switching off the headlights, I couldn't locate the power button.
Rear top stop light: Notice how, the stop light is so big , has giant sized screws and does not sit, flush in with the body of the car!. Definitely borrowed from some other car. This stop light is not made for Brio, must be from the CRV or some other big vehicle.
No dead pedal: This is no biggie, but an irritant. But thankfully there is lot of space to rest the left foot on the floor besides the brake. So there is some solace there.
No distance to empty: The instrumentation is all there. The car gauges the mileage and fuel left. All that's left is just a simple formula to calculate distance to empty and display. Don't know how this was missed. But however I am really grateful for the mileage indicator which I guess none of the other cars in this class have?
Small inside rear view mirror: I don't know if there is any standard size for inside rear view mirror, but the one in the Brio does not exploit the huge glass tail gate of the car. There is at least 5-6 inches on either side of the transparent rear neither covered by the rear view mirror nor the outside mirrors thus causing blind spots on both sides. A larger mirror, maybe 2-3 inches longer would have solved this issue easily. Maybe, one needs to clip on the convex rear view mirrors on the OE, but the problem is convex disables the day-night functionality of the OE mirrors :(
No remote lock beep: I thought the Hondas characteristically beep their horns when locked. But the Brio is mute. Every time I lock the car, need to turn around and see if the light blinks to ensure it's locked. Thankfully, the remote has a dedicated lock and unlock button, unlike in some cars, where it’s just a toggle switch and many times one gets confused if the car was just locked or unlocked!
Hazard light switch: This is a toggle switch and there is no way to know that if it’s on or off. This should illuminate and blink when the hazard light is on. There is a subtle beep from the blinkers, but this sound is lost in traffic and/or music noise.
Two free services: I felt kind of cheated seeing this. All other cars I owned had at least 3 free services. Safari, the extreme one, has 5 free services I think. Two free services which may be exhausted in the first couple of months itself by many are a little too little.
Other items that already widely discussed...
No rear wash wipe: Me, living in Chennai, I really don't need a defogger. But a wash wipe is a must-must.
Stone-age radio antenna: I guess Honda hand few thousand of these antennas remaining un-used from the old (first version) City and they decided to use it here :)
I understand that this is "made to a cost" car, but most of these points which I have raised are not necessarily going to cost much to fix and fixing these may bring about even more refinement and finesse to the already most refined car (in its class and price range IMHO).
Honda recently raised the price of the SMT by 11k (in Chennai) for just adding the power mirrors and a pair of rubber mud flaps for the rear tires. Customers do not mind this and they still buy the car, because even after the 11k rise, this car still remains huge VFM when compared to any other car in the market. So even if fixing these minor points is going to increase the cost of the car by another 11k, I am sure customers won’t really mind and this increase in quality and comfort will result in even more customers, I feel.
Some simple surprises I really loved.....
Excellent OEM music system: Good bass, good treble, but slightly weak mid (which one can live with). Surprising performance for an OEM one. I thought, the OEM music system of the figo was very good, but this equals it. But of course this does not have the bells and whistles such as bluetooth, volume increase in high speeds and of course CD player which the Figo has but the Brio's music system does what a music system need to do perfectly, sound decently good. I guess just removing the OE speakers, especially in the front and replacing them with components will make the sound Q even better.
The illumination of the dial and cabin lights: I love the way, the permanently illuminated dials fade off and the cabin lights fade in when you turn off the vehicle. Such a pleasant "Welcome home" sign when you park the vehicle and switch it off at the end of a busy day.
One Question for fellow owners / experts
I have been trying to decipher the logic behind the "ECO" light, but am clueless till date. It definitely is not based just on RPM i.e. keeping the RPM low. If that's the case, the ECO light should come on when I up-shift to say 4th gear when I am doing 20 Kms, but it does not do so. Any logic on how the ECO indication works?
Long Post. Hope you had the patience to read it ;) Comments and feedback on my observation most welcome! Cheers!!
Got my "urban titanium" Brio SMT delivered on the 19th. I've driven around 70 Kms over the week and I love the car and cherish every moment driving it. I am very proud and happy that I took a wonderful decision with the purchase and I am sure, I will continue cherishing the ownership of the car for several years to come.
Quite a lot of Brio owners here have written their positive ownership reviews and experiences with their car and thus all of us know what the Brio excels in and what everybody loves in the car. Such reviews greatly influenced my buying decision.
And so, I thought, for a change, that I would wear a critique's hat and place a few interesting (may be already known) facts that I discovered during the first week with the car.
Huge gap in the glove compartment cover: The rest of the car's fit and finish is exceptional. Best in class. But there is a huge gap in the glove compartment cover. This is a big eye-sore. Now that I have noticed it, I keep seeing it :(
Badly finished wiper stalks: The rear of the wiper stalks where your fingers gets in contact is unfinished and very rough.
Cheeky door handles: I understand the "V" model gets a different handle. But the lower models have inside handles which are much lower quality, shiny and cheap looking compared to the plastics in the rest of the car.
Steering wheel design and horn: The steering wheel has a nice feel to it but it’s badly designed I feel. It’s very difficult to sound the horn with the hand on the steer. Am barely able to reach the horn with the thumb and unless you have a super powerful thumb, you need to take your hand off the steering to sound the horn. The design is as such, the steer spokes are also very thick so holding the spokes and driving also is not possible. This is a big issue for me. Views?
Steering audio controls not illuminated: In the first week of ownership, when driving at night, I always kept confused between the volume and track + / - switches. These switches are kept very close to each other and it’s very easy to press the wrong switch without any illumination
Illuminated power windows: Same case as the steering control they are not illuminated. It’s so easy and cheap to illuminate these switches since they are receiving power (current) already, all that's needed are some cheap LEDs to be shoved in. This is a must have which is missing.
OE music system button illumination: When the headlights are switched off, the illumination for the music system buttons goes off, the LCD display however remains illuminated. The buttons need to stay on permanently like that of the dash or just fade off after sometime. The first few days, when I wanted to switch off the music system after switching off the headlights, I couldn't locate the power button.
Rear top stop light: Notice how, the stop light is so big , has giant sized screws and does not sit, flush in with the body of the car!. Definitely borrowed from some other car. This stop light is not made for Brio, must be from the CRV or some other big vehicle.
No dead pedal: This is no biggie, but an irritant. But thankfully there is lot of space to rest the left foot on the floor besides the brake. So there is some solace there.
No distance to empty: The instrumentation is all there. The car gauges the mileage and fuel left. All that's left is just a simple formula to calculate distance to empty and display. Don't know how this was missed. But however I am really grateful for the mileage indicator which I guess none of the other cars in this class have?
Small inside rear view mirror: I don't know if there is any standard size for inside rear view mirror, but the one in the Brio does not exploit the huge glass tail gate of the car. There is at least 5-6 inches on either side of the transparent rear neither covered by the rear view mirror nor the outside mirrors thus causing blind spots on both sides. A larger mirror, maybe 2-3 inches longer would have solved this issue easily. Maybe, one needs to clip on the convex rear view mirrors on the OE, but the problem is convex disables the day-night functionality of the OE mirrors :(
No remote lock beep: I thought the Hondas characteristically beep their horns when locked. But the Brio is mute. Every time I lock the car, need to turn around and see if the light blinks to ensure it's locked. Thankfully, the remote has a dedicated lock and unlock button, unlike in some cars, where it’s just a toggle switch and many times one gets confused if the car was just locked or unlocked!
Hazard light switch: This is a toggle switch and there is no way to know that if it’s on or off. This should illuminate and blink when the hazard light is on. There is a subtle beep from the blinkers, but this sound is lost in traffic and/or music noise.
Two free services: I felt kind of cheated seeing this. All other cars I owned had at least 3 free services. Safari, the extreme one, has 5 free services I think. Two free services which may be exhausted in the first couple of months itself by many are a little too little.
Other items that already widely discussed...
No rear wash wipe: Me, living in Chennai, I really don't need a defogger. But a wash wipe is a must-must.
Stone-age radio antenna: I guess Honda hand few thousand of these antennas remaining un-used from the old (first version) City and they decided to use it here :)
I understand that this is "made to a cost" car, but most of these points which I have raised are not necessarily going to cost much to fix and fixing these may bring about even more refinement and finesse to the already most refined car (in its class and price range IMHO).
Honda recently raised the price of the SMT by 11k (in Chennai) for just adding the power mirrors and a pair of rubber mud flaps for the rear tires. Customers do not mind this and they still buy the car, because even after the 11k rise, this car still remains huge VFM when compared to any other car in the market. So even if fixing these minor points is going to increase the cost of the car by another 11k, I am sure customers won’t really mind and this increase in quality and comfort will result in even more customers, I feel.
Some simple surprises I really loved.....
Excellent OEM music system: Good bass, good treble, but slightly weak mid (which one can live with). Surprising performance for an OEM one. I thought, the OEM music system of the figo was very good, but this equals it. But of course this does not have the bells and whistles such as bluetooth, volume increase in high speeds and of course CD player which the Figo has but the Brio's music system does what a music system need to do perfectly, sound decently good. I guess just removing the OE speakers, especially in the front and replacing them with components will make the sound Q even better.
The illumination of the dial and cabin lights: I love the way, the permanently illuminated dials fade off and the cabin lights fade in when you turn off the vehicle. Such a pleasant "Welcome home" sign when you park the vehicle and switch it off at the end of a busy day.
One Question for fellow owners / experts
I have been trying to decipher the logic behind the "ECO" light, but am clueless till date. It definitely is not based just on RPM i.e. keeping the RPM low. If that's the case, the ECO light should come on when I up-shift to say 4th gear when I am doing 20 Kms, but it does not do so. Any logic on how the ECO indication works?
Long Post. Hope you had the patience to read it ;) Comments and feedback on my observation most welcome! Cheers!!
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and this is a huge problem.![[cry]](https://www.theautomotiveindia.com/forums/images/smilies/Cry.gif "Cry [cry]")
