2020 Honda City review, road test

We put the fifth-generation City through our comprehensive tests to find out how it performs in the real world.

Published on Sep 28, 2020 07:00:00 AM

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The engine that really impresses in this department is the diesel. Averaging nearly 2kpl more than the fourth-gen car in the city, this fifth-gen City diesel returns an impressive 16.2kpl, while the highway fuel-economy stands at 19.1kpl, identical to the outgoing version.

In the petrol-manual’s case, there’s a new sixth gear brought into the equation to make it a more relaxed highway cruiser. What’s more, the final drive ratio has been lowered to 4.111:1 (compared to 4.294:1) and the gear ratios from first to fifth are unchanged from the outgoing version, so the engine will spin at a lower RPM compared to the fourth-gen car. As an example, 100kph comes up at 3,000rpm in fifth and 2,700rpm in sixth gear, as against 3,100rpm in fifth gear in the outgoing version, thus sipping less fuel while cruising. As a result, it returned 11.5kpl in the city and 17.7kpl on the highway, an overall improvement of 0.6kpl, despite the gain in weight.

What comes as a surprise is the petrol-CVT’s city fuel economy of 12kpl, which goes to show how frugal and intuitive the CVT is compared to a manual. Helping the CVT’s case further is the presence of an Eco mode, which relaxes the responses, especially under part-throttle inputs. But it is still very usable in this mode and owners won’t mind leaving it switched on at all times to extract the best economy out of this engine. On the highway, the petrol CVT returned a rather respectable 16.4kpl.