While its RWD platform and overendowed Pilot Sport tyres ensure that it handles neatly on rural roads, I've driven few cars that feel so at home in an urban environment.īy contrast, the City feels as shocking as a post-lockdown HIIT session – its heavy, unassisted steering asking for much more effort from its driver. The new car gives its best up to 30mph, and it slinks around sans mirrors slicing time from your commute like a moped, its tiny turning circle reminiscent of a terrier chasing its tail. Though there may be similarities on paper, the way they perform is – inevitably – rather different. As is its performance: the Turbo II's lissom 735kg kerbweight allows 0–62mph in 8.4secs, which is a mere 0.1secs behind the 152bhp, 1,543kg e. Which is homing in rapidly on the cost of its 2020 relation. Rich bought his for £5,000 in 2018, the importation process from Japan taking that past 10 grand, yet its rarer-than-a-Huayra status in the UK has seen its value double again: we have insured it today for £20,000. He impressed his dad enough that it was fast-tracked to production as the very first turbocharged Honda. It boasts a slightly skunkworks feel, too, being a pet project of Hirotoshi Honda, one-time Mugen boss and the son of company founder Soichiro Honda. Standard Citys used a 1.2-litre engine with around 70bhp, the Turbo upping that by 50 per cent, producing a smidge under 110bhp in the second-gen guise we have here. His pumped up hatchback may look teensy enough to fall into kei car regulations, but it's not, instead following a design idiom brilliantly known as 'tallboy', which ensures it seats four adults with surprising ease. If that doesn't scream 'sense of humour', I'm not sure what does. Richard Reeve has driven his beloved 1985 Honda City Turbo II over 200 miles – on a 36☌ day, with the aircon only functioning in tandem with the heater – and he's still smiling. The Japanese company has form, which has just pulled up on the outskirts of Olympic Park with a grinning Yorkshireman behind the wheel. We find ourselves in achingly trendy east London to prove that Honda didn't just stick a picture of a modern Fiat 500 on the wall and tell its designers to follow suit. A sense of humour is harder to quantify, but substantially more valuable in this corner of the car world. It triumphed in our EV comparison test despite trailing its rivals on nearly every line of the spec sheet. That's the only annoyance that gets within the same area code of one of these, however. Honda's been wise to follow the recipe with its new electric car, the Honda e. Think of the all-time great town cars – Cinquecento, Mini, MkI Twingo – and they've all got two things in common: dinky dimensions and doe eyes. Nope, the quickest way through a city – on four wheels, at least – is smaller. Just ask the Porsche or Ferrari owner, helplessly stuck at a T-junction waiting for a courteous flash of lights and a gap to filter into, as the hands of their Tag Heuer tick excruciatingly towards their Very Important Meeting. A sports car does not provide the quickest way through a city.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |