When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
We took delivery of our first car in Australia on Tuesday afternoon.
The car is a brand new Honda Jazz (not available in the US). It is in the Super-mini Class, which is a fancy way of saying 'econo-box'.
That segment of the market is much more developed here than in the US so you get a pretty good choice of cars and they do not look like the US 'econo-boxes' (hence calling the class Super Mini). Also, the fact that we pay $4+ per gallon makes these gas sniffers quite popular.
We got the VTi-S model (top of the line) with the CVT transmission since it is going to be mostly my wife's car and she refuses to drive a manual car (I did teach her but it is just not her cup of tea :-) ). It comes fully loaded with leather wrapped stearing wheel, CVT (with 7 speed mode), fog lights, front lip, rear spoiler and alloy wheels.
This car is a mixture of the Insight, the Element and the S2000 although not because actual parts of these cars are used. Mostly because of the ideas that are used.
- Insight: Lightweight built, Ultra efficient engine (It is actually the same engine that comes in the Civic Hybrid in the US).
- S2000: Stiff suspension, Leather wrapped steering wheel, very sporty looking dash, fast acceleration on the 7 speed mode (more ahead)
- Element: Van like seating, rear seats that fold down completely flat. The rear seats. You can actually fit two bikes inside without taking the front wheels off.
My wife is absolutely in love with it. So much she wanted me to Zaino it straight away!! :-)
We went for a drive yesterday and took turns. I drove to the destination and she drove back. We both got great fuel consumption. Hoever since I had an Insight for a while I managed to squeeze 46 MPG out of it at the speed limit (60 -65 MPH). She did well too at around 40 MPG. That is better than she ever got out of the Civic so she was really happy (remember: It costs $45 to fill up the 11 gallon tank! )
When you put the car in the 7 speed mode (think shiftronik) you get 7 forward speeds that you control with the buttons on the steering wheel. If you are about to hit the rev limiter it automatically shifts for you. In this mode the car is quite fun to drive. I hit my wife's speed limiter (white knucles, screams, etc) a few times in this mode...;-)
Since the car is so versatile and we cant find any negatives (so far) we think we'll keep this one for a loooooonnggg time.
Here are a few pics. Pardon the small size but I am on a dialup and it is really slow to upload pics to the US.... ENJOY!
03-11-2004, 02:34 PM
and shif with my left hand.