Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla Altis reviews

I have been test driving quite a few C and C+ segment cars of late because the time has come to bid bye to my favorite Ford Ikon 1.6. I preempted Skoda Octavia from my test drive suite as it was already becoming an outdated vehicle.

The reviews

You can find my detail reviews on both these awesome cars at the following links. At the end of it, though my heart said Civic, my head said Altis for the practical reasons in Bangalore and hence booked a Toyota Corolla Altis.

honda-civic-india
Image courtesy: Honda Siel Cars India
Honda Civic review

toyota-corolla-altis-india
Image courtesy: Toyota Kirloskar Motors India
Toyota Corolla Altis review

Enjoy reading and Happy motoring!

All New Honda City (ANHC) iVtec road test

As usual, I had posted my detail road test and review of the ANHC (All New Honda City) i-Vtec on mouthshut and here are the excerpts from that review. You may head to the All New Honda City i-Vtec review page for more details.

All New Honda City - iVtec
Image courtesy: Honda Cars India

Futuristic design

Honda India has been one of the pioneers in bringing in futuristic car designs with their Honda City and Civic series. The ANHC is no different. In fact, from the exterior design point of view, it’s an extremely good looking vehicle. When it comes to the interiors, it has tried to mimic some part of the Civic’s console and steering but the plastics and finish are extremely disappointing.

The engine and performance

The best thing about the ANHC is its 1.5L iVtec engine that is so smooth and powerful. It delivers a 118ps power with a decent 146Nm torque. In fact, I thought, in a 0-100 shoot out it may overtake the Toyota Corolla Altis. The gear is slick and butter smooth so are the brake, gas and clutch pedals.

So, what’s the problem?

At the time of writing, the ANHC is a totally under-featured vehicle that has no fog lamps, no alloys, no electrically foldable mirrors and no CD-player etc. And without all these it is priced at something like 8.5L ex-showroom in Bangalore. Moreover, the interiors are extremely disappointing and one wouldn’t feel like they are sitting in a 9L car. Read more about the ANHC in my Honda City review on Mouthshut.

Happy Motoring!

Ford Ikon – In a league of its own

I have been fascinated by cars and bikes from a very young age. I always watched, studied and admired them along with the various aspects of automobile engineering from my childhood. We did not have any car or bike in my house at that time and hence never got to try my hands on those coveted machines (if you can call them so) of that era. My first hands-on with a bike was at the age of 7 whereby I tried to ride my uncle’s Luna (do you remember that moped?) and got nice scolding and a couple of whacks for the same.

After I got my first job, the very first thing I did was to buy a bike. I, in fact, bought a Royal Enfield Machismo at that time – which was obviously a little too much for my thin frame :). After moving to the US for about three years, I got to experiment with a lot of good quality cars but most of them were auto-transmission models.

Coming back to India in 2001, gave me the opportunity to experiment with various nice cars. Since I always preferred driver’s cars over those who looked great or provided good mileage, I picked Maruti Zen as my first car in India. It was an awesome car to drive but I was yearning for more and hence in 2004-’05 I switched to a Ford Ikon 1.6 Petrol which, at that time, was probably the best driver’s car in India.

Ford Ikon 1.6 Review

Though, I have been writing car reviews here and there, I thought of organizing my auto reviews a little bit and hence started publishing them on my blogs. Unfortunately, some of them got closed due to other blogging priorities and hence I moved some of my reviews to Mouthshut.com.

My Ford Ikon review on Mouthshut is the first organized and complete review of that kind. You may please read the review and provide your feedback there itself. At some point, I plan to consolidate all my reviews on this blog.

Happy Motoring!