My initial thought was that the Honda Jazz was nothing like jazz. Then I remembered the definition in the Magnetic Fields song: “It’s divine, it’s asinine, it’s depressing / And it’s almost entirely window dressing / But it’ll do” – and thought maybe that was the reference. Although you wouldn’t call it divine.
It is small, but it has no nip. In fact, it has almost no acceleration in any gear, and a bossy LED display constantly tells you to go up a gear when you feel as though you’re almost out of puff in the one you’re in. Setting off on a journey is like driving your regular car after packing it for a holiday: it behaves as though it’s carrying too much luggage and an unusual family member.
On the stick, sixth and reverse are adjacent, reasonably enough, but reverse has no push-in or pull-up differentiation, so there’s always the chance of a mistake, which I don’t enjoy on a motorway. When you really put your pedal to the plastic, fifth is noisy and sixth is spongy. It simply isn’t big enough to guzzle gas, but I wasn’t impressed by the fuel economy or the emissions, either. It felt like it had forgone its oomph, but forgotten why.
The cabin is more spacious than you’d expect, although it has the odd annoyance: the resting space for your left leg is too close to the clutch and the arm rest between the front seats is obstructive. The boot is small, but at least that saves you from packing more stuff. There was more gear than I anticipated, including a rear-view parking camera. These are really only necessary in a large car, but have percolated the market thanks to a curious mix of “why not?” and status. The satnav claims to offer traffic assist, but I didn’t notice an absence of traffic on the routes it favoured. The Jazz has an automatic braking system for city driving, which beeps intermittently to remind you of the existence of other people. I have never had the courage to test exactly how little you need to be concentrating for this to be necessary.
It is perhaps the car you’d choose if you’d started your driving life in a Honda Civic, upgraded for the family years to a CR-V, then downsized for retirement to something smaller, slower and altogether lesser. I get it: nobody likes change. But if you screwed your courage to the sticking place, you’d have more fun for less money in a Skoda Fabia Hatch.
Honda Jazz
Price £17,105
Top speed 113mph
Acceleration 0 to 62mph in 11.5 seconds
Combined fuel consumption 57mpg
CO2 emissions 114g/km
Eco rating 8/10
Cool rating 3/10
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