SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


This is a launch report. In other words, it's simply a new model announcement. The driving experience was limited to a short drive over a prepared course chosen to make the product look good. We can therefore not tell you what it will be like to live with over an extended period, how economical it is, or how reliable it will be. A very brief first impression is all we can give you until such time as we get an actual test unit for trial. Thank you for your patience.


Honda shifts gears, includes first-time buyers in demographic. We attended the launch of the 2013 Honda Brio.

Pics supplied

Honda con Brio

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday December 19, 2012

“None of you was at the (matric year-end) rage here in Umhlanga last Friday,” grinned Graham Eagle, Honda SA sales and marketing director, “but Honda was. We had 10 new Brios on display and a team in attendance to show and tell.”

For those whose basic Italian is rusty, brio means verve, vigour, cheerfulness and energy; all qualities designed into Honda’s new entry-level city car aimed at students and first-time buyers. On that note, Honda respectfully requests that you hop out of the box classifying all its products as transportation drones built exclusively for Grampy and grand-aunt Jemima. Look also, they say, into those more exciting ones marked Asimo, the little white robot that obeys thought commands and Superbike CBR1000RR, aka Fireblade.

Brio is compact; 3,6 metres long on a wheelbase of 2345 mm, almost 1,7m wide and just 1,5 metres tall, but it carries four grown people, hauls up to 519 litres of luggage, turns on a tickey and gets by on a claimed 5,6 litres of fuel for every 100 kilometres. It also looks edgy, thanks to a double-triangle styling theme that emphasises its wide, low and energetic stance. Inside, it’s all curves, contrasts and stylish packaging to make it young, exciting and spacious.

It is well equipped with manual air conditioning, powered windows (all four) and mirrors, a decent music centre with four speakers, controls on the steering wheel, USB and auxiliary, remote central locking and an immobiliser. Unusual for this price level, it comes with a two-year, 30 000-km service plan.

Being a Honda first and foremost, it’s built to be safe with the company’s patented Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE) to deliver a robust structure in terms of both safety and durability. The body uses high tensile steel in key areas of the frame, while the front structure is equipped with pedestrian injury mitigation technology to absorb impact energy. It’s equipped for safety too, with a pair of airbags, ABS brakes with EBD and the front seatbelts have pretensioners and load limiters.

Energy is provided by the newest version of Honda’s 1.2-litre, SOHC, 16-valve, i-VTEC four-cylinder engine developing 65 kW at 6000 rpm and 109 Nm in an almost straight line from just over chugging speed to 4500 rpm. That means it pulls like a little carthorse. Suspension is courtesy of McPherson struts up front and an H-shaped torsion beam at the rear, while braking is taken care of with 240 mm ventilated discs and 180 mm drums. Gear shifting is with a choice of five-speed manual or automatic (not CVT) transmissions.

Our all-too-brief road time showed that, in manual form at least, the little Brio is smooth and comfortable, accelerates well, pulls strongly and handles very decently indeed.  Just like a Honda, in fact – proof that Grampy and Jemima have been snickering at your ignorance for, like, forever.

Information gathered during a manufacturer-sponsored media launch

The numbers
Prices: R119 800 (manual) and R129 800 (automatic)
Engine: See text
Acceleration to 100 km/h: 12,2 seconds (m), 14,7 seconds (a)
Average fuel consumption (claimed): 5,6 l/100 (m) and 6,3 l/100 km (a)
Tank: 35 litres
Luggage: 161/519 litres VDA, up to windows
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km
Service plan: 2 years/30 000 km; at 15 000 km intervals

To see our review of this car, click here

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

My reviews and launch reports appear on Thursdays in the Wheels supplement to The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles each month, most months of the year (except over the festive season) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

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