Honda has revealed that the current-gen City will continue to be offered in fully-loaded variants with no plans of any stripped down version. Moreover, it could also see a significant price drop with the arrival of the new car.
Honda will soon be launching the fifth-gen City in India post the lockdown. We have also reported to you that Honda will continue selling the current-gen City alongside the new generation model. The current-gen model will be offered as a petrol-only car and it was also expected that the Honda City could eventually also see its way into the fleet segment. However, Honda Cars India have made it clear that the current-gen City is not destined for the fleet segment and that it will continue to be feature-rich offering.
In an interview with Autocar India, Rajesh Goel, senior Vice President and Director, sales and marketing, Honda Cars India, said, “I definitely am not intending to start stripping the car off its features as I launch the new one. It will still be fairly loaded irrespective of its positioning.” The current-gen car surely will be positioned below the new Honda City, the latter being deemed as a much premium offering. Currently, the Honda City was available in four variants – SV, V, VX and ZX. Going ahead, Honda might re-shuffle the variant lineup of the current City but the features on the top-spec model like LED headlamps, diamond-cut alloy wheels and a 7.0-inch infotainment system will perhaps not be given a miss out.
The fifth-gen Honda City is a quite larger than the current-gen car and it will also have much more features and equipment than the current-gen car. Being positioned a notch higher than the current-gen car, it will also have several segment-only features like a blind spot camera and Amazon Alexa integration. The City has always been a premium sedan offering in the minds of Indians and its customers and Honda would not like to harm that image by bringing out a stripped out version of the current-gen car in an attempt to look at fleet sales.
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This will be first time in Honda’s 20-year-plus history in India that they will be offering two generations of the same car. Mr Goel reveals that they have received numerous complain its from loyalists and customers of the City on discontinuation of a previous-gen model whenever a new model was brought in. And we have to admit that even as enthusiasts, we have always liked that older generation Honda City, always acclaiming it for its timeless design. It might actually be a great thing to see both generations of the City on our roads together.
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The 1.5L petrol engine in the current-gen City has already been updated to BS6 norms and even the styling of the current-gen car is not out of date yet. In fact, it could easily remain in style for atleast 2-3 more years. The current-gen car will still continue to find sufficient buyers for itself and with an expected lowering of its price, the current-gen car might actually be very lucrative for many. The City also remains extremely well appointed and relevant to date. With a growing popularity of SUVs, sedan sales have naturally seen a dip but with two models of the same car, Honda might be able to reap a larger success from a continuously diminishing segment.
