BRIO is Honda's new small car for India

Near eleven months to the day Honda showed the mockup of its Project 2CV at this year's Auto Expo, it took the wraps of the near production prototype of this B-segment car for the emerging car markets of Thailand and India at the Thailand International Motor Expo 2010. The car now has a name - Brio - and on hand to do the honours was none other than Honda Motor's President and CEO Takenobu Ito who were succinctly informed that lightweight, fine dynamics, good packaging and a very rewarding drive would be key attributes for this car which would also sport a very competitive price tag.

Brio in the literal sense of the word stands for a youthful and energetic persona and as we could make out from the form and the proportions, this Honda sure is a racy little number which has its work cut out though on many fronts. The car employs the Japanese firm's oft-quoted and well executed "man maximum, machine minimum" design concept but this time taken to the limit given its overall compact dimensions. In fact just as Toyota has delighted with its Etios, it is the cabin area to the overall proportions that truly signifies how well the Honda designers and the packaging engineers have plied their craft to make a cabin feel most comfortable for five full grown adults.

The Brio project was on even before Honda launched the Jazz in India but it truly got even more impetus when the high price positioning of the Jazz meant sales were sluggish. The Brio is very important therefore in this critical aspect of Honda getting large numbers where it matters - out on the roads. And in a segment awash with great cars at every price point delivering strong value, Honda will be marked out for how well it positions the Brio.

The design of the Brio is racy and very youthful with a fun to drive cheeky exterior without being cheesy. At the Thailand International Motor Expo it was turned out in shiny metallic green and this was to signify its link to the Thailand Eco-car project which calls for small cars (irrespective of cubic capacity) to meet a minimum fuel efficiency target of 20kmpl in their own driving cycle. What Honda has therefore done for Thailand is to make a specifically lighter car than its Indian counterpart and while this won’t be substantially lighter it would of course set the very same design and production ethos for the made in India version as well. Given that low CO2 and high fuel efficiency remain critical aspects for automakers in their move forward, the lightweight allied to the all new version of the 1.2-litre i-VTEC engine will make for a car which will deliver big, claim the Honda engineers across the board from Japan, Thailand and India.

In fact, the Honda Siel engineers and product planners have stated with a degree of conviction that the drive experience of the Brio would be scintillating and delight users across the spectrum. While no power or torque figures were stated, ditto being the case with all up weight, what was inferred was that the car would come with a 5-speed manual gearbox for India while Thailand would get this transmission plus also a CVT as an option.

The racy arrowshot design, reminiscent of so many recent Hondas, including the brilliant new CR-Z hybrid sports car, manifests itself to great effect on this machine. It is a credit to Honda’s design team that they have given super shape to a form with small proportions. Also the delightful proportion of glazed surfaces to sheet metal is another aspect and unlike so many other small cars, the rear end styling is pretty distinctive.

The Brio is one compact number as its overall exterior dimensions suggest: 3610mm in length, 1680mm in width and 1475mm in height. On this very aspect let me also throw in another idea and suggest that Honda could drum up a saloon which could very well be squeezed into the 4.0-metre overall length should they decide to storm in a model here as well but that’s conjecture at this point. The interior is pretty distinctive as well and while straightforward, it carries new design cues to make for a comfortable ambience. As cars get smaller and their acceptability now dawns on to a larger populace, interiors will also turn into major defining elements for the overall user experience.

The Honda Brio will go into series production in Thailand around the second quarter of calendar 2011 while in India it will begin rolling off the assembly lines at Honda Siel Cars' Greater Noida unit around August-September 2011. The key attribute for Honda in India has been to relearn everything it can on the production and purchase side of its operations. The obvious thing was for Honda to learn from its successful and large motorcycle base and so every detail of localization (to the tune of 80 per cent at start up) has been configured and thought of to deliver value without compromising quality. This is the biggest challenge for Honda with the Brio and if it can hit the sweet spot on this count, it would really hit the ground running. The 80 percent localization it states is the most for any Honda four-wheeler to date at start-up and it is not just about this being used to peg costs and overall price down but also to put into practice a new way forward for all cars from the Brio onwards.

Speaking of pricing, Honda's president and CEO Takenobu Ito mentioned that for India the car would be priced below Rs 5 lakh and that is mighty low given the way it went about the Jazz. That Honda supermini sadly has sung a lamentable tune thanks only to its price positioning and if Honda has any ambitions to play the game in the largest segment of the car market in the country, it will need to be spot on with pricing otherwise it would have lost out on the one opportunity to redeem itself. On this particular note I think that Honda is now seized of the matter and all the words and murmurs coming from the Honda Siel folk were one of reassurance on the pricing front. Well the firm has about nine months to deliver a bonny baby and also to price it just right to find many a home and heart.