New 2014 Honda City Variants and Prices - Which one suits you best?

There is immense buzz around the new City. Honda says that it has received 9,000 pre-launch bookings already and that’s even before the car had arrived at dealerships. Now that it has, you have a choice of petrol and a diesel engine in five trims each with manual transmission and a CVT equipped petrol City in two trims. So which one should you go for? Read on.

The New Honda City’s prices start from Rs 7.42 lakh for the base petrol ‘E’ variant, a whole Rs 90,000 cheaper than the base 1.6 petrol Hyundai Verna. The base ‘E’ variant isn’t as bare-bones as we expected – you get electrically adjustable outside rear view mirrors, all four power windows, driver side airbag and ABS with EBD. 

We think there will be a lot of takers for the mid-level SV variant. At just over Rs 1 lakh more than the base variants, both the petrol and diesel SV trim City get a chrome front grille, a lot more on-board information like fuel consumption, driving range, outside temperature and dual tripmeter, entertainment system with Aux, USB and Bluetooth connectivity, a 3.5 inch screen, steering mounted audio and phone controls. This variant also gets a different seat fabric to the entry level variant, armrests for the front and rear passengers and a rear air-conditioning vent. On the safety front it gets an extra airbag for the front passenger.

Honda says that off all the 3rd generation Citys sold in India, 15 percent were automatics in 2013 and the market for automatics is growing every year. Naturally they expect the CVT equipped new City to do well. Since the CVT is marginally more fuel efficient that the manual gearbox at 18Kmpl to the manual’s 17.4Kmpl in equivalent trim, it could be a popular model in our perennially congested cities. It costs Rs 1 lakh more than the manual transmission new City so if you do a lot of in-city driving, it’s the variant to buy.

The V and VX trim new City gets the works. You have for the first time in this segment, a 5-inch touchscreen entertainment system with four speakers and 4 tweeters, the car is bathed in chrome from the grille to the door handles, cosseting leather seats (VX), key-less push-button stop/start system (VX), rear parking camera with three views, alloy wheels and sunroof (VX). Since the sunroof and leather seats in the VX trim City add almost Rs 1 lakh to the car, the V trim City almost all the other features is splendid value for money.