Now it’s common knowledge that travelling from the centre of Jakarta is no 15- or 20-minute drive. Total travel time, to and fro, could exceed six hours, and that’s on a good day. So, taking the advice of our friends at Autocar Indonesia, we decide to stay on the city’s outskirts. All we have to do now is navigate 12-odd-km of a city ring road before we hit the highway – easy-peasy. To give ourselves even more time with the Mobilio, we decide to leave at six in the morning. Maybe we can beat the traffic. But that’s wishful thinking; the jam to get out of the city starts a mere 10 minutes into our drive. MPVs, cars and trucks fill all five lanes of the ring road, two service lanes included, and around corners, we see traffic piled up for miles and miles. All that at six in the morning!
Very quickly, I sort of understand why most Indonesians prefer to own MPVs. The logic is pretty clear: if you’re going to spend hour after hour in your car, it better be as comfortable as possible. So in Indonesia, very few people buy tiny hatchbacks, and small- and medium-sized sedans are all but unheard of. People carriers like the Toyota Innova and Avanza and the Suzuki Ertiga rule here. Indonesians, like us, also love travelling with their extended families, so a third row of seats is important as well.
The Brio platform is one of Honda’s major developments for the Asian markets. The platform currently underpins the Brio hatchback and the Amaze sedan, while a third model is expected to be launched in India this July. This all-new car is called the Honda Mobilio and is a seven-seater MVP that will take on the Maruti Suzuki Ertiga.
The Honda Mobilio MPV (codenamed 2NH) is 4.4-metres long (wheelbase of 2.6-metres) and has a ground clearance of 185mm. It may appear like a stretched out version of the Brio but much like Amaze, it looks like it has been designed from the ground up to be an MPV. The Mobilio is a budget MUV, and so it shares a lot of components with the other Honda cars that would help it achieve a very competitive pricing. Despite this budget tag, the Mobilio looks and feels premium car with a trendy design and the Honda badge at the front.
The interiors of the new car are similar to that of the other Honda cars with beige being the predominant colour. The front two rows will certainly be spacious with a foldable third-row that can either accommodate children or make way for extra luggage.
The music system will be similar to that of the City sedan and it will have to be seen whether the touch screen AC panel will be fitted on the higher trims. The safety features will be up to the mark – ABS-EBD will be standard on all except the base variant and, at least the top two variants will get front airbags.
The Mobilio will be powered by the new 1.5-litre turbocharged Earth Dreams diesel engine churning out 100bhp and 205Nm – the same unit that powers the Amaze and City. The petrol variants will get the 1.5-litre i-VTEC unit putting out 117bhp and 145Nm of torque.
The Honda Mobilio has reached production stage and the MVP is expected to reach the showrooms by July end. Honda will target the Ertiga with the new car, so expect a starting price of around Rs 6.25 lakh for the petrol base variant, the top-end diesel on the other hand should carry a price tag of around Rs 9 lakh. We have seen the Mobilio at the 2014 Auto Expo and are pretty impressed with the overall product. Once launched, the Mobilio will also compete with the Chevrolet Enjoy and Mahindra Quanto
The short gearing, however, means there’s always plenty of punch on hand, especially when you wind the brilliant VTEC engine past 4,000rpm. A sporty snarl is accompanied by a progressive shove in the back and then, typically, the engine just wants to spin and spin and spin. What makes it even nicer is that the last 1,500rpm of the powerband feels particularly explosive.
As with other cars on this platform though, the Mobilio doesn’t feel very well insulated. Spinning the VTEC hard creates a din, and when you drive over coarse surfaces, there’s a fair bit of road noise as well.
With large 15-inch rims, 185mm of ground clearance and a long wheelbase, ride quality is pretty comfortable. There is a hint of stiffness at low speeds, especially over sharp bumps, but otherwise, the Mobilio absorbs the bumps pretty well. There’s almost no pitching, absolutely no Xylo-like flip-flop and the Mobilio responds smartly to the steering too.
I all but forget about the extra length of the Mobilio when driving on the highways and regular country roads. The car gives almost no indication of the extra weight being carried behind the driver, even when you take corners, and agility in general feels almost as good as that of the Amaze. This, of course, will change once you load the car up with passengers and the Mobilio does feel its size when we drive it hard on some tighter corners at a track later in the day. But that does little to change the feeling that the Mobilio, just like the Ertiga, feels surprisingly car-like to drive.
When Honda gets the Mobilio to India, sometime around July, it’s likely to be an instant success. Now well practiced in the art of pricing a car right for the Indian market, Honda is likely to place this MPV at a slight premium – around Rs 50,000 – to the Ertiga. This 1.5 petrol will be joined by Honda’s 100bhp 1.5 diesel and the petrol is likely to get the same efficient CVT automatic gearbox you get on the City. No, the Mobilio isn’t perfect. The dash feels a bit basic, refinement could be better and Honda should have focused even more on the third row. But even as things stand, the Mobilio looks like it will deliver exactly what Indian customers are looking for in a seven-seater – plenty of space, efficient engines and car-like driving manners. Get ready to see plenty of these on our roads.
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