Jazz

After 11 years of trouble free motoring Sheila's Honda HR-V has gone. It's been almost perfect since we got it as an ex demo car in 2001. Apart from wear and tear items hardly anything had gone wrong with it in 82K miles. One and a half new sets of tyres and a few wiper blades, and apart from service items it only had three things go wrong with it, and one of those was paid for by Honda. The other two were very minor and inexpensive.

To replace the HR-V we surprised ourselves by buying a three month old ex demo Honda Jazz. Surprised because it was always a given that we'd get a CR-V but in the end it seemed just too big and impractical. Amazingly despite its seemingly small size the Jazz is actually bigger on the inside than the HR-V was, and not actually any smaller than the CR-V is. Looks can obviously be very deceiving!

The Jazz is actually great fun to drive and not at all like you might expect given it's less than stellar image. It's got good nippy performance, is extremely quiet and smooth, handles well, and is loaded with many things that are options on most other cars. Two bikes will easily fit inside and the seats fold in ways I've never seen in other cars like it. And, on top of all that, it can easily do over 50mpg.

Fingers crossed that it will live up to its reputation and be another superbly reliable Honda.