Honda Brio review - Look lively!

The last while has not been a good time to be a Honda employee. The Japanese behemoth, which once could do no wrong in India, has found itself beleaguered by all manner of crises. Some, like the recent tsunami in Japan, have been beyond its control, but others have been situations where a bit of timely action could have staved off significant headaches. To not have a diesel offering in its stable, in a country where petrol prices have blown the roof off, is puzzling, to say the least. The other area where Honda has displayed a lack of foresight is in the small car arena; it may have given us the Jazz, but its price ensured that only die-hard Honda fans reached for their chequebooks.

All slumps have an absolute bottom point, however, and Honda appears to have reached its — the only way now seems to be up. Its diesel engine plans have been put into operation, the Jazz is now available at a mouth-watering price and, perhaps most significant in the present moment, it now has a genuine ‘small’ car in their product portfolio — the Brio, meaning ‘liveliness, vigour and vivacity’. So does it live up to its name? Let’s find out.

Stand in front of the Brio and you’ll see the Jazz’s DNA in evidence in the way that the bonnet is shaped and the headlamps flow back towards the body. The design team adopted what they call a ‘Double Triangle’ form for the car, with the ‘dynamic’ triangle focussed on the nose section, sweeping forward, and the ‘sporty’ triangle focussed on the rear bumpers. The Brio is an entertaining mix of the sporty and the quirky; when seen from the front three-quarter, especially with the alloy wheels and fog lamps of the ‘V’ version, the car could well be a souped-up hot hatch. In profile, the lines flow smoothly backward, giving the car a sense of purpose; the rear end is a little at odds with the rest of the package (the ‘quirky’ bit), with the sharply angular, flat hatch looking somewhat old school, and the protruding tail lamps coming off as a bit ungainly.