Road Test: Honda City VTi-L

Review by Phill Bertolus - 05/August/2009

Honda's City i-VTEC 5 speed auto sedan gets pretty close to the claimed fuel consumption with my driving. At 7.04 litres per hundred km I couldn't believe it when I paid such a small amount for fuel (plain old unleaded too) after driving a mixture of freeway and city K's. 

What makes i-VTEC so special?

The i-VTEC engine provides for better acceleration at low engine speeds than an engine without the technology. One can easy tell a petrol engine with this technology compared to one without it. It seems quieter just because the engine revs less, which  in turn is the result of more torque at low revs. However its key advantage is low fuel consumption with plain old unleaded fuel.

Drive: 4/5

In the Honda City VTi-L version of the car this smallish engine produces a modest amount of very easy to use power. The car pulls from low down in the rev range making for easy commuter driving in the peak hour traffic snarles.

As you'd expect, when you ask the car to go as hard as it can from a standing start to the speed limit, things get noisier and you eventually get there. Clearly that's not what the Honda City is about.

The 5 speed transmission immediately tries to get the engine revs back down as soon as the driver has calmed a bit, preferring instead to focus on fuel consumption. City even tries to make you feel guilty about sinking the boot by showing an instantaneous bar graph of how much fuel you just gobbled up.

Engine: 4/5

The precise workings of Honda i-VTEC technology are not widely understood outside an elite group of automotive engine designers dotted around the world (who can understand Bernoulli's gas equations and thermodynamics). One man who claims to understand exactly how i-VTEC operates is American engineer Corlis O. Burandt because he claims to have patented the technology in 1990. In his US patent number 4,961,406, commonly known among the elite as the '406' patent, dated October 9, 1990 titled “Method and device for optimizing the air-fuel mixture burn rate of internal combustion engines during low speed light and heavy load operating conditions”, he describes the magic used to power Honda's City in this remarkably frugal manner.

Unfortunately for Corlis O. Burandt history was extremely unkind. He says "I mean, I lost everything. I lost my house, I lost all my cars. I lost everything. I was fricking homeless. I lived in that goddamn car for a while. I mean, how many inventors live in their prototypes? I mean, is that ridiculous or what? It was just...I ruined my family with the deal. But in terms of what happened to me: basically, I was left to rot for eight years."

Burandt began designing engines for a venture capital company, Investment Rarities Inc. in 1980. In 1981 he signed an agreement which gave the company ownership of the patents but he was to receive a percentage of any royalties. On April 7, 1988, Burandt filed the '406' patent application which took 2 years to come through. Then in 1994, a cruel blow, Investment Rarities Inc failed to pay the patent maintenance fees to the US patent office. The patent expired on October 9, 1994.

Burandt only found out about the expiry of the '406' patent in 2001 after reading an article about Honda's introduction of a variable valve timing engine (the K series) which prompted him to check with the US Patent and Trademarks Office. Later in 2002 he asked Investment Rarities for the title to the patent and got it, long after it had expired. Then Burandt, with the aide of lawyers, tried to have the patent reinstated.

After many attempts with the PTO and various courts over several years, the final chapter was heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit which handed down its decision on June 10,  2008. Burandt lost. United Stated patent number 4,961,406 has expired and anybody was free to use its intellectual property.

Exterior: 4/5

While City's platform is shared with Jazz the two vehicles have quite distinctive bodies. I understand the Honda jargon for this state of affairs is that the two cars are the same “model” but different “versions”. I suspect that's something of a mis-translation from Japanese however. 

The Jazz has a much shorter nose, with it's windscreen coming further forward over the front wheels compared to City, while its roof line is higher. Essentially Jazz is easier to park in a tight spot because it's shorter. That sort of conflicts with the name of the two vehicles. I would have thought that a car name “City” would be easier to park in the city. So I reckon “Jazz” should be named “City” and “City” should be named perhaps “Suburban” (although that brings the gargantuan GM product to mind).

The City's styling evokes thoughts along the lines of hi-tech. It's definitely a “boy” car where Jazz is possibly slightly more feminine. When parked next to the low end BMW's it felt among peers as far as looks go. The black review model looked great with the black trimmed 16 inch alloys.

Interior: 3.5/5

The interior feels huge for such a small car. This turns out to be because the windscreen is at an angle of about 21 degrees from horizontal, stretching out beyond arms length and well over the front wheels (although not as far as the Jazz sibling which shares most of the mechanicals). Unfortunately, as soon as the sun comes out vision is obscured by an annoying windscreen reflection off the huge dashboard shelf.

Like many cars in this category, my head (186cm - 6'1”) touches the roof in the back seats. The sloping roof line dictated by current styling trends for sedans just makes it too hard to sit in the back. For me it really didn't matter how much leg-room there was because I feel I'd  have to sit in the front passenger seat.

City's radio has MP3. MP3 is a must have! Doing the DJ thing from the passenger seat is really cool. The iPod Touch is completely at home in the Honda. It's simply a matter of connecting the cable, located at the front of the centre console, to the iPod and then selecting USB on the radio. The doof-doof is simply amazing. Passengers where surprised by the sound quality emanating from the front of the car. The iPod battery even got a charge while driving too. The only improvement I could think of would be to have a docking station built in with a door to keep it out of sight somewhere. All cars need MP3 iPod connectivity. It costs nothing (or very little, and you probably can't buy a radio now that doesn't have it). Fantastic.

Overall: 4.5/5

Many people will find it hard to part with the extra cash for the hi-tech research and development Honda obviously spent on their mechanicals. Make no mistake, this car is state of the art in frugal driving on plain old unleaded fuel. If you want higher performance then you'll need to look further up the product line, perhaps at Civic or Civic Type-R. If you want to save even more money on fuel then you'll have to go to alternatives like diesel or hybrid technologies.

But still a nice car to drive and easy on the hip pocket at the pump.

References: http://asia.vtec.net/article/k20a/