It may look a bit futuristic, but the spaceship-like City is a very clever design, with everything focused around the cabin. The design liberates more space on the inside. The City has a cab-forward stance with a sharply raked front windscreen that ends over the front wheels. The ZX’s slightly longer wedge-like nose features sharply-etched headlamps, Honda’s updated corporate grille and sportier bumpers. The design is futuristic, but not an instant classic: Honda has tried to lessen the visual bulk from the rear three-quarters thanks to the wider tail-lamps and the different bumpers.
The interior is large and airy, with plenty of glass area and light colours everywhere. This one is classy and sporty, and uses quality materials. The three hooded dials look great, and the controls look and feel great. The seats are comfy, with good support and plenty of legroom. There are plenty of storage areas as well and good standard equipment, including steering and seat height adjustment and an Alpine stereo. Visibility is good, but for the thick A-pillar. However, the huge windscreen means the car heats up very quickly in the sun. There are some areas that could be improved upon: the ‘wood’ in the cabin is unconvincing, there’s only a temperature warning light instead of a proper dial, a folding armrest instead of a split/folding rear seat, and a lack of safety equipment. The VTEC version comes with slightly spruced up interiors with aluminium inserts that look smart.
The City ZX is primarily an urban cruiser, and everything, from its engine to its gearbox and chassis, has been geared up for that. The car uses a very sophisticated 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol, which is very different from the earlier City’s. The i-DSI motor fires two sparks per cylinder for efficient combustion and has been mapped for good low-end torque, rather than top-end performance. As a result, this 77bhp motor is extremely useable at city speeds, helped along by the short gear ratios. It is also very quiet and smooth and the manual gearbox extremely slick and pleasant to use. The City will also cruise quite happily on the highway, but ask it to overtake in a hurry and it will neither respond as quickly as you’d like nor give you the sort of top-end whack you really want. The City works particularly well with the optional CVT transmission, which is similar to an automatic and even more user-friendly around town, shifting seamlessly and keeping revs low for excellent fuel economy. It also has a Sport and a Low mode, the first giving harder acceleration, the second keeping the transmission in a low ratio, which makes it easier to climb slopes. There is a performance drop as compared to the manual, but it’s not too bad, and it’s a good trade-off if you’re going to remain city-bound.
The new VTEC with its 100bhp engine is a good highway car, and thanks to it being pretty tractable (it pulls from as low as 1500rpm), city driving is effortless. As with all Honda engines, it is smooth and refined and the extra power doesn’t have a huge impact on fuel economy. The VTEC returns 10.5kpl in the city and an impressive 16.3kpl on the highway.
The i-DSi engine returned a superb 10.9 and 16.6kpl in manual guise, and the CVT returned a very respectable 8.9kpl (city) and 14.5kpl (highway).
The ZX has received a host of modifications to the suspension to improve the old City’s biggest flaw. Body control is better than on the old car and it feels nicely planted at high speeds, but it still lacks the ‘stuck-to-the-road’ feel you get in a Fiesta. The steering too has improved, thanks to Honda reworking the suspension geometry, but is still a bit of a disappointment as it fails to provide enough confidence when cornering and with its ‘light-at- high-speeds’ feeling which sometimes borders on scary. The Honda’s talents come out in the city, where it has a tight turning circle to make parking easy.Underneath the skin, the City is a very modern car, with a well-designed, stiff frame, MacPherson struts up front and an H-type torsion beam at the rear. The ZX rides much better now thanks to revised spring and damper rates. The VTEC comes with disc brakes all around, but ABS is not even on the options list.