2004 Honda City idsi review from Malaysia

After 10 months, the oil breather chamber leaked. Replaced and fixed under warranty with no hassle from the service centre.

Battery was replaced once after its 2nd year. Nothing has gone wrong since.

It's now at ++90K kms.

Mine was bought new in 2004. It’s a 1.5 idsi. It's been wonderful.

Specs are really great for this category of car. Safety features are also rather generous for this category of car: ABS, EDB, twin airbags, G-con.

The space is magnificent. A huge trunk that swallows almost everything. Interior space is also above average. You can even put stuff under the rear seats. And if you want even more space, the rear seats come down neatly, creating a huge space. The interior has a nice modern feel to it, and all instruments are well placed. Build quality is not the best, but well above average.

Engine is nice and smooth. The CVT gearbox is tiny bit noisy, but you can live with. The engine only has some 80+ bhp, but the CVT ensures it's always in the powerband, which makes it great.

The engine, together with the CVT, is surprisingly good on hill climbs. Much bigger cars will be stunned, which they have on numerous occasions. It has sequential shift on the steering wheel, but I rarely use it. But it's good for downshifting actually. I use it when I want some engine braking like in a manual car.

Another plus point is it sips fuel, making it very easy on the wallet.

A drawback is that it's not good for long distance highway driving. It has a small engine, so that was expected. It's best for what it was designed for i.e. City driving as the name implies.

Handling is not the best, but adequate enough. You can’t expect to do a Jensen in this car. Tyres are skinny and car’s handling suffers a bit in strong side winds, or overtaking lorries at high speeds. After I changed to wider tyres (Not bigger, just wider), the problem actually went away.

Design… well it's not the nicest looking car around, but it actually grows on you. People here compare it to the Vios (same class), yes the Vios is nicer, but there's nothing special about the Vios’ design, it's just a very plain car design.