2023 Honda City Hatchback

Honda City Hatchback 2023 Review

The City Hatchback is a pretty easy car to figure out. Within Honda’s line-up of vehicles, it presents itself as a 5-door alternative to the 4-door City sedan - the end. But its story becomes a little muddier when considering that it is also stepping into the shoes of the Jazz.

There shouldn’t be much to dissuade you away from either body style since they both have their practicality pros and cons, catering to differing preferences. They also mirror each other in many more ways than they are distinguishable.

In the world of B-segment cars, the City’s status as a class leader stands tall and firmly planted, so these same attributes naturally apply to the Honda City Hatchback as well. It’s a surprisingly spacious, easy to drive, efficient, and reasonably peppy thing to drive around, excelling over long distances and, well, cities.

Honda City Hatchback 2023 Specifications

Like the City sedan, the Hatchback is available in 5 variants that gradually raise the equipment, technology, safety levels with each step up in price: City 1.5L S, City 1.5L E, City 1.5L V, City 1.5L V-Sensing, City 1.5L RS e:HEV.

The main differences between the S, E, and V variants come down to standard equipment and materials. Only the V variant and above receives LED headlamps, for example, while the entry-level S has to live without a touchscreen infotainment unit. What’s interesting to note here is that the equivalent City sedan is slightly less expensive than its Hatchback counterpart despite the fact that the four-door.

Just like its Sedan counterpart, the Honda City Hatchback is offered with two entirely different powertrains across its range. The more familiar S, E, and V variants are powered by the venerable 1.5L DOHC (previously single-cam SOHC) i-VTEC powertrain, which produces a healthy 121PS of power and maximum torque of 145Nm. The engine is mated to a CVT-type automatic transmission.

The halo City Hatchback RS e:HEV variant is powered by Honda’s cutting-edge Intelligent Multi-Mode Drive (i-MMD) powertrain, which combines an internal combustion engine (ICE) with two electric motors, and a high-power lithium-ion battery pack. It works differently than a traditional hybrid, as the system allows the Honda City Hatchback RS e:HEV to be predominantly driven using its electric motors and a combination of the motors with the ICE engine to power the car seamlessly, delivering 108PS and a class-leading 253Nm to the front wheels.

Exterior and Interior Honda City Hatchback 2023

This isn’t the Jazz, nor does it try to be despite it and the City always being somewhat related under the skin. Instead, the City Hatchback is exactly what it says on the label.

The newest City, and therefore the City Hatchback, adopts more exterior styling cues from the larger Civic and Accord such as the front end treatment that incorporates sharper headlight illumination signatures and a centre grille shroud in either chrome or gloss black.

Wheel sizes and designs also distinguish lower-tier variants (15-inch) with higher-tier ones (16-inch). The elephant in the room, though, is the rear end design that is essentially a City sedan that’s had an axe taken to its rear quarter, reducing its overall length by 208mm.

The only difference between the Hatchback and the Sedan is the seats at the rear where the Hatchback has received the famed 4-Modes ULTRA Seats as mentioned above. Like the Jazz, this ability to easily and conveniently fold the rear seats into multiple configurations is a huge plus for the Honda City Hatchback, which almost makes up for the difference in boot capacity against the sedan.

Honda City Hatchback Tech and Safety

Four (4) airbags are standard in the low-rung 1.5 S but any variant gets 6 airbags in addition to anti-lock brakes (ABS) and Electronic Stability Control/Program (ESP). The 1.5 V receives Honda’s LaneWatch, a temporary video feed taken from a side mirror-mounted camera. All variants except the 1.5 S also receive a much nicer (than the previous City) 8-inch touchscreen infotainment unit with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support via USB.

As you’d expect the nicest toys are given to the top-of-the-range variant, that being the RS e:HEV in the case of the Honda City Hatchback, though its active safety (or ADAS) kit list is shared fully with the step-down 1.5L V-Sensing, this includes: Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS/AEB), Forward Collision Warning (FCW), Lane Keep Assist System (LKAS), Road Departure Mitigation (RDM), Lane Departure Warning (LDW), Auto High Beam (AHB), and Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC).

Rivals and Competitors of Honda City Hatchback 2023

Just as the City sedan competes against the Vios in Malaysia, the City Hatchback’s inherits the Yaris as its arch-rival. Against the Toyota, the Honda does offer a more comprehensive tech and safety suite as well as some on-road refinement and superior handling/manoeuvrability - though some might disagree.

Oddly, there aren’t that many direct rivals from non-national automakers unless you count those that go up against the City sedan such as the Nissan Almera. The Mazda 2 poses a some threat but is priced a little out of contention and does lack that crucial active safety component. As an overall contender in the B-segment that isn’t another SUV, the City and the City Hatchback are hard to walk away from.