A cool and cloying cloak of quietude cuddles and cloisters the flat and foreboding fenscape ahead. The timely trill of my cellphone that stirred me from my slumbers at smack on six is brought firmly into focus as an autumn dawn splinters the sky like a celestial cannon, raining freshly made day light onto the helmster’s delight of the empty blacktop ahead. It’s time to play Jazz.
Fear not, for I haven’t joined some parping band of avant garde artistes. The ref in the previous sentence merely confirms that today’s steed is the freshly born B-seg baby from the Rising Sun funsters at Honda. Afore we commence this 7am slice around the torturous twisties that will power us towards Peterborough, let’s take a tick to assess the finesse with which the Big H has re-tooled its supermini superstar for ‘015. Suffice to say, sheet steel had been preened into focussed yet familiar forms while the innards remain as capacious as a two-storey Tardis and as practical as a pair of polythene pants.
Initial impressions are of an engine as lively as an startled scorpion aligned to a shifter as crisp as a porcelain poppadom while your left loafer cosies up to a clutch as feelsome as a sex pest squid. Perfect pedal placement allows you to surf the stoppers as you blip the business pedal, adding up to a smooth sound and no bum notes. First impressions are no substitute, however, for the deep dive delights it is a motoring journalist’s job to discover. Time to get my MoJo mojo working. Let’s Jazz it up.
I press the power pedal as if squishing a sizeable spider and the 1.3-litre four flamer responds in an instant, reaching for revs like a floundering frogman and unleashing the meat of momentum as if to prove it’s all torque. Slamming through the H-gate in search of ever more vigorous velocities, the hearty Hon seems to thrive on coming alive, the well-set suspension soaking up ruts like a tightly tuned towel as the tortured tyres squeeze into the surface with a tenacious tone that says we can take it and the screaming soul of its Type-R gene pool echoes in the whirling wake of its relentless rush down this wheelwright’s wake-up call.
Speeding into a spicy switchback at a full five-fifths, I snapped shut the gas tap and felt the tall tail come into play. I simply caught it with a dab of oppo and I was away.
The Honda Jazz 1.3 i-VTEC SE Navi is a bitch. And I spanked it.
Troy Queef is Executive Associate Editor-At-Large for DAB OF OPPO magazine
