The 1.2-litre four-cylinder is an old engine and it does not hide the fact, but four cylinders at this price is now a rarity and the refinement advantage over the three-cylinder alternatives is obvious from the first start. There is no thrum at idle, no shake on startup, and at part throttle in traffic the engine is smooth and quiet in a way that makes the car feel more expensive than it is. 

Power delivery is linear and completely predictable, with no turbo threshold to time and no sudden surge to manage, and for a family driver that predictability is worth more than peak numbers. The engine, producing 89 bhp, is rev-happy and enjoys being pushed towards its power peak, and with two people aboard the car moves along briskly enough for city and highway work. 

Load it with four adults and luggage and the limitations become clear, with inclines and overtakes needing planning with a downshift or two. Beyond about 4,000rpm the engine gets very vocal, and the absence of bonnet insulation means that the noise reaches the cabin more than it should.

The five-speed manual is precise and light with an almost featherlight clutch that is easy to modulate. The problem is the gearing. The five-speed manual gearbox is spaced fairly short, leaving the engine spinning higher than ideal at highway cruising speeds, so a long run at 100 to 120 km/h is noisier and less relaxed than it should be. Buyers doing regular highway distances will notice this on every drive.

The CVT is the more interesting choice and the reason many people buy this car. In a segment where every rival offers an automated manual that nods your head at every shift, this is a proper automatic, and in city traffic it is transformative. The creep speed is judged well for bumper-to-bumper crawling, the power delivery is seamless, and the rubber band effect that CVTs are criticised for is well contained provided you are gentle on the throttle. Feather the accelerator and the car is smooth, quiet and efficient, and that is the driving style this transmission rewards.

Get heavy with the right foot and the picture changes. Kickdown response in normal drive mode can take a couple of seconds, which means overtakes need setting up rather than executing on impulse, and on ghat sections, the gearbox feels lethargic until you switch to sport mode or use the paddles. Neither is a hardship once understood, but a driver who expects a torque converter's instant response will take some time getting used to the CVT setup.

Ride and Handling

The suspension setup is conventional, with struts in front and a torsion beam at the rear, and Honda has tuned it firmly towards comfort. That decision suits the car and the buyer, and the execution is better than the hardware suggests.

At city speeds the ride is genuinely absorbent. Small potholes, broken tarmac and expansion joints are filtered out without much reaching the cabin, and the suspension works quietly, avoiding the thuds and clonks that budget cars often transmit through the floor. Large potholes taken carelessly do register with a distinct thump, but the recovery is immediate rather than a series of secondary bounces. 

Honda stiffened the rear springs for this generation, which fixed the older car's tendency to bottom out with a full load, and the practical result is a rear seat that stays comfortable with three adults and a loaded boot.

At highway speeds the car feels more planted than its size and weight suggest, and this is where being a sedan pays off. The low centre of gravity keeps the body settled, undulations are absorbed in a single controlled movement, and the car tracks straight without constant correction. Owners moving up from small hatchbacks routinely describe the ride as belonging to a more expensive class of car, and that is a fair assessment. 

Handling is predictable rather than engaging. The steering is light at parking speeds, weights up sensibly as pace builds, and provides enough consistency to feel secure without offering much genuine feedback. Body roll is present but well controlled, the chassis is predictable through corners, and the car changes direction without drama. 

This is not an enjoyable car to drive quickly, and the tyres give up grip earlier than the enthusiastic alternatives in this price bracket. That said, it stays stable and planted at road legal speeds that most family buyers in this segment will not exceed.

The Amaze's compact footprint, excellent all-round visibility, light controls and tight turning circle make it one of the least stressful cars in its class to drive in dense traffic. Noise and vibration levels are well managed apart from the engine at high revs.

Efficiency is a strong suit and better in the real world than the claimed numbers suggest. 

It returns 11-15 km/l in city driving, depending on the traffic.

Driven gently on a highway at sensible speeds, owners have reported figures up to 19 km/l, with the CVT holding an advantage over the manual because the engine can manage high cruising speeds at low revs. 

The 35-litre tank is small, so the practical consequence is more frequent fuel stops on a long trip than the efficiency figures imply.

The cabin is where Honda's oldest strength shows. Nobody in this segment packages space better, and the Amaze feels roomier inside than its exterior dimensions suggest. 

The dashboard is clean and horizontal, finished in premium beige-and-black two-tone upholstery with satin metallic and piano-black accents on the steering wheel, dashboard, and inside door handles. 

The eight-inch touchscreen sits in a sensible position, is responsive and gets wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. Physical controls handle the climate system, and the driving position is close to perfect straight away. 

The instrument cluster combines analogue gauges with a 7-inch full-colour TFT MID, and the display is clear. Additionally, the steering wheel carries illuminated audio, hands-free telephone, and voice-recognition switches and paddle shifters on the CVT. It also tilts for height adjustment.

Every stalk, switch and control falls exactly where your hand reaches for it, which sounds like a bare minimum until you drive a rival that gets it wrong.

The front seats are comfortable for most builds, though larger drivers will find the cushions narrow.

However, there is no sunroof, no 360-degree surround-view camera, no auto-dimming mirror and no USB-C charging. The audio system is mediocre, and the reversing camera is functional, but low on resolution compared with the better systems in this bracket.

What Honda offers instead of a sunroof is a camera mounted under the left mirror that projects the entire left lane onto the touchscreen when you indicate. In our city driving conditions, where two-wheelers appear on the left with no warning, this is genuinely useful, and owners consistently rate it as the feature they would refuse to give up. 

Rear seat space is the standout. Knee room behind a tall driver is generous by class standards, the bench is set at a height that supports thighs rather than leaving passengers with knees raised, the backrest angle is comfortable for long journeys, and three adults fit across it more willingly than in most sub-four-metre cars. 

Rear air vents, a centre armrest, seatback pockets and bottle holders in both doors round out the practicality. The one real omission is adjustable headrests for rear passengers, which is a safety compromise as much as a comfort one and difficult to defend on a car that otherwise takes occupant protection seriously.

Material quality is honest rather than plush, with hard plastics almost everywhere. The light-coloured trim keeps the cabin airy but shows dirt, and the finish is aimed squarely at surviving a decade of family use. 

Refinement inside is good at city speeds and adequate at highway pace. Honda improved the insulation for this generation and traffic noise intrusion has dropped, though there is no insulation under the bonnet and the engine makes itself audible when worked hard. Wind noise is well controlled, and tyre roar is the main intrusion on coarse surfaces.

The previous generations of the Amaze always looked like a hatchback with a boot attached to it, but fortunately, this third-generation fixed that and looks like a proper small sedan with a coherent shape. 

The nose borrows heavily from the larger Honda models sold here, with a broad grille flanked by slim LED headlamps and a bumper that gives the front some width. The bonnet is flat, the shoulder line runs cleanly from the headlamps to the tail, and the boot is high enough to give the rear some visual weight rather than leaving it looking chopped.

The best angle is the rear. The wraparound tail lamps stretched into the rear quarter panels make it look like its bigger sibling, the City. 

In darker colours, particularly the blues and greys, the proportions genuinely work. In white, the traditional fleet colour of Indian sedans, it still reads a little too much like an airport transfer, which is a problem the car cannot really solve.

Multi-spoke alloy wheels on the upper trims sit under arches that are properly filled without the tyres looking stretched, and the overall restraint means the design will not look dated in five years. 

The overall road presence is bold, and it stands out when parked along with its rivals.

Build quality is solid rather than dense. Doors close with a reasonable thunk, panel gaps are consistent, and the paint finish is even, though the sheet metal does not have the substantial feel of the European alternatives at similar money. 

The low sill and wide door aperture make getting in and out easier for older passengers, the boot lid opens to reveal a genuinely large and well-shaped 416-litre load bay that is among the biggest in the class and swallows a family's luggage without negotiation, and the ground clearance is sufficient for city speed breakers if not for badly rutted rural tracks. 

Outward visibility is excellent in every direction, helped by a low bonnet line and slim pillars, which makes this an easy car to place in traffic.

The Amaze earned five stars for adult occupant protection with a score of 28.33 out of 32, and three stars for child occupant protection under Bharat NCAP testing, which places it among the safest compact sedans on sale. 

Six airbags, ABS with EBD, vehicle stability management, hill start assist, ISOFIX child seat mounts, and three-point seatbelts are standard across the range. The absence of adjustable rear headrests remains the one genuine safety gap in an otherwise complete package, and it is a curious omission on a car that gets so much else right.

The top ZX trim carries the Honda Sensing ADAS suite, which is camera-based rather than radar-based and covers adaptive cruise control, collision mitigation braking, lane keeping assist, road departure mitigation and automatic high beam. Being the most affordable car in India with this equipment is a real achievement. The system works well in the conditions it was designed for, namely marked highways with reasonably disciplined traffic. 

In dense Indian city driving it is best switched to a lower sensitivity or left alone entirely, since the lane keeping intervenes on unmarked roads and the collision warnings react to two-wheelers cutting in. 

The left-mirror camera deserves repeating in a safety context because it is the feature that will actually prevent an incident. Indicating left brings a wide view of the entire left lane onto the touchscreen, showing exactly the two-wheeler or cyclist that a mirror glance misses, and it works every time regardless of weather or road markings. It is a lower-technology solution than a blind spot monitor and arguably a more useful one for our roads.

Braking performance is dependable, stability control intervenes smoothly rather than abruptly, and the car's inherently predictable handling means an emergency lane change does not produce surprises.

The Maruti Dzire is the car that outsells everything else in this segment combined, and it does so for reasons that are hard to argue with. It offers a sunroof, a factory CNG option, better claimed and real-world efficiency from its newer three-cylinder engine, a lower entry price, a five-star crash result of its own from both Global and Bharat NCAP, and a service network that reaches everywhere. 

What it gives up is refinement, since three cylinders will never match four at idle and low speeds, and it offers an AMT rather than a proper automatic, which is the single biggest reason to choose the Honda if your commute involves traffic. Rear seat comfort and boot space favour the Amaze narrowly. For most buyers the Dzire is the safer and no-nonsense pick, but for buyers who value how a car feels rather than what it costs to run, the Amaze is the better car.

The Hyundai Aura sits between the two, with a four-cylinder petrol of its own, a CNG option, a well-equipped cabin and Hyundai's polished infotainment and dealer experience. It rides comfortably, feels well built and undercuts the Amaze at the entry point. What it lacks is a proper automatic, a promising crash safety rating, and the Honda's rear-seat generosity. Buyers who want the CNG running costs without giving up four-cylinder smoothness will find it the logical middle ground.

The Tata Tigor is the value option and the one that undercuts everything here, with a factory-fitted CNG variant and decent safety, but it is older in design, less refined and noticeably behind on interior quality and gearbox choice. It makes sense for a buyer working with a hard budget ceiling and less sense for anyone comparing on merit. The Tigor is also due for a facelift, which is expected very soon.

The real competition, though, is not another sedan at all. Buyers with Rs 10 lakh in hand are overwhelmingly choosing compact crossovers instead, and the Fronx, Punch, and Exter pull customers out of this segment every month. 

Against those, the Amaze wins clearly on ride comfort, rear-seat space, boot capacity, engine refinement and driving composure, and loses just as clearly on ground clearance, road presence and the intangible sense of having bought something modern. If you have already decided you want a sedan, the Amaze is the most complete one available at this price and the only one with ADAS. 

If you are still deciding between a sedan and a crossover, take a comprehensive test drive with your family aboard before assuming the taller car is the better one. A surprising number of buyers who do that come back and buy the sedan.

The Amaze is a car built by engineers for buyers who think about ownership over years rather than about the first week of showing it off. It boasts a spacious cabin, the boot is genuinely large, the ride is comfortable, the engine is refined and dependable, the CVT is the only proper automatic in its class, visibility is excellent, ergonomics are faultless, and the safety credentials are solid. 

Honda's standard warranty package, with three years and unlimited-kilometre cover (extendable further to 7 years and unlimited kilometres), and a reputation for engines that outlast their owners' interest, sits behind all of it.

The weaknesses are equally clear and mostly about desire rather than function. It misses out on a sunroof, a 360-degree surround-view camera, a CNG option, and the audio system is poor. 

The manual's short gearing makes highway cruising busier than it should be, while the CVT punishes impatience with the typical rubber band effect. The starting price is higher than the segment's cheapest options, and the automatic commands a premium that some buyers will find difficult to swallow. 

Between gearboxes, the manual suits highway-heavy use despite its gearing and the CVT suits anyone whose week is spent in traffic, and the CVT is the version most owners end up loving.

Buy this car if your priorities are rear-seat comfort, boot space, mechanical dependability, a smooth automatic and a proven crash rating, and if you are indifferent to what your car says about you. Look elsewhere if you want a sunroof, a CNG option, or high city mileage. For the family it fits, this is one of the most quietly sensible purchases available under Rs 10 lakh.