The Honda Jazz makes an appealing used buy with its unbeatable combination of space and compact footprint
When it comes to superminis, you’re spoilt for choice: some are engaging and fun to drive, while others are well built and major on refinement.But there’s one standout supermini that delivers on practicality and space like no other – and it’s a hard one to turn down now that prices have tumbled to a very accessible £4000. Forget the Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Polo and Seat Ibiza: for zipping around a city, you should consider a Mk3 Honda Jazz.What makes the Jazz so appealing, other than its price, is its clever packaging. The Mk3 – sold in the UK from 2015-2020 – has a longer wheelbase than its predecessor, which allowed Honda to increase the volume of the entire cabin.Slide into the back of a Mk3 Jazz and you’ll be astounded by how much head and leg room there is, even if you’re tall. Two adults can sit comfortably in the back and they won’t grumble if you need to add a third person for a short journey.It’s not just capacious, though: the rear cabin of the Jazz also has trick‘ Magic Seats’, whose bases flip up like cinema seats so you can fit bulky items across the rear passenger area without needing to fold the rear seats flat. And the Jazz is streets ahead for boot capacity too: with 354 litres to play with, it’s 62 litres bigger than that of the same-sized Mk6 Ford Fiesta.Given all that function, there’s only a little room for form in this relatively conservative cabin, with gloss black and chrome trim doing only so much to liven things up – but fit and finish is suitably reassuring, and hard-wearing plastics on the main touchpoints mean it ages well.Five trims were available from launch. S, SE and SE Navi have decent standard kit such as Bluetooth and cruise control, but we’d fork out an extra grand for an EX, which adds alloy wheels, a rear-view camera and, with the Navi package, in-built sat-nav.All of the earlier versions have a 1.3-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that makes 101bhp and 93lb ft of torque. It’s a leisurely lump, with 0 - 62mph taking a rather sedate 11.2sec, but you can have it with either a six-speed manual or a CVT gearbox. Its claimed combined economy is 56mpg, but the Jazz is more likely to achieve around 41-44mpg in real-world use. You’ll typically pay around £190 in tax annually, but it can be as little as £35 for some versions.Such limited performance means you do have to up the ante on the motorway and it can get a bit unrefined when you do. Stick to urban environments, though, and the Jazz pootles around nicely in a hassle-free manner. We’d opt for the manual because it’s more fun to drive than the CVT. Just don’t expect the same level of engagement as a Fiesta.If you’re after a touch more zip, there’s the 128bhp 1.5-litre Sport variant, which arrived with the facelift in 2018. Spec-wise, it’s the same as an SE but gets a slightly more purposeful-looking bodykit, as well as LED headlights, black a lloys and leather trimmings inside. It costs a little more than the 1.3-litre and is probably not worth the extra outlay because you still have to work it quite hard.Still, the Jazz rides well and irons out lumps and bumps, the steering is accurate and linear and overall it’s a very easy car to ride around in.Weedy engines aside, the uber-practical Jazz is just as polished as the Polos and Fiestas that dominate the urban jungle.
