Matt Prior: The Honda that's not quite jazzy enough

After recommending the Honda hybrid to a family friend, our man finds out it's not for everyone...

Let me tell you about Daphne. Daphne is a friend of the family. Retired, healthy and in her seventies, she lives in a small town in the sticks that’s badly served by public transport. Most of her travel is around her town and nearby villages, so she drives, because she’s busy. She organises things, helps people out, takes people in. She’s well known and totally adored.

She also recently wanted a new car. Now, Daphne knows a lot about a lot of things, but cars aren’t her bag. I’m afraid she’s not an Autocar reader. She knows enough, though, to do what’s sensible. She asked friends, read reviews and eventually asked the local car dealer, and they all said much the same: “Buy something like a Honda Jazz. You won’t regret it.” She bought something so much like a Jazz, in fact, that she bought a Jazz.

Now, the Jazz is the sort of car that I recommend often for people like Daphne. Actually, it’s the sort of car I also recommend to people who aren’t particularly like Daphne but are enough like her in that they want a dependable, sensible and economical runabout. Something that probably won’t go wrong, that doesn’t burn a lot of fuel and that is compact yet has room for grandchildren, cakes for the church fete or a dachshund. The Jazz is precisely that sort of car.

But there is a problem. Despite being a lovely old lady and a pillar of the community – which, whether Honda likes this or not, is core Jazz demographic – Daphne doesn’t like her new car. “You won’t regret it,” they said, but I’m afraid she does.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s as reliable and sensible as any other newish Honda and Daphne knows that this is exactly what she needs in a car. It’s just that when it comes to walking out of her house in the morning and seeing the Jazz on her driveway, Daphne’s heart sinks and she thinks: “Has it really come to this?”

The Jazz is the sort of car, Daphne thinks, that people buy when they’ve had quite enough excitement for one lifetime. It’s the sort of car that people buy thinking “it will see me out”. She can’t shake the feeling that the Jazz is an old woman’s car. And even though technically she is one (sorry, Daph), that’s not how she feels.

This is both terrific and terrifying news to me.

It’s terrifying because I recommend cars like the Jazz to people who aren’t interested in cars all the time, and usually when I talk to them again months later, they’re thrilled: it doesn’t go wrong, it gets warm in winter and cool in summer, it’s easy to drive and it’s comfortable. But what if they’re just politely accepting this car-as-an-appliance, or if it just reinforces their belief that cars are boring?

And it’s terrific because, honestly, who wants a Jazz? If Daphne’s life was depicted as part of a Hollywood film set in an English country idyll, she would drive along country lanes and pull up outside chocolate-box cottages in a Morris Minor or an old Series Land Rover.

It’s a romantic notion, but not everybody wants the hassle of running a classic car.

I’ve suggested that Daphne head back to the Honda dealership to part-exchange her Jazz for a Civic Type R.