Honda ZR-V
| Photo Credit:
Anubhav Sharma
Honda has been a quiet presence in the Indian market for some years now, selling steadily with the City and the Elevate but without a halo car. The ZR-V is the attempt to fix that, and it comes here as a completely built unit from Japan, with nothing removed and nothing engineered down to meet a local price. It also means paying a premium, which places the ZR-V in a bracket where buyers have been trained to expect size, a tonne of features and road presence above everything else.The ZR-V leads with elegance more than presence, with proportions that are soft and rounded with no hard creases, and the whole thing reads closer to a crossover than a slab-sided chunky SUV. LED headlamps with integrated LED DRLs and sequential turn signals, 18-inch alloys, full LED tail-lamps and dual exhaust tips give it a finish that is expensive rather than loud. Buyers looking for the visual authority of an SUV will not find it here, and Honda has clearly decided not to chase it.Inside is where the import shows its value. The cabin is largely black and classically Honda, with a mesh panel running across the dash that houses the air-conditioning vents, a dash-mounted touchscreen and an EV-style button-operated gear selector. Physical knobs handle the climate control, thankfully, and a 9-inch touchscreen, a 10.2-inch driver’s display, a 12-speaker Bose system, eight airbags, a 360-degree camera and a powered tailgate cover the essentials. The front seats are firm and supportive but not ventilated, and before you complete the gasp let me tell you there is no sunroof and no spare tyre. The world clearly agrees with what a small bunch of us have been saying; sunroofs are mostly useless and I am glad Honda is on our side, but the spare tyre is a miss.double powerThe engine is a 2.0-litre strong-hybrid petrol working with twin electric motors, making a combined 181 bhp and 32.1 kg-m through an e-CVT. For most of the time, the petrol engine runs as a generator and the motors drive the wheels, so the car pulls away with the immediacy of an EV rather than the pause of a conventional automatic. Honda claims 7.9 seconds from 0 to 100 kph, and that felt believable on the Buddh International Circuit’s straight. Ask for everything at once and the engine note runs slightly ahead of the speedometer, especially in Sport mode, which feels and sounds good. There are paddle shifters, and this may take some adjustment for loyal Honda users, but they adjust the regen and not change gears.You sit in this car rather than on it, and that was quite apparent during the short slalom section where direction changes were sure footed. The steering is accurate and consistently weighted, brakes do what they are asked to. It is hard to say how firm and comfortable the ride will be in real-world conditions, based on our short spin on the track. I do wish we had the full track available to really push the car, and not a restricted one, because the ZR-V seems eager and sporty.Honda says that 800,000 ZR-Vs have been sold globally since 2022, and it feels engineered like something that has had the years and the volume to be properly sorted. Bringing in a strong hybrid, certified E20 compliant and self-charging, at a moment when what goes into the fuel tank in this country keeps changing, helps its case, too. Prices are expected to be announced shortly, but if one were to believe the ₹40-45 lakh (ex-showroom) rumours, it is not going to be a walk in the park for Honda. The ZR-V will not out-argue a bigger SUV on presence or on a feature list, and it does not try to. It is for someone who understands solid engineering is more important than a sunroof, who wants an SUV for practical reasons and not only size. That is a narrower audience than Honda would like, but for the people in it, the ZR-V will be a welcome green flag.@TheMotorGramPublished on July 24, 2026
