I bought a Honda Jazz a month ago, used approved Honda 3 year old here in UK.
The main thing that comes to mind when I think of the latest Jazz model is that this car is incredibly smooth in town and very agile because that torque really kicks when you need it... It is very well put together, it has all modern essentials and it feels refined for a brand entry model. The active cruise control works well too. I believe this is the best city car in the market all things considered such as versatility. The reputation that this car has for being for old people is ridiculous in my view. I'm 48 years old.
What I plan to do is what makes people giving me a weird look when I say it: I plan to keep the car until it has around 20 years old.
I had a mk8 Civic from 2010 that I part exchanged for this one. I always respected the oil changes but the rest was a bit neglected. The car was starting to get a lot of rust in the undercarriage and the paintwork looked drab and full of scratches and chips. Now I plan to address these problems early on with the Jazz and take better care of it so it lasts longer.
Honda's, like many other Japanese brands, has soft paints so I had a plan to give it a little boost to protect the paintwork early on, so it will look acceptable when the car is older.
I had it applied a 7 year ceramic coating on the car. It was expensive and I seriously think I am the first person to spend 650£ on a Honda Jazz ceramic paint coating!
What I will do next, and perhaps the most important thing is undercarriage rust protection, again to delay rust problems and keep rust under control until the car is at least 20 years old. I will probably go with Dynax UC.
I will also wash the car more frequently, particularly in the winter freezing months, using self service stations and not machine washing to prevent both rust, paint swirls and fading.
Also in a chat with AI I got aware of other issues given the context of my mileage and routines. I mostly drive short runs in the city and do about 5000 miles a year. With this low mileage and short runs, the petrol engine doesn't have time to warm up and this can cause moisture and fuel vapours to accumulate in the oil and degrade it quicker. So the AI recommended me to either use the car for at least 30 min on the motorway every weekend of every other weekend or change the oil more frequently. The other issue with low mileage cars that do not warm up the engine enough, often tend to accumulate more carbon in the engine. This is probably what caused misfire and failed injectors on my previous car at the 15 year old mark. The Honda specialist recommended me to use branded fuel more often, as opposed to supermarket fuel (which I was using constantly), back when I had this injector problem, because these fuels have more detergents to clean injectors and AI actually advised me to once or twice a year use branded E5 fuel to give it a good clean.
I take what AI says with a pinch of salt but this makes sense to me... I was just wondering what are your views on this?
A couple of questions if you got this far into reading this post:
Do you know any good aftermarket mudguards for this Jazz? The original Honda mudguards are pricey... Did you manage to install the rear mudguards without drilling or removing the back bumper? I believe this facelift version of the Jazz uses the exact same mudguards as the previous one since 2020.
Do you think buying a Vgate iCar Pro 2S Bluetooth OBD2 Diagnostic Tool is useful to keep an eye on the car and the hybrid system? Or is this just a pointless toy when I'm not a mechanic?
