Amazingly Stately

The third generation of the Honda Amaze packs a punch, it's got a 4-cylinder motor, six airbags as standard and ADAS for the range-topping variants. But it's also still a very reliable and spacious compact sedan. We tell you how it stacks up

- Dipayan Dutta

The good old sedan seems to be on the uptick as we bring 2024 to a close. This time, the volume drivers are the first to make their way to the battlefield. A couple of months ago, we tested the new generation of the Dzire, set to the din of spy images from its biggest rival, the Honda Amaze. And now the latest third generation of the Amaze is here in the flesh.

We’ll start with the visual cues. And for a second, let’s leave aside the stark contrast between the pre-production sketches and the car that you see on this page. Moving from the previous generation to this one, the Amaze meets the rest of the Honda cars in terms of its design and aesthetic. I like that Honda has chosen to go against the grain, making the third-generation compact sedan boxier, with sharp, almost perpendicular lines forming the car’s silhouette. It gives the Amaze an identity that stands out from the current crop of compact sedans and makes it instantly recognisable as a Honda. The front end is dominated by the massive rectangular grille with hexagonal vents; it does seem to draw inspiration from the Elevate, as do the headlamp units, which house three LED projector lights and a DRL signature that doubles up as your indicator. What is cool, though, is that Honda has integrated a high and low beam function right into the lamps that make them better visible both at night and in the day without taking away from the throw of the headlamps. It’s these little intuitive additions that make the Amaze feel like a Honda. There’s an LED foglamp too, that shares a similar housing design to the City.

Move to profile and you’ll get a sense of what I mean when I say perpendicular lines. There are three very distinct boxes that you can draw from the design, interrupted only by a sharp shoulder line that runs along the flank.