Honda's CR-V is a car with hidden talends

Neil Lyndon tests the new Honda CR-V, but isn't convinced that it's the best SUV on sale.

By Neil Lyndon

A new Honda CR-V might have been handy at our place in the Scottish hills during the latest freeze. The CR-V’s advanced all-wheel drive set-up and hill descent control system (on the automatic version) would have been a boon when the unmade track that leads down to our house from a minor road was covered with snow and our parking area became an ice-rink.

We didn’t need the CR-V, however, because we already had our family bus Citroën Berlingo and our workhorse Great Wall Steed pickup, both on winter tyres.

With its terrain selector option and its limited slip differential, the Berlingo XTR climbed the Cresta Run of our drive as sure-footedly as a mountain goat. With its switchable four-wheel drive, including a low-ratio option, I would back the Steed to cross the Greenland ice-cap – so it didn’t turn a hair at tackling our school run.

Most significantly, you could almost buy both of those cars for the price of a single CR-V.

The 2.2 litre i-DTEC EX automatic I drove at the recent launch of the CR-V would cost well over £32,500. The Berlingo starts at £16,795. Our Steed SE is fully-equipped at £15,998. If you occasionally had to drive on tricky surfaces, you could snap up one of those two and send a child to Eton for a few days on the money you would save from not buying a top-of-the-line CR-V.

The flaws in this argument, obviously, are that people don’t buy cars like the CR-V for their all-terrain capabilities. And customers who understand the value of Hondas don’t buy them because they are cheap.

Honda is the only manufacturer recognised and feared as an equal by Volkswagen and Toyota. Unmatched for engineering, build quality and reliability, Honda’s products regularly figure in the top 10 in impartial surveys of all cars for customer satisfaction and dependability. The Swindon-built CR-V has been cherished by suburban yummy mummies as the perfect school-run-and-supermarket vehicle ever since it first appeared in 1995. They may never need it to cross land any more rugged than the school playing-field but they rightly value its bombproof build quality and indomitable dependability.

Now, however, Honda is caught on the claws of a nasty dilemma. With cheaper products, other manufacturers such as Kia are rapidly closing the gap on quality. And, at the same time, Honda’s badge doesn’t have the clout of kudos carried by a BMW or a Mercedes to justify charging a premium price.

The CR-V embodies this quandary. Revisions to the exterior design which were intended to emphasise its “rugged good looks” have largely resulted in making a plug ugly car merely plain. A smoother snout and a lower roofline eliminate a couple of the characteristics that made a CR-V stand out in a crowd and reduce it close to featureless anonymity. Kia’s Sportage is more stylish to about the same extent as Kate Moss outshines Princess Anne. Even Mazda’s CX-5, whose looks are the least of its attractions, is more distinctive. Both are cheaper.

Strikingly and obviously superb as the engineering and build quality on the CR-V may be (take a look at the precision of its shut-lines, sense the complexity of its multi-link suspension in the refinement of its ride), it’s questionable how many people care about such qualities. Does any conversation at the school gate turn around the relative merits of a car’s stop-start system? The CR-V’s may the best yet but you’d have to be desperate for something to brag about to bring it up at the coffee morning.

The CR-V was always the soft-roader that drove most like a conventional car – with the least body roll and the sharpest handling characteristics. That remains true of the new model. But the mercenary question raised by the Berlingo, the Steed, the Sportage and the CX-5 is – how much are those hidden qualities worth to you, Mr/Ms Punter?

Source:telegraph.co.uk