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It has been quite a while since the maroon Honda Amaze first entered the CarWale parking lot. All of us were initially confused over Ninad’s insistence of getting an automatic car in our long term fleet, with our team of petrolheads all wanting the peppy little car with a manual stick. After a while however, it all started to make sense. While all other members of our team are well-versed in the art of driving, Fleme and I are what you can call, new kids on the block. With both us fresh out of driving schools, the boss thought that it would be better to start us off in an automatic car.

After a long day at work or at shoots, driving is something of a stress buster for many of us and the automatic gearbox makes it a lot easier. It eliminates the hassles (and sometimes, the fun) of shifting cogs, making it a breeze to use in stop and go city traffic, especially for a beginner like me. Besides being a part of my daily commute for a short time, the Amaze also excelled in its role as a tracking and support vehicle for our shoots. With confidence slowly setting in, I started taking it for longer trips and it is in the Amaze that I got my first taste of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, with Selvin and Sagar smacking my wrists for every one of my lapses.

The gearbox tends to get confused in the uphill ghat sections, though playing with the D1, D2 and D3 drive modes makes the task a lot easier. The gear stick slots into the drive mode perfectly, and an indicator on the instrument cluster reduces the hassle of getting your eyes off the road, while going through the modes.

While people have been complaining about the noisy i-DTEC diesel engine in the Amaze, the petrol engine is very refined and doesn't bother you most of the time. Rev it hard and the sweet noise of the petrol engine mildly infiltrates the cabin, though we aren’t complaining. Ride quality is very good, and the Amaze soaks up all the bumps and craters with ease.

The light steering and small turning radius make it easy to navigate through the crowded bylanes of APMC market and Navi Mumbai. The car’s small dimensions make it easy to park in a tight spot, though the presence of rear parking sensors would’ve made the job a lot easier. Currently, only the Hyundai Xcent is available with rear parking sensors (and a camera, for that matter). Nevertheless, getting an after-market sensor for the Amaze won’t be a big problem.

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The seats are pretty comfortable and while the integrated headrests might not seem very cosy, they offer ample neck support. As opposed to what the dimensions might suggest, the Amaze has loads of space inside the cabin and in the boot, though the interior is very basic and functional and lacks excitement. The driver side door has a plethora of buttons including window controls and mirror adjust controls, though all of them are pretty easy to operate once you get the hang of it. Also, the 'airbag' signs on the dashboard and on the steering wheel feel very reassuring. The air conditioning system is pretty competent too, though it does tend to get noisy at higher fan speeds

One of the biggest complaints with the Amaze is with its music system. Neither I nor any of my team members were able to connect our phone to the system, and with Bluetooth connectivity not a part of the package, we were stuck with either the FM or sweet silence for most of the time. The sound from the system is pretty basic and an upgrade is must if you are a music enthusiast. Also relying on the system’s USB port to charge our phones has left many of us in a tight spot, as the USB port isn’t capable of charging phones.

With the price of diesel slowly catching up with that of petrol, buying a petrol car makes much more sense now, than it did a few years ago. However, as it is an automatic car, the efficiency of the Amaze was destined to be on the lower side. With the car being driven in city most of the time, the Amaze managed to return 9.2kmpl though I’m sure that an experienced driver with a delicate right foot could push the number up to 12.

While I’m not particularly fond of its looks, a majority of my team members and friends feel that the Amaze is ‘delightful’, a notion which I’m sure has been influenced by the maroon paint scheme, more than anything else. Nevertheless, the Amaze has definitely charmed (trying hard to avoid using ‘amazed’) me with its ease of use and practicality and has played a big part in teaching me how to drive. However, the time has come for me to let go of it and move towards more challenging things (read: a manual car).