The Honda Jazz will be launched soon thereby marking Honda’s first foray into the small car segment. The new hatchback has a heavy price tag and will be ranked second on the list of expensive hatchbacks in the country, beaten only by the exorbitantly priced Fiat 500. The Jazz’s starting price of Rs 7 Lakh puts even reigning price-champions in the segment – Skoda Fabia and Hyundai i20 – to shame.

The much awaited Jazz is being looked upon with skepticism by auto analysts and small car buyers alike as this is Honda’s first deviation from regular textbook car launches. So far, all of Honda’s cars have submissively belonged to the segments that Honda has intended them to be in and the Jazz appears to be a rebel that’s pushing the upper limit of the premium hatchback segment.

After a similar attempt from Skoda, with its premium hatch Fabia that failed to impress, it’s difficult to really tell if the expensive Jazz will ride a newly developing trend where price wouldn’t defer an interested Indian car buyer. So far, car buyers in the country have always appreciated hatchbacks with traditional prices of under Rs 5 Lakh and Hyundai and Maruti Suzuki have been juicing this market for years. Without a doubt, Honda is relying on brand popularity and India’s symbolizing it with quality. Also to be noted is that Honda’s experiment comes in the face of an unpredictable Indian market which is only just recovering from a hard fall.

The launch of the Jazz is important particularly after Maruti Suzuki’s new small car Ritz that promises plenty of goodies such as ABS, airbags, integrated music system, and several other features – all at an appreciable price. What could worry Honda is that the Ritz also promises cheap spares and low running costs which the Jazz, though belonging to a class of its own, could find hard to deliver on. Another worrying factor that Honda has already considered is the crowded nature of the Indian small car segment. The plentitude of small car models lays out all options for car buyers.