Which Honda Jazz trim holds its value better?
Even if it wasn’t quite the runaway hit that its predecessors were, the third-generation Honda Jazz has nonetheless found plenty of happy owners in South Africa. It’s now been on sale here for a little more than five years, so enough time has elapsed to accurately gauge its depreciation. Which trim level holds its value better? We crunched the numbers to get you the answers.
Perpetuating the legacy
When the third-generation Jazz arrived here early in 2015, it had a solid foundation on which to build market share. The first two generations garnered high praise all round, and pushed the boundaries of supermini packaging. Obviously, the Jazz’s signature “Magic Seat” arrangement carried over the 2015 model, and with it came the exemplary space utilisation we’d come to expect from this design.
The rest of the package also remained much as it was, with the exception of that frowning front end grafted onto a more-angular body style – gone was the cheerful and cuddly visage of old, and in came a surprisingly angry-looking evolution of the established concept. For the rest, the 2015 Jazz was much the same as before. Why mess around with a good recipe?
Related: Top 3 things you need to know about the Honda Jazz.
While this model wasn’t quite as commercially successful on local soil as its predecessor, some of this market share slide can be attributed to the introduction of the smaller Honda Brio and 7-seater Mobilio/BR-V: if you’re going to buy cheap, go as cheap as possible; and if you want space, get as much space as you can.
As a result, Jazz sales came under pressure from its own siblings, but this likely didn’t faze Honda SA very much. After all, as long as they’re moving metal, they’re happy, and the BR-V certainly moves off showroom floors in satisfactory numbers. Now, five years down the line, we can finally look at early third-generation Jazzes to find out how popular they are in the used-car market as well.
Related: Read our review of the Honda Jazz Sport to get more info about the highest Jazz trim level.
To compile this report, we found average resale values for 2015-vintage Honda Jazzes listed on AutoTrader, and compared these values to the list prices of these variants at launch. We looked for cars that have covered at most between 15 000 and 20 000 km per year, as that is an industry average, which means that most of the Jazzes we considered in this evaluation have between 75 000 and 100 000 km on their clocks.
Higher-mileage cars weren’t included, because breaking the 100 000 km psychological barrier does a car’s resale value no good, but lower-mileage cars were allowed. Value retention is expressed as a percentage of the list price when new, and gives a fair idea of each derivative’s value retention.
Honda Jazz 1.2 Trend manual
New Price: R 179 900
Average Used Price: R 127 400
Percentage of value retained: 70.8%
This is the entry-level Jazz, and it puts up a decent showing at the age of 5 years. Retaining a smidge more than 70% of its new-car value, the basic Jazz Trend is proving to be surprisingly resistant to depreciation – especially considering that this is arguably the least-desirable trim level.
Honda Jazz 1.2 Comfort manual
New Price: R 204 900
Average Used Price: R 139 583
Percentage of value retained: 68.1%
This is a surprising result, given that the Comfort is a much more appealing trim level with nicer appointments. Used-car buyers don’t seem to agree, however, which pushed the high-trim manual Jazz down to a lower value retention than the entry-level version. With that said, the Comfort trim level still commands a R 12 000 premium over the base Trend derivative even now, so bargain-hunters will still be better served with the cheaper variant.
Honda Jazz 1.2 Comfort CVT (auto)
New Price: R 221 900
Average Used Price: R 153 838
Percentage of value retained: 69.3%
This result is roughly in line with what we’d expect, with the self-shifter being in slightly higher demand than its manual equivalent and thus retaining slightly more of its value. Automatic gearboxes make city driving a lot easier, and are definite selling points for a city car like the Jazz.
Honda Jazz 1.5 Dynamic CVT (auto)
New Price: R 264 900
Used Price: R 161 200
Percentage of value retained: 60.9%
One would have imagined that the higher-powered 1.5-litre Jazz would have been even more popular, but the near-absence of 2015 Jazz 1.5s from our listings pages show that these variants were never in high demand. This is reflected by the poor value retention of the 1.5 Dynamic CVT derivative (the only one for which we could actually obtain a relevant sample size), which is worth only 60.9% of its initial value, even though most of these cars have mileages far below our limit.
Summary
As far as a used Honda Jazz goes, the high-trim variants (meaning anything with a1.5-litre) have very poor resale value, which promises (and delivers) excellent value for pre-owned buyers. Interestingly, the 1.2-litre derivatives are more plentiful and retain more of their value, both of which factors indicate that the smaller-engined Jazzes were more popular all along.
But, for only about R 7 500 more than a 1.2-litre automatic Jazz, you can pick up a much better-equipped 1.5-litre version. That’s not a lot more money for a vastly more useful engine and a bunch of extra luxury, and indicates that 5-year-old Jazz 1.5s are really the most appealing pre-owned buys.