2014 Honda Mobilio review, test drive

Sometimes urban traffic in India is a real downer. A slow crawl to and from work in Mumbai is all but expected, and drive in Bangalore for any length of time and you’ll experience what being immobile in a car for long periods feels like. Traffic is something we’ve gotten used to. Nothing we have can, however, fully prepare you for the gridlock you experience in Jakarta; easily the number-one entry on the traffic jam charts.

Now it’s common knowledge that travelling from the centre of Jakarta is no 15- or 20-minute drive. Total travel time, to and fro, could exceed six hours, and that’s on a good day. So, taking the advice of our friends at Autocar Indonesia, we decide to stay on the city’s outskirts. All we have to do now is navigate 12-odd-km of a city ring road before we hit the highway – easy-peasy. To give ourselves even more time with the Mobilio, we decide to leave at six in the morning. Maybe we can beat the traffic. But that’s wishful thinking; the jam to get out of the city starts a mere 10 minutes into our drive. MPVs, cars and trucks fill all five lanes of the ring road, two service lanes included, and around corners, we see traffic piled up for miles and miles. All that at six in the morning!

Very quickly, I sort of understand why most Indonesians prefer to own MPVs. The logic is pretty clear: if you’re going to spend hour after hour in your car, it better be as comfortable as possible. So in Indonesia, very few people buy tiny hatchbacks, and small- and medium-sized sedans are all but unheard of. People carriers like the Toyota Innova and Avanza and the Suzuki Ertiga rule here. Indonesians, like us, also love travelling with their extended families, so a third row of seats is important as well.