2016 Honda HR-V First Drive: The Compact Crossover That’s Big Enough

The new car market is full of rolling contradictions: There is the fast looking youthful car that can’t even beat Grandma’s 15 year old Buick in a 0-60 mph sprint. The rock climbing SUV that looks macho enough to pump iron, but gets easily jostled when you jump a curb. Even gargantuan minivans that are anything but mini, and have enough cup holders to function as a drought abatement tool for Californians.

The compact crossover has become this new, somewhat fashionable automotive oxymoron. When Honda introduced the brand new HR-V to a large group of auto journalists in Miami as a “compact crossover,” our collective reaction was ”Why not just call it a four-door hatchback?“

Well, for starters, compact crossovers like the HR-V are as different as minivans and SUVs once were to the cars and trucks that formed their physical foundations. You sit higher in an HR-V than you do in a sporty Honda Fit, even though they share the same platform.

The profile of the Honda HR-V appears to be a bit narrower than Honda’s other compact, the Civic. Yet it offers surprisingly more usable space. The back seat can stow away anything from a mountain bike to several large potted plants. (At least that’s what the inner gardener in me saw when I maneuvered the rear seats with one hand to a resting vertical position.) If you fold down the front passenger seat, the HR-V can also swallow up a variety of long and narrow items – from surfboards to 4x8 sheets of metal and plywood.

In a world where cars are designed to become longer, lower and wider with every generation, the HR-V appears to be shorter, taller, and more bloated. Yet, in person, the bloat is pretty much a functional byproduct of taking the Fit’s chassis and stretching out the shape to maximize the HR-V’s functional space. It looks compact and muscular without being plump, and at less than 3,000 lbs. when equipped as a front-wheel drive model, the HR-V is within 100 to 200 lbs. of the Civic sedan.

It also feels a bit more tight and taut than the Civic when it comes to city and highway driving. Although it’s technically a four door hatchback, the HR-V feels more like a coupe to many of us who regularly drive older sedans. If you haven’t driven a new vehicle in a while, you’re in for quite a shock.