Honda HR-V Black Edition 2017 first drive

You know the Honda HR-V: it’s the small SUV from Honda that’s quietly and competently been on sale for a couple of years. It’s been doing what most Hondas of recent years have done: offering plenty of practicality, frugality and anonymity, all for a higher price than rivals.

Honda has found a way to make the HR-V even more anonymous: making every single surface of the car inside and out black to create this new Black Edition. Even the Black Edition badge on the tailgate is painted black.

The changes are minor, but most of note is the leather interior and optional 18in alloys, as well as some more fancy black trim. You can get the Black Edition in petrol or diesel flavour, with the 1.6 diesel tested here.

The leather seats in the HR-V Black Edition’s cabin might be a welcome touch of luxury, but they sit in a cabin that’s otherwise quite drab, lacking any real flair or intrigue.

The Honda HR-V feels a spacious car inside and does a very good impression of a car from the class above for practicality. But its supermini giveaways – and specifically, the fact it’s based on a Honda Jazz - are the three things you interact with most: the steering wheel, gear lever and pedals, which all feel rather weedy.

The rear suspension of the HR-V is the limiting factor in ensuring the car rides well. The front does makes a decent fist of absorbing bumps, but the rear does not - it crashes over bumps in the road, making it feel like you’re towing a small trailer. Those optional 18in alloys do little to help.

It gets a gold star for economy, though. It’s easy to achieve well over 50mpg, which makes for an impressive range from the 50-litre tank. That economy isn’t achieved at the expense of performance, either, with the HR-V pulling strongly from low revs to make the car nippy around town in particular.