The CR-V is one vehicle that I really loved, specially after driving it to Delhi for the Auto Expo last year. I loved its size, loved the hundred and one utilitarian features in the cabin, I loved its versatility and I loved the commanding view from the cockpit. I loved the fact that it had 4WD and that I did not have to bother with when was the right time to engage it and I loved the fact that while it looks like an SUV, it drives like a car! But most of all I loved the ease and convenience that it afforded - fatigue-free driving whether in the city or on the highway. I had told everyone at work that it would be the next vehicle I would be buying, but then came the Skoda Octavia vRS and I was caught in double mind... a situation that I have just manage to extract myself out of as you will discover during the course of reading this road test.
Although the 2.0-litre i-VTEC engine I felt was adequate for normal everyday driving (personally one can do with more power in most of the cars) the possibility of having the 2.4-litre engine as well was always on the cards as the CR-V was available with it internationally. But there were those like the friends of ours at Deogarh who felt that the power and the ground clearance was slightly inadequate specially while tackling the Himalayas and traversing over landslides and negotiating steep climbs on broken down roads with a fully laden CR-V.
So giving in to public demand, as the company puts it, Honda Siel launched the latest CR-V, not only with the 2.4-litre i-VTEC engine from the Accord, but with a manual transmission variant as well.
We were eager to try out the manual transmission version as soon as possible and though Honda Siel invited us to Delhi to drive the vehicle there, we preferred to wait for the CR-V to be transported straight to Pune for us to do a full blown road test and put the car through all the various road test routines. So here is our verdict after having driven the car for over a fortnight, not only around the city and the highways but on some very trying terrain as well. As we used the CR-V as our means of transport to cover the India Rally - the Pune round of the FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship, laden with three photographers and their equipment plus the normal complement of editorial staff.