THE AVERAGE AGE of the American soldier fighting in Vietnam was 19. Remember Paul Hardcastle’s song of the same name in the early 1980s? If you can, you’re edging ever closer to the average age of the Honda Jazz driver, which happens to be 56.

Now that’s quite high, but I think I might have the answer to why this is the case after mentioning it to the King of Killarney, Deon Joubert. He too likes the Jazz, and although he’s not yet 56, he’s contemplating his inevitable mortality as do all middle-aged men from time to time.

Joubert reckons the Jazz is the last car people buy before they die. It’s not a tagline I’d recommend Honda use in their marketing, but his logic is impeccable. You retire, you sell your big house (now sans kids) and downscale to something smaller. You do the same with your car. The reason you buy a Jazz (with cash) is because it’s cheap to run, easy to drive, multi-functional and won’t break before you check out.

I’m nowhere near ready to breathe my last, but the Jazz’s tenure with me is almost up as it’s off to find a new owner in a month. The little time we got left has been spent well. For the first time recently I put the Magic Seats to their proper use ferrying garden supplies and plants back and forth between the nursery and our garden. Normal boot space is a sizeable 399ℓ, but it swells to an impressive 883ℓ (measured to the window line) once you’ve folded the seats completely flat. It’s a one-motion operation, with no need to adjust the front passenger seat or the headrests. It’s amazing what this little car can swallow, but it gets even better. A tug on the leg frame on the rear seat’s base, which you then lock against the seat back in an ‘up’ position, opens up a space between the front and rear seats in the rear foot-wells. Objects up to 1280mm high can be stowed in this space – perfect if you need to transport tall potplants that don’t fare well in the prone position.

PREVIOUS UPDATE HERE

IT’S ALREADY MONTH four into our ownership experience with the Honda Jazz and so far our little big car has performed flawlessly. In my first update on the Jazz I mentioned that I seemed to be the only guy driving one, especially the only one with a moustache.

Since then the moustache has gone (it boiled down to a choice between the mo and my marriage), but I’ve yet to see another man behind the wheel of a Jazz. They are out there though, judging by the number of comments the story received on www.topcar.co.za. This is what Herman Botha had to say:

“I am a senior male citizen with a short beard who bought one seven months ago! I bought it as a second car to our Lexus RX450H. What a lovely little big car! I used it twice to Jo’burg from Cape Town and twice from Cape Town to Durban. Loads of space. Very economical. Younger people respect you and give way for the old ballie in the Honda. Just love that panoramic roof. I don’t like the type of cloth seats that detect every hair and speckle. Auto gearbox finicky and needs to get used to. Otherwise a solid little car. Very, very happy”

Reading some of the other comments it soon became evident that most of the other Jazz drivers were getting a much better fuel consumption figure than mine.

“I drive a 1.5 Jazz. Your fuel consumption of 8.9ℓ/100km is high! In the city I get below 7ℓ/100km (This is the actual consumption, not the figure shown in the car). At 133-135kph (GPS speed) I also get below 7ℓ/100km in Gauteng. At the coast the consumption is 10% higher at that speed. Driving between Johannesburg and Pretoria at average of 100kph, the consumption go down to 5.1ℓ/100km !!,” said another Herman (could it be that all male Jazz drivers are called Herman?)

Reassuringly Alan had these words of advice: “Hey, another guy driving one! I picked mine up in January and simply love the car. Figured out if you drive with the roof open and the windows down, it feels a bit like being in a convertible.

My fuel consumption was also like that in the beginning, but it dropped after about a 1000km, or maybe that’s when I figured out how to drive it properly! It takes some getting used to easing off the fuel when you’re in the right gear/speed.

Oh, put your foot flat one day as a test. You will be surprised at just how much performance the car has for a non-performance car! It does after all have more kW than the VW Polo and Vivo 1600′s.

Sadly, I don’t have a moustache…On the up side, I do see a few of us guys driving a Jazz around. I guess we are the clever ones!”

A negative comment came from a reader who preferred to remain anonymous: “For your sake, I hope that they have sorted out the electric window on the driver’s side that gets stuck halfway and runs down again. Honda refuses to replace it (it’s still under guarantee) and just puts silicone spray on it every time I complain.”

Fortunately that hasn’t happened to me. My window works just fine. If it was me though, I’d definitely take it further because it doesn’t sound like the Honda after sales service we’ve become accustomed to.

It seems my challenge for the month ahead is to get my fuel consumption on par with other Jazz owners

PREVIOUS UPDATE HERE

A THING OF beauty is a joy forever, which explains why I like my Apples as much as I do. Not the crunchy kind, but the ones prefaced by ‘i’ such as iPod, iMac, iPhone and, by the time you read this, the iPad. I know, all you Windows/Android/Sony lovers out there, that there are possibly better MP3 players, computers, phones and digital tablets out there.

But they’re not as beautifully designed and executed, as intuitive and desirable or, most importantly, as easy to use as my Apples. We all use machines every day of our lives, but it’s the interface between man and machine which determines whether we want to take our cellphone and throw it against a wall or proudly show it off to all our friends. Can you just stroke the screen to call up applications, or do you have to use your meat grinder thumbs to call up tiny sub-menus within sub-folders within main folders?

Apple has managed to make the man/machine interface as smooth as stroking velvet instead of more like dragging your nails across a blackboard. It’s the same interaction which can make a thoughtfully engineered Honda Jazz more fun and rewarding to drive than a luxury car costing five times as much.

Take something simple like an USB port, which allows me to charge my iPhone while syncing to the sound system in the Jazz. This allows me to access the music stored on my iPhone via the car’s controls and makes my drive to and from work a bit more tolerable every day. Not exactly rocket science and not expensive, so why do so many of the cars we drive only have a measly port for an auxiliary cable? It’s a small thing, but usually when a manufacturer gets the sum of all the small things right, the whole thing is good too. Which, up to now, has pretty much been the case with the Jazz, our own little big car.

A WEIRD CONFLUENCE of circumstances left me with most of the domestic driving duties for the last month, a task for which the little/big Jazz is perfectly suited. I love driving hot hatches and performance cars as much as the other guys in the office, so the first few days saw me expropriating the keys to icons such as the Renault Megane RS Cup, the Subaru WRX STI and a variety of large SUVs in our parking lot to liven up the school run and daily trundle to the office in rush-hour traffic. This did not go down well with the increasingly vocal but still vertically challenged choir in the back seat.

The RS Cup, any petrolhead’s dream and a car that made me fall in love with Renault all over again, has only two doors. It’s a problem when you’re dropping the kids off at school. It means I have to stop in the middle of something resembling a loose scrum in a small town match without a referee. Then I have to get out, slide my seat forward and release the now hyperventilating and increasingly claustrophobic moaners into the melee before making my escape.

The STI, bless its soul, has four doors. You’d think I’d be able to stop, drop and go without any fuss. You’d be wrong. It sounds like a helicopter coming in to land, the off-beat engine sets off car alarms, and that wing! Let’s just say the kids won’t get out unless I drop them unobserved a block from the school. The SUVs are fine, as long as you’re adept at three-point turns trying to get in and out of parking spaces designed for … well, cars like the Honda Jazz.

Its diminutive exterior hides a roomy interior that swallows younglings and their backpacks, tennis racquets and cricket bats. Its small dimensions, light steering and snickety-snick gear changes mean that you’re in and out of parking spaces with the minimum of anxiety. Less anxiety leads to less stress and happier drivers. Ever seen a Jazz owner in a fit of road rage? Neither have I