It turns out the massive boom in A-segment electric vehicles, with Honda projecting a staggering 294% year-over-year sales surge, should have happened a long time ago. Electrification fits city cars like a glove. They don’t need massive road-trip range, their instant torque and agility are perfect for urban traffic, and buyers aren’t exactly crying over losing a noisy three-cylinder gas engine. Plus, even with steep depreciation, starting cheap means you lose very little actual cash down the road.
Expect to see a wave of tiny cars following the track of the new Honda Super-N, hitting markets next week at a highly aggressive £19,000 price point, complete with a standard purple paint job.
While brand new to Western buyers, the underlying N-Series architecture is a Japanese kei car legend, spawning everything from mini-vans to tiny pickup trucks. The Super-N is the sporty, rebellious teenager of the family. In fact, thanks to wide-body fender flares that resemble a hamster hoarding acorns, it’s actually too wide to qualify for Japanese kei car tax breaks.
Yet, the JDM enthusiast spirit is everywhere. Anyone who knows the legendary Sunday Cup will instantly fall in love with its tall, narrow silhouette, riding on aggressive, Mini GP-style wheels pushed out to the absolute corners. You will stare at that ridiculous rear spoiler, giggle at the sticky Yokohama Advan tires on a car that looks like a motorized candy wrapper, and immediately wonder if you should order the optional racing stripes.
Underneath those flared fenders is a track that is 50mm wider than the standard electric N-car, paired with re-tuned steering. It weighs in at 1,097 kilograms. The Super also gets heavy-duty front hubs, aluminum suspension arms, a beefier rear axle, and upgraded driveshafts to eliminate torque steer.
Sadly, that retro JDM nostalgia completely dies the moment you open the door. While the seats are great and passenger space is shockingly generous, the dashboard is a boring, uninspired landscape of sensible plastic, especially next to the playful French flair of a Twingo. It is functional, quiet, and user-friendly, but it will never get your heart racing.
Honda clearly went overboard with five driving modes and six regenerative braking settings. “City” mode offers clever one-pedal driving, but let’s be honest: we are all here for “Boost” mode. Activating it injects a 30% power bump that completely transforms the car, spinning the tires at intersections like a real-life Mario Kart.
However, the simulated gear shifts and the Active Sound Control system are the ultimate buzzkills. Just like in the Prelude, the steering wheel paddles click nicely, but the software fails to simulate realistic power delivery through the virtual gears. Worse, the fake engine noise is actually just a flat, monotonous digital drone that gets louder without ever changing pitch.
But that doesn’t mean the fun is gone. In an automotive landscape where a BMW M5 is a five-meter monolith and an Audi RS5 weighs over two tons, weaponizing a featherweight city car through narrow urban streets feels like using a cheat code.
