Honda Super-N review

Honda brings its electric kei car to the UK as a Twingo rival – with 'manual' gearbox and exhaust note

Honda UK boss Rebecca Adamson says the new Honda Super-N is not intended as a successor for the dearly departed Honda E – despite the obvious visual and conceptual links.

It's still "a very funky, cute Honda," she acknowledges, but "not based on the E in any way." Instead, Honda’s second take on a funky electric city car for the UK is a hot version of the N-One E it sells in Japan – which is, itself, based on the petrol-powered N-One kei car.

In Japan, it’s called the Super-One but it can’t take that name here because a national karting league has the rights to it. There’s also a taller, longer MPV version that has sliding doors and is endlessly adorable, but there's no word on that coming to the UK – yet.

Are you keeping up? The long and (very) short of it is that the Super-N measures just 3.4m nose to tail, has a 2.5m wheelbase, weighs a little over 1300kg, seats four and looks oh-so very cute, even in the feistier performance garb it’ll wear in the UK – part of a package of market-specific adaptations that also brings a fake manual gearbox and fruity ‘engine’ note.

The spirit of the City Turbo II lives on.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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But the really important differentiator between the Super-N and the E is that the newer car has a job to do in bolstering Honda’s EV sales mix.

The E was a halo product – a premium-leaning, tech-heavy flagbearer for the Japanese firm’s bold electric age, and one that was pitched well clear of the mainstream at around £37,000. It was an eyebrow-raising list price even before you consider it had a shorter range than nearly every other electric car on the market.

“In terms of what it will do for us, the price point will be very important,” says Adamson of the Super-N. “And the opportunity for this car, from my perspective, is not only our existing customer base.” The plan is for the Super-N to appeal as much to young drivers in the city as it does to existing CR-V and HR-V owners, for example, who need a smaller station car or school run shuttle.

With that in mind, Adamson emphasises, “the affordability of this car” is key. Honda won’t give even a rough steer on pricing with the car still half a year from showrooms – but given the Super-N is more upmarket than the £15k Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03, but sized and specced to do battle with the incoming Renault Twingo and Volkswagen ID 1, a starting price of just under £20,000 seems likely.

Aside from the flared wings, wider tracks (which take it beyond the width limit for a kei car), racy 15in alloys and slightly more 'aggressive' (it's all relative) bumpers, the Super-N is visually unchanged from the N-One E kei car on which it is based. The prototype we drove at Honda's test track in Japan was wearing some mean-looking Advan performance tyres, but Honda has yet to confirm if these will come as standard in the UK.

Honda won’t tell us yet precisely how technically different the Super-N is from the N-One E, beyond the fact that it’s more performance focused. Engineers did suggest, though, that the fundamental ‘package’ of the base car is unaltered,  so there should still be a 29.6kWh battery under the floor giving slightly less than the more sedate standard car’s 183-mile range, and capable of charging at up to 50kW. 

INTERIOR

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Even though the Super-N could be just a little over half the price of the car it replaces (indirectly or otherwise), I don’t think it particularly feels it.

The high ceiling, straight sides, step-through front cabin and low floor create a decently roomy interior that's perhaps less dazzling in its design than the E's, but more overtly functional.

No wood trim, virtual fishpond or digital mirrors here – but the materials all feel reassuringly hard-wearing; the 'Magic' rear seats flip and fold to accommodate (relatively) bulky loads; and there are chunky physical buttons all over the wheel, dashboard and centre console, none of which you need to stretch for because the whole car is the size of a chest freezer.

It remains on the right side of basic too: there’s a 9in central touchscreen (whose functionality I can’t attest to), a 7in digital gauge cluster (complete with artificial rev counter), USB-C chargers, a heated steering wheel, adaptive cruise control and electric windows in both rows. 

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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Our first taste was all too short, but encouraging nonetheless. Even in the space of a few laps on a tight, twisting handling circuit, it was clear that real effort has gone into making the Super-N feel stable, controlled and – crucially – engaging when it's called for. 

It’s predictably sedate in standard mode, nipping off the line with a spiritedness that's common to all EVs regardless of positioning, but then bleeding off the urgency in its responses as it passes 20mph and generally feeling agreeable but relatively homogeneous in character. 

But Boost mode is where it gets fun. Immediately the throttle responses become sharper and the full reserves of the front motor (unknown quantity though that is) are liberated to give a real sensation of shove as you wind it up. I couldn't possibly guess at the extent of any power boost the Super-N has received, but it certainly felt like more than the standard car's 63bhp - particularly as the Super-N is said to weigh slightly more. I'd hazard a guess that its on-paper performance figures won't be far off those of the Fiat 500e and Mini Cooper E. 

But more important than any cold, hard stats is that the Super-N’s sensory enhancements over the standard car have made it feel lively and up for a laugh. Unlike the Abarth 500e’s droning, unconvincing fake exhaust, the Honda’s soundtrack sounds more than plausibly like a Civic Type R’s turbocharged four-pot – though engineers say it's not modelled on any one engine in particular.

Admittedly, I only had a few minutes to play with it, but it didn’t feel like one of those gratuitous gimmicks you’d show to all your mates on your first day of ownership, before turning off forever (particularly as it’s only audible inside, pleasingly).

The simulated seven-speed gearbox is impressively realistic, too, with torque output varying according to the notional ‘ratio’ you’re in – like in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N – and a simulated kickdown built in so you can still drop a gear and disappear. If you hold it at the redline in manual mode for too long, there’s even a fake fuel cut-off system that’ll kick in - a fun little Easter egg. 

RIDE & HANDLING

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The Super-N is afflicted by that inevitable top-heavy stance that’s common to kei cars – inherently tall and compact as they are – but benefits dynamically from the battery being under the floor, giving a centre of gravity that, Honda says, is lower than many ‘petrol sports cars’. 

It also has enough adjustment in the steering column and seat base to facilitate a steering position that’s more comparable with a supermini than a small van, and while the small battery means the Super-N won’t be an EV range champion, it does mean the floor and seat base are the same height as in the petrol equivalent, so you don’t feel perched. 

That, plus the extra stability afforded by the wider track and the wheels being pushed right out to the corners of the body, makes for a predictably cheeky-feeling handling package. The steering feels a little lacking in feedback but is nonetheless quick and responsive, and while I wasn’t able to push this prototype to the ragged edge, I was impressed by how well it kept roll in check through tighter curves – testament to the work that’s gone on underneath to tighten up the chassis. 

Unlike the E, the Super-N is front-driven, and did seem prone to a touch of torque steer when we hoofed it out of a hairpin, but the fairly serious-looking, 185-section Advan sports tyres on our prototype did a commendable job of pulling it back in line in the absence of any trick front diff.

Honda tested the Super-N extensively on UK roads in the run-up to its unveiling (this being the only market outside Asia it’s been confirmed for sale), but hasn’t said whether our cars will receive any sort of bespoke tune. The only nugget we could extract, amusingly, was that British roads are so rumbly and rutted that Honda’s engineers could barely hear the engine sound as they drove along, so it’s been turned up in the cars heading here.

VERDICT

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Good fun though it seems, too much about the Super-N remains unknown for us to give any definitive verdict on its competitiveness – and gauging that is harder still when core rivals like the Renault Twingo and Volkswagen ID 1 have yet to be launched. 

Even in light of those glaring uncertainties, though, there’s nothing to stop us being glad it exists in the first place: electric cars need to be smaller, cheaper and more whimsical if they’re going to convert the cynics, and first impressions suggest Honda’s take on the recipe could be a decently rounded crowd-pleaser. 

Felix Page

Felix Page
Title: Deputy editor

Felix is Autocar's deputy editor, responsible for leading the brand's agenda-shaping coverage across all facets of the global automotive industry - both in print and online.

He has interviewed the most powerful and widely respected people in motoring, covered the reveals and launches of today's most important cars, and broken some of the biggest automotive stories of the last few years.