The 2017 Car of the Year-PH

Honda CR-V turbo diesel

It’s the time of the year again when Cebu Daily News features the winner of the Car of the Year-Philippines of the Car Awards Group, Inc. (CAGI).

This year’s winner is the all-new Honda CR-V 1.6 SX turbo diesel, making it two in a row for the Japanese automaker.

Last year, it was the Civic RS Turbo that won the same award.

The fifth-generation CR-V arrived quietly in the country just last September, but it has since made noise, helping local dealer Honda Cars Cebu Inc. (HCCI) chalk up a 33 percent increase in sales from November of last year to the same month this year, according to general manager Alec Bucao.

Another proof of its popularity is the long waiting line of paid reservations of the compact crossover at HCCI.

That the CAGI, an organization made of some of the top motoring journalists in the country, chose the CR-V as this year’s best means it is indeed one impressive crossover.

HCCI lent us the top-spec variant and we, too, believe that the CR-V is deserving of the Car of the Year title.

There a lot of features we can highlight to prove our point but we’ve narrowed them down to just five and still think it deserves the award with just these:

It’s the first Honda in the country to be equipped with a diesel engine. That alone is great considering how we Filipinos are so in love with diesel engines. The CR-V’s Earth Dreams Technology i-DTEC turbo diesel is so refined that it doesn’t even feel like a diesel. And it has decent numbers, too. It produces 118 horsepower and 300 newton meter of torque. All that is transferred to all wheels via a nine-speed automatic transmission.

Its exterior style is enhanced by sharper character lines capped off with handsome 18-inch wheels on all corners and a beautiful fascia highlighted with full-LED lighting.

No shift lever, no problem. One of the most talked about feature of the CR-V is its electronic gear selector that is usually available in high-end models. Now, shifting through gears can be done by just a push of a button. Really cool.

The CR-V has a bunch of high-tech safety features such as vehicle stability assist, agile handling assist, lane keep assist system, collision mitigation braking system, forward collision warning, among others. But one driver assist feature we found very useful and unique is the lane-watch camera that gives you a view of your blind spot via a camera located at the lower part of the right side mirror. This is activated either when you engage your right turn signal light or through a button at the headlight switch lever.

It can accommodate seven comfortably. Even the third row, with proper adjusting of the front and second row seats, can be comfortable for the average Filipino. And ingress and egress is easy thanks to a nifty fold and tumble feature of the second row.

(WATCH: No gear shift lever here!)

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