Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Comparison: Design, Features, Space, Performance & Price

1. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire: An Introduction

Honda sales game has become stronger than ever, courtesy of the introduction of the stylish compact sedan in India – the Amaze. Over almost two years of presence, the Honda Amaze has enjoyed a fair share of success with more than 4 lakh cumulative sales in the country. Earlier this year, Honda launched the BS6-compliant Amaze sedan in India. In line with this, the Amaze’s fierce rival, Ford Aspire also receives its BS6 update with slashed prices in the Indian space.

While it’s interesting that both cars start with a letter A in their names, the two compact sedans bear a striking difference in terms of design, features and specifications among others. If you are in the market for a good family compact sedan and still hesitate over the Amaze vs Aspire, IndianAuto will tell you which car is better to buy in our detailed Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire comparison. Let’s find out.

2. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Dimensions: Which Is Bigger?

As you can easily notice from the table below, the Ford Aspire seems to have all the ammunition to raise a good fight with Honda Amaze when it comes to the proportions. In its latest avatar, the Ford Aspire is wider, higher and longer in wheelbase than the Amaze by quite a margin while sharing the same length of 3,995 mm with the Honda sedan. Even with the ground clearance, the Ford Aspire also towers over the Amaze by 9 mm.

However, it’d been a surprise that all these massive sizes didn’t translate into a bigger cargo space for the Ford Aspire while Honda has managed to give quite a decent amount of room at the trunk to its compact sedan offering. Specifically, the Honda Amaze offers a boot space of up to 420 litres whilst that of the Aspire is at 359 litres merely. What we don’t know is that whether the Ford Aspire might compensate that by a roomier cabin for its passengers compared to the Amaze counterpart, which we’ll check out in the next part of our Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire comparison. 

3. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Design: Which Is Better Looking?

Exterior Comparison

Actually, the Honda Amaze has been designed from scratch that makes it look always new and distinctive. Gone are the sub-4m sedans with rounded cute looks and gone is the budget-end Brio’s platform. Honda designers have decided to give the sedan quite a family look, courtesy of an aggressive front end with sculpted contours and imposing shape. From a distance, the Honda Amaze looks like a mini City.

The Honda Amaze features a thick chrome grille that floats over to the sleek headlamps set up and houses a big Honda logo. The subtle character lines across the sides and rear complete its neat look. The rear end of the Honda Amaze also gets a boxy shape that helps reveal the decent boot of the vehicle. From our visual standpoint, the Honda Amaze looks a bit wider than the Aspire and it also comes with more cohesive design cues than the American-sourced sedan model.

Just like the Amaze, Ford also launched the BS6-ready Aspire compact sedan in India in February. While the Amaze embeds a fair bit of elegance in its design, the Ford Aspire comes with a sporty stance that sees the inclusion of aggressive styling elements. The 2020 Ford Aspire BS6 gets a nice honeycomb mesh grille with chrome surrounds along with a large centre air dam below it.

However, the side profile of the car doesn’t give it a balanced look, especially with its short and stubby boot. That said, the Ford Aspire seems to be more hatchback-inspired with that boot. But apart from that, the Aspire looks simple and subtle at the side and rear. The newly-added 15-inch alloy wheels also look nice and give the car a better stance.

Interior Comparison

Both sedans come with the black and beige colour scheme for the interiors with black treatment for the centre console and dashboard and beige colour for the seat fabrics and upholstery. Buyers will like the sound when shutting doors on the Ford Aspire, giving them a sense of confidence. The 7.0-inch floating-type touchscreen infotainment system stands out on the dashboard, flanked by the horizontal air vents at both sides. However, the dashboard design of the Aspire seems a little bulky that lacks some soft-touch elements than that of the Honda Amaze counterpart.

The Amaze’s interior really impresses us right at the first glance. A sense of elegance is felt all around the dash and cabin. However, there’s a grouse that you can notice with a closer look, the build quality of the Amaze’s cabin is not as solid as the Aspire. The touchscreen infotainment system is placed at the middle of the dashboard with the centre AC vents atop it and physical buttons and knobs below it. The steering wheel is rather conventional and houses some controls.

4. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Features: Which is Safer and More Convenient?

Comfort Features

Both Ford and Honda are trying their best to give their latest Aspire and Amaze enough comfort goodies for the most comfortable drive in the city traffics. Generally, the Amaze doesn’t offer the same level of equipment as the Aspire counterpart. The Japanese offering is equipped with some comfort features such as manual AC with heater, power windows, driver’s side window one-touch down, front and rear accessory socket, bottle holder on all doors, front cupholder, front-seat headrests, interior light, steering mounted controls and 4-door speakers (except for the base E MT variant).

On the other hand, the Ford Aspire is brimmed with a range of creature-comforts including adjustable front & rear headrests, 12V power source outlet, fabric seat upholstery, vehicle connectivity with Ford Pass, 2 front and 2 rear speakers (except for the base trim), front dome lamp, welcome lamps, tilt steering, day/night IRVM, power windows, manual AC, automatic AC (for top-spec trim), steering mounted audio controls, gearshift indicator, distance to empty, door ajar warning, variant intermittent front wipers and more.

Safety Features Comparison

The Honda Amaze doesn’t offer the same level of creature-comforts as the Ford Aspire though, it offers a long list of safety features including dual airbags, ISOFIX child seat mount, anti-lock braking system (ABS) with electronic brake-force distribution (EBD), seatbelt pretensioner with load limiter, engine immobilizer, day/night rear-view mirror, rear parking sensor, impact sensing door lock, driver and front passenger seatbelt reminder, high-speed alert, key off reminder, door ajar warning lamp, diesel particulate filter indicator as standard features across the range.

The standard safety features of the Ford Aspire comprise of driver and passenger airbags, ABS with EBD, rear parking sensors, engine immobilizer, front 3 point seatbelts, rear seatbelts, high-speed alert along with driver & passenger seatbelt reminder.

5. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Engine Specs: Which Is Better?

The Honda Amaze and Ford Aspire deliver quite a similar amount of power and torque as both cars come with 1.2-litre petrol and 1.5-litre diesel engines under their hood.

The discrepancy in terms of power and torque output figures are quite marginal. While the Honda Amaze’s 1.2-litre i-VTEC petrol mill produces 90 PS of power and 110 Nm of peak torque, the Aspire churns out just 6 PS more power and 9 Nm more torque as against the Amaze.

As far as the diesel engines are concerned, both the sedans once again share a 1.5-litre diesel motor option, delivering the similar power of 100 PS. As for the torque, while the Honda Amaze develops 200 Nm, the Ford Aspire gets a slightly higher torque figure of 215 Nm.

What really works in favour of the Honda Amaze is that the Honda Amaze is offering both manual and automatic transmission, making it range more flexible while the Ford Aspire goes manual only.

In terms of performance, it’s the Aspire’s diesel motor that will like more to push. Ford manages to give the Aspire a lively feel at low range, making the Aspire diesel a petrol-like model.

6. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Top Speed: Which is faster?

7. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Mileage: Which Is More Fuel Efficient?

The Honda Amaze and Ford Aspire seem not to stray far from each other regarding the fuel mileage. When comparing the equivalent manual configurations of the two models, the difference is just small. Specifically, the petrol MT of the Amaze can deliver a fuel efficiency figure of 18.6 kmpl as rated by ARAI while that of the manual petrol-powered Aspire is 18.5 kmpl. The Ford Aspire diesel-MT can return a fuel mileage figure of 24.4 kmpl while the Honda Amaze diesel-MT comes with 24.7 kmpl.

8. Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire Price: Which is cheaper to buy?

As you can see from the table, the Ford Aspire is cheaper than the Amaze by a fair margin. While the Japanese compact sedan comes in the price range of around Rs 6.17 – 9.99 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi), the Aspire is priced at around Rs 6.09 – 9.82 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). From this, the Amaze seems to have a huge competitive edge over the Amaze rival in the competition, given the wider range of comfort features, 6 airbags and dynamic ride and handling it has to offer.

9. Honda Amaze: Other Competitors

Apart from the Ford Aspire, Honda Amaze also rivals the likes of Maruti Dzire, Hyundai Aura and Tata Tigor, etc. in the sedan segment. Here are our detailed comparisons between Honda Amaze vs its rivals based on aspects like Design, Interior, Features, Engine Performance, Mileage and Price.

10. Ford Aspire: Other Competitors

Just like the Amaze, the Ford Aspire also takes on other compact sedans in India such as the Maruti Dzire, Hyundai Xcent, Tata Tigor, Hyundai Aura among others.

11. Verdict: Which Model Is Worth Buying Between Honda Amaze vs Ford Aspire?

When looking at the price table, we know that Ford is getting more aggressive pricing strategy here. If you are a keen driver, just go for the Aspire. If safety is your concern, the Aspire gives you six airbags and solid build quality. The peppier engines might be also a big advantage of the American sedan over the Japanese counterpart. Meanwhile, the lighter controls, well-designed cabin with bigger boot space along with the flexibility of an automatic gearbox makes the Honda Amaze a well-rounded package. Of course, if you don’t mind paying a bit more. That said, it’s again your own choice between your mind and your heart to decide which car is better to buy.