Used Honda HR-V cars for sale

Used Honda HR-V pros and cons

Is a second hand Honda HR-V a good car?

The Honda HR-V is a classic Honda, in the sense that it’s not the most exciting nor thrilling car to drive in its class, but it majors on solidity, practicality, and reliability. It’s like a straight-arrow accountant — you might not love them, but when you need one you really need them. 

Actually, the HR-V is not un-stylish. In fact, with that grille integrated into the front bodywork, and the sloping angle of the tailgate, the HR-V manages to look distinctive as an alternative to the likes of the VW T-Roc and Toyota C-HR.

Like the C-HR, the HR-V is hybrid-only, and that makes it an ideal choice for those who want to do the right thing from an environmental point of view, but who aren’t quite ready yet to make the leap to fully-electric power. There’s no need to plug the HR-V in to charge — it’s a so-called ‘self-charging’ hybrid — so it's simple and straightforward to use. 

Honda has packaged the cabin very cleverly to give it some seriously useful space. The fuel tank is actually under the front seats, which frees up space behind, while the back seat get Honda’s ‘Magic Seat’ function, which allows the base of the seat to flip-up vertically, like a cinema seat. That means you can easily carry tall, slim loads — such as a large plant or a big-screen TV — in the back. 

When being used as normal seats, those back seats are very roomy, with truly impressive rear legroom, although headroom gets a bit tight for taller passengers. 

The cabin design is also rather nice, taking influence from the Civic hatchback, and while there’s a few cheap plastics, there’s also a sense of typical Honda robust build quality. There’s a 9.0-inch touchscreen set up high on the dashboard, which isn’t the easiest to use, but it does come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto which helps. The main instruments — a mixture of digital and analogue dials — look a bit cheap, but they’re easy to read. If you can track down an ‘Advance Style’ model, that comes with a more stylish interior with orange highlights and light-coloured leather seats. 

The disappointment is that the boot is actually pretty small. It’s square and has a low loading lip, which is good, but at just 319 litres, its much smaller than the likes of the T-Roc or the C-HR, which are hardly paragons of loadspace themselves. 

Sold only in hybrid form, the HR-V uses the same 1.5-litre petrol engine as the smaller Jazz hatchback, linked up to two electric motors. The combined power output is 131hp, which isn’t bad, and the HR-V gets a slightly larger battery so that it can spend a little more time running on electric power around town. 

While Honda has Formula One heritage, don’t go expecting scintillating performance from the HR-V — 0-62mph takes a lengthy 10.6 seconds, although the HR-V feels stronger from medium-to-high speed than that. The changeover from petrol to electric power and back again is very smooth, but when you plant your foot for maximum acceleration, the engine roars and moans loudly, which is in sharp contrast to the HR-V’s otherwise refined demeanour. Still you can easily get up to around 50mpg in daily driving, so there are compensations. 

The HR-V has surprisingly weighty steering, but the overall setup is clearly aimed at comfort and the HR-V is adept at soaking up bumpy road surfaces, even on the large 18-inch alloy wheels. It’s also a good motorway cruiser, thanks to that soft suspension. 

So the HR-V is a little quirky to drive, but it’s roomy in the cabin (if not the boot) and given Honda’s reputation should be endlessly reliable. If that sounds good to you, you can look at used Honda HR-V deals here. There are other used Honda vehicles available through Carwow, where you might find the right car for you.

What to look for when buying a used Honda HR-V

This HR-V is actually still quite a new model, and so it’s hard to get a solid idea of what goes wrong with them. In general though, Honda has an incredible reputation for reliability and solidity, and it seems likely that the HR-V doesn’t deviate from that. It should, in all likelihood, be one of the most reliable cars you can buy.

The current HR-V didn’t place in the Driver Power Top 50 Cars To Own survey, but in the wider customer satisfaction survey Honda finished 11th overall, with a tiny 13% of owners reporting problems with their cars.