Last week’s launch of the all-new sixth generation 2023 Honda CR-V in Indonesia is important for us Malaysians because the Indonesian market car provides the most accurate indicator on how much more expensive the locally assembled Malaysian market 2023 Honda CR-V will be.

Yes, the Honda CR-V has already been launched in Thailand earlier in March this year, but the Thailand market car is not a very good comparison, simply because Thailand’s CR-V never had the 1.5-litre VTEC Turbo engine. Instead, their 11th generation CR-V is transitioning from the 2.4-litre naturally aspirated i-VTEC – which was never offered in Malaysia’s outgoing 10th generation CR-V.

Indonesia however, had an identical 2.0-litre i-VTEC and 1.5-litre VTEC Turbo engine line-up as Honda Malaysia’s.

As expected, the 2.0-litre i-VTEC is no longer offered in the latest CR-V. For this 11th generation CR-V, the powertrain options in Indonesia are:

• 1.5-litre VTEC Turbo making 190 PS / 240 Nm, paired to a CVT
• 2.0-litre full-hybrid making 148 PS / 183 Nm (engine), 184 PS / 335 Nm (motor), paired to a belt-less, planetary gear set E-CVT

With the cheaper, naturally aspirated 2.0-litre i-VTEC gone, the 2023 Honda CR-V’s starting price in Indonesia is now up by a shocking 40 percent! From IDR 525,300 to IDR 739,900. Total variants have also been reduced from 4 (including the sales run-out campaign Black Edition model) to just 2.

Apart from the discontinuation of the cheaper (but no longer meets today’s emission standards) 2.0-litre i-VTEC engine, another reason of the big increase in starting price is because Honda Sensing is now standard.

If you were to compare like for like, the increase in prices between comparable variants (1.5-litre VTEC Turbo with Sensing) is around 11 percent. That’s a lot less than 40 percent but an 11 percent hike is still a very sharp increase, double the industry’s typical rate of circa 5 percent or less for a new generation model.

Applying the same 11 percent increase, expect the new Sensing-equipped 1.5-litre VTEC Turbo-powered 2023 Honda CR-V to start from circa RM 180k. If Honda Malaysia retains a base specs variant without Sensing, then a circa RM 170k price is still possible.

With its core variants expected to breach the RM 180k ceiling, the new generation 2023 Honda CR-V will soon enter the Honda Accord’s territory – currently priced from RM 187,400 to RM 197,400.

This is probably why Honda Malaysia has decided to discontinue the Accord by the end of this year.

The outgoing 10th generation Honda CR-V is currently sold at:

• 2.0 2WD: RM 146,900
• 1.5 TC-P 2WD: RM 165,800
• 1.5 Black Edition: RM 170,400
• 1.5 TC-P 4WD: RM 171,400

However, checks with several Honda dealers show that the entry 2.0-litre is sold out, only the higher range variants remain. Interestingly, despite widely published news of the new generation model, the Honda dealers we spoke to say demand for the CR-V is not slowing at all.

The current generation CR-V is good enough for its target buyers and with the expected price hike, buying the ‘old’ CR-V seems like a wise choice.