I-Shift, they call the Jazz's automatic'
transmission. This is a misnomer. It doesn't. Shift, that is. Not very often,
anyhow. And not very well at all.

It is, in short, utter pants. You're at the
traffic lights. Light goes green. Pin the throttle. The little Jazz revs
sweetly, up and into the VTEC. I-Shift decides to change up, because that's
what automatic gearboxes do.

Accelerate, accelerate, and then... nothing.
Complete loss of power. Your head jolts forwards towards the windscreen.
Seemingly seconds and seconds of interminable nothingness as the i-Shift
searches for the next gear - confound it, I'm sure I left it here somewhere -
and then... clunk. Awkwardly, abruptly into gear, head thumped back into the
headrest, up through the revs to do it all over again. Oh dear.

You learn to drive round it a bit, easing off
the accelerator on changes, helping i-Shift as much as you can. You will feel
sorry for i-Shift. But even if you take manual control of the shifts from the
flappy paddles, it's still awful: too slow to change, useless at matching the
revs, jerky to the point of nausea, despite being a clutchless manual rather
than a full automatic. It's a similar set-up to the equally ponderous Smart
ForTwo. Maybe a normal auto would work
better.

The Jazz is a great car, a 16-out-of-20 car.
But look at the score above. That is how rubbish i-Shift is. Avoid.