India, Oct. 13 -- For a car that has come to define the idea of an easy-going midsize sedan in India, the Honda City has never really been about chasing fuel-efficiency records. Instead, it has built its legacy around refinement, a light steering feel and that familiar calmness you sense the moment the engine settles into idle. Yet, with rising fuel costs and more buyers shifting to automatics for convenience, the question is no longer about how smooth the City CVT feels, but how efficiently it can navigate the grind of urban traffic.

To find out, we took the Honda City CVT out into the heart of Delhi's everyday chaos, not on empty test tracks, but in realistic conditions where ACs stay on, traffic rarely lets up and passengers don't tra...