A highly drivable four-door, the Honda Fit excels on fuel economy, has a tough, thrifty engine, and can carry a lot of cargo, with all kinds of interior elbow room—almost enough to bring along a bike.
After picking up my Honda Fit test car, I decided to stop, as usual, for my morning coffee at a well-known dispensary of the bowel-loosening beverage. No sooner had I stopped and opened the door to get out when a jogger, who was on the far side of the street, darted across traffic and ran up to me.
“The last Honda I owned was a 1991 Civic, and I got 406,000 kilometres out of it,” he panted breathlessly. “Four-hundred-and-six thousand kilometres! And I didn’t have to do anything to it. Not one thing! All I did was change the oil. Should I buy one of these?”
That’s not for me to say, but if you want a highly drivable four-door hatchback that’s amazingly good on gas and has a surprising amount of interior room, and if you like Honda products, the answer is yes.
If, however, you don’t like a firm ride, my test car—the Sport model—may not be the one for you. The Fit comes in three trim levels: DX, LX, and Sport, and although they’re pretty much the same vehicle, the Sport features larger 15-inch wheels and tires and a tuned suspension that gives it the ride of a lumber wagon. This is a harsh little tusker to drive and, although it may cling a little tighter through the corners, it magnifies every bump and dimple in the road and loses some of its comfort factor in the process.
Power for all three is supplied by a 1.5-litre four-cylinder that puts out 109 horsepower and 105 foot-pounds of torque. It features a drive-by-wire throttle arrangement, variable valve timing, and a single overhead camshaft. This isn’t the most powerful engine in the small-car category, but somehow it’s enough. Red line is 6,500 revolutions per minute, and in all gears the engine is lively, refined, smooth, and usable. It’s a little loud on the highway, perhaps, but nothing intolerable. I don’t want to come across as a Honda groupie, but the carmaker never ceases to amaze me with its ability to consistently manufacture tough, thrifty, and lively small-displacement engines. Don’t take my word for it—tuners and performance buffs love Honda engines precisely because they can be tuned to within an inch of their life and stay reliable.
There are two transmission choices with the Fit: five-speed manual and five-speed automatic. The Sport, however, has a slightly different auto box than its stablemates. It features Honda’s sequential SportShift manual shift feature, and, should you choose to, you can go through the gears via steering-wheel-mounted paddles. I love this feature, and used it all the time; it adds $1,300 to the price tag. I’ve also driven the five-speed manual version, and it too is more than civilized and driver-friendly.
Needless to say, the fuel economy is exemplary. With the automatic, the Fit Sport delivers 8.0 litres per 100 kilometres in town and 5.8 litres per 100 kilometres on the highway. If you get it with manual transmission, you may qualify for a $1,000 rebate from Transport Canada under the EcoAuto program, although this offer will apparently be withdrawn by Ottawa in the near future. (For more information, see www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/ecotransport/.)
There’s all kinds of interior elbow room here, as well. Fold the back seats down, and 1,186 litres of cargo space is revealed. The Fit isn’t quite a minivan but you can carry a lot of stuff back there, and you fold the seats forward simply by releasing a back-mounted catch. The headrest must also be removed to get a fully flat floor, but that’s easily done. With a little effort, you can get most of a bicycle into the back of the Fit and, theoretically, it’ll carry three people in the back. I wouldn’t want to be the guy in the middle, though, and the three people should be friends, but it can be done.
It’s interesting to note the similarities between the Fit and a Civic wagon that Honda sold during the 1980s. You could get the wagon with Real Time AWD, and in many respects it was very similar in concept and execution. One of my high-school buddies bought one after he got married, and if memory serves, he racked up over 350,000 klicks on it and drove it for at least 15 years trouble-free. Adding AWD availability to the Fit would make it even more usable, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards at this point.
The base DX model starts at $14,980, and the Sport, which is the top of the range, starts at $19,580. With that you get underbody and rear-roof spoilers, fog lights, MP3–playback capability, and an upgraded stereo. This is in addition to standard-issue items like air conditioning, power windows, tilt steering, cruise control, and power door locks. Safety equipment includes front, side, and side-curtain air bags, and brakes are front disc and rear drum, with an antilock braking system and electronic brake distribution.
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