thinking of buying a fit

I am considering buying the fit. Also looking at the Yaris and
Nissan's new Versa. Anyone have any thoughts. Camparisons? The good,
bad and ugly.

 

The Honda Fit IS the BAD and the UGLY. I'm not stupid enough to buy one, especially at the
ridiculously high price Honda is charging American fools.

 

I have a Fit with about 4k miles on it. Bought it at the end of
April. It's my first Honda. So far I like it a lot. My previous car
was 2002 Subaru WRX. Traded it in with about 95k miles on it. It was
starting to give me trouble and it needed high octane. I have a 100
mile round trip commute and was looking for a commuter. I cross
shopped the Yaris but didn't like it as much. Here's lowdown:

Good:
Fuel economy at 40mpg on regular gas.
Interior space is quite large for such a small car.
General comfort is good for a 6 footer like me.
Rear seat room is great for a car this size.
Handling is pretty good as well. Suspension seems pretty well sorted
out.
Reasonable power and torque despite the engine size.

Bad:
Radio reception seems weak.
Steering seems a bit twitchy.
No cruise control on base model.
No floor mats included -- have to buy separate.
Wheel covers on base model -- come on Honda!
Rear wiper swipes too frequently -- needs more of a delay.

Ugly:
Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I thought the shape was
bit odd at first but I've gotten used to it.

Overall, I think it's a great little car so far. I don't expect to
have any issues with it. With 40mpg my commute cost is now about half
of what it was before with the WRX. Make no mistake. This is not a
hot hatchback like a GTI or WRX. It gets you from point A to point B
with little drama and no flair. With the 5-speed it keeps up pretty
well with traffic. Seems pretty well screwed together. I think it's
the perfect solution for $3.25 a gallon gasoline these days.

Check out Car and Driver online for a comparison of the cars you are
cross shopping. The Fit won by a considerable margin.

Hope this helps.

 

Well, that was sure a worthless comment. Do you have any USEFUL
information or comments? other than gut level droolings!

 

Your tooo stupid to find one to buy.

 

I have about 1200 miles on my Sport Auto. I echo all the comment made
by Santos. Very roomy vehicle.

The radio is nice good, love the Aux feature and the MP3 playing. The
paddle shifters are a bit of a gimmick, but could come in handy for
driving on snow, or long downhills. I am no longer in that much of a
hurry that I have to downshift to overtake someone.
Ride is a bit firm, but the car is very controlled.

I would avoid the rubber floor mats - the front ones are too small and
slide around. The rubber mat for the trunk area is good.

 

Hi there.

I have a Jazz which (I think) is the same as a Fit. ("Fit" in the UK =
something someone does when they've lost the plot).

Anyway it's the first car we've owned that our family actually love. It's
fairly basic, we have 1.4 Auto SE but everything on it works fine. Someone
went into the driver side door and it's broken at the moment. It cost
700GBP to fix which is about what people say a door costs to fit and spray.

I did 2 postings a couple of months ago about the good and the bad. Here
they are. Sorry there's a bit of duplication...

One other thing; some people have actually paid over the list price to get
one early. (In the USA? Not sure). Anyway, they're not that good for
goodness sake. Wait a couple of months or weeks or days!

- Very good round town. Very nippy in all "close quarter" situations
- Mine hardly ever goes over 30mph. Most trips less than 5 miles YET 41
mpg. I think this is 34 US mpg.
- Noisy on motorway
- Not amazingly powerful at speed
- Not so good on high speed motoring, that said VERY good in stop-start
driving situations, so if you're a motorway traffic jam every day, you'll be
fine.
- Gearbox is amazing
- Drive select (P - D - N - R lever, you know) is a bit vague; there's no
gate on it and it's easy to slip into one of the weird low torque D options
only to find out you're in it when you want to zip off .
- (optional) Boot bags total waste of time
- Roof mounting storage thing is quite nice, but not worth the money
- Don't bother with those boot/shelf mats. They get in the way
- Wish I'd got the automatic air temp option
- Rear windscreen washer - wiper is poor but works
- Quite slow to warm cabin in the morning
- Mine's never been back to the dealer. Hooray!
- Easy to keep clean
- Stereo OK, but see note below...
- Good to park / reverse
- Kids like it
- Will easily take 2 adults and 1 kid in back seat.
- Totally easy to shuffle seats around. Hooray for that too.
- Good leg room front and back.
- Rear view mirror vibrates (worst case vibration found so far is Pink
Floyd's "One of these days" when it gets to the on-off-on-off bit). Might
need to avoid death metal too (but that's for a whole different reason) .
- Magic seats are just that; very clever
- I'd recommend this car if you drive round town. It works.

I'm a UK based Jazz user. To be honest, I'm a fan of the car. It's never
given me a problem, it's got good economy and it does have a lot of nice
features.

- Don't know anything about that dealer carry on. Never had any problems
myself BUT I did a pre-purchase survey in the local DIY shop car park of
Honda users. There's just no way that the Honda dealers are as good as
Mercedes (only owned MB till the Jazz). I expect problems when there are
problems if you get my drift. THIS DID NOT TURN OUT TO BE TRUE WHEN I HAD
TO GET DOOR DAMAGE FIXED. THEY WERE VERY GOOD.

- I got my Jazz in 2 weeks with a very good trade in on my A160 which was a
total disaster of a car. You see the difference for me is that my Jazz has
never been to the garage; my A160 was always in it!

- Not had any problems with the floor covering. In fact this is the easiest
car to clean inside and out that I've ever owned. See note below however...
Don't bother with vac. cleaner, just use a stiff brush on the seats. Work
from the top down. Remove the carpets when you get to them, brush off on a
wall. No worries. Damp cloth over the plastic surfaces works fine.

- Don't buy the cargo mat. It's just not needed; it gets in the way when
you put the seats down.

- Personally, I like the wheels BUT I've found that you need to be careful
to clean them behind the spokes otherwise dirt quickly builds up there too.
It's easy to do with a soaked sponge, just remember to do it.

- I've not had a problem with power at low speeds; it wants to be away. At
higher speeds (e.g. 70mph) it's got very little zip.

- Stereo fine for me apart from the fact that the rear view mirror wobbles
at high bass levels. It was suggested in one newsgroup that I could turn it
down .

- I drive an automatic and I don't get this gear change problems at all.
As I understand it, the car has a continuously variable ratio box. The
manual changer (only used it once) is only there to give you something to
play with. Forget about it. Pull away as fast as you like and there are no
changes; it just gets faster and faster. Amazing. There is a problem with
the auto shifter thingy. It's got no gate between the various forward drive
options. Too easy to slip into one of them and find there's a problem next
time you set off needing power.

- There's no problem with seeing the stereo.

The petrol filler cap on my Jazz does lock.

- The rear window wiper is FAIRLY (not totally) useless

- There is a really small problem with dirt on the outside of the car. I've
got mud flaps BUT when you come to power-wash the car you need to take
special care to remove the very large amount of heavy-dirt / mud on that
bottom radius just below the doors. It's got that lumpy-bumpy under-car
coating and boy does the c**p stick!

- The magic luggage carriers are a total waste of time. So are the rubber
mats you can get for the knee-height self.

HTH.