Car Review: 2008 Honda Fit
This past weekend we were just sort of hanging around so we decided to drive up to New England and get our kid baptized. Good times hanging with the fam, and we’ll post up some photos when we get them back from the photomatt.
We also got to visit Erin and Jay who we hadn’t seen a while. They fed us, hooked Ted up with some cute welcome-to-existence prizes and then watched Ted for us while we go to drive their sweet new ride, a 2008 Honda FIt Sport.
So nice of them to let us take it for a quick spin. We each drove it around the neighborhood a bit.
The thing that stood out to me the most was the redunkulously tight turning radius. I was pretty sure that the back wheels were turning too. But this was no 1987 Honda Prelude with four-wheel steering. It was, in fact, the little hatchback that begged to do donuts. Around a single donut. (Note to Erin and Jay: We did not perform donuts in your nice new car. Just turned around in a cul-de-sac. Then we took it off a sweet jump. Twice.).
Besides driving in circles, I also used the paddle shifters located just behind the steering wheel. It’s an automatic, but the gears can be shifted manually and without a clutch. I thought it worked well (and better then the Mazda 3 paddle shifter I tried before), but its still a little confusing for me because I’m shifting gears and there is no clutch pedal on the floor. I think if I had a Fit, I would use the paddles.
The rest of the dash layout was clean and intuative. The speedometer and tach had a cool blue light around it which I thought was cool in a blue-lights-are-cool kind of way.
Acceleration was right about where I thought it would be – fairly quick but not quite neck-snapping. It’s 109 horsepower engine isn’t quite what you’d want in a top-fuel drag race, but the car is light and the driver will probably be rewarded with respectable fuel economy.
As far as exterior looks go, I like the Fit from most angles. Every once in a while it looks like a 2002 Civic SI. The tall windows make it look a little van-esque sometimes, but for the most part it feels very much like a hatchback.
The inside is giant and it’s seats fold in useful ways, just like every hatchback should. Jay gave us a full dealer salesman like-demo of all the seat modes.
Kate and I both agreed that we would buy a car from Jay. In fact, if he still had his giant Chevy Caprice battle cruiser, we would totally buy that from him.
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Between the Fit, Versa and the xD, I like the looks of the Scion better. But the value return on the Fit over 5 years is better than all three. Plus, there are no saftey ratings on the xD and that is not good for Ted!