A friend at work just showed me his new ride: a BMW with 30,000 miles, convertible with power roof, new leather, new tires, and free 4-yr warranty -- all for $23,000! A week earlier, I showed him my Fit for $4,000 less. Ouch. With gas coming down, does this drastically diminish the value of our Fits? For the record, I was never in the market for a used BMW, but I do admit to having car envy....

 

Man that is a nice BMW. I'm kind of whishing i got a different car some times. I payed 18,300 OTD in San Diego for my FIT. Now i moved to FL and gas is cheap here so now i whished i could have got a really nice car for around 5-7k more. But i don't see to many people selling there FITs used at all. I was trying to sell mine to buy a S2000 but no one would give me enough for it so i kept it. I will just drive this for the next 4-5 years and save and get something else when the time comes

 

Well, gas price did come down but still not cheap by any standard.
Besides with the Fit you can fill up with regular, Beemer requires premium.
Maintenance cost might be another factor.

But I guess it's all depend on the reason that you bought the car for.
If you want something that have drool factor and you are not worried about gas price definitely get the Beemer.
If you want good priced and reliable transport with high resale value Honda is the way to go

 

In a word, I would say no. A couple weeks, or months for that matter, of falling gas prices do not make economical vehicles automatically obsolete. Gas is falling at the moment, but chances are the low prices will be short lived and we will see higher prices in the near future. Premium fuel and considerably less fuel economy put the 330 at a disadvantage in the gas comparo.

FITinMyPocket said it pretty well.

Much of the discussion depends on the reasons why you are driving what you are. Are you looking for a practical car or a status symbol? I love BMWs, but there is a fundamental difference in the purposes of these two cars.

Finally, maintaining a BMW will nickel and dime you to death from the get go, and it only gets worse as the vehicle gets older. I have also come to understand that this leads to a relatively strong stigma against higher mileage BMWs because potential owners who have done their homework know that the true cost of owning and driving that vehicle is quite high.

There is no question that Ultimate Driving Machine commands more attention and provides the said "drool factor," it's just a matter of how deep your pockets are and how willing you are to make sacrifices in areas such as insurance premiums, for example, for the car.

 

I don't know about others, but I like driving a car that's thrifty with gas no matter how low the gas price gets. Money is still money. Also in my opinion, BMW's are the quintessential douche cars - the average BMW owner is going to be a jackass driver with too much money on his hands (or in many cases, their parents' hands), sorry but that's how it is. Either that or elderly asian men.

 

Man but the 330 are so clean. If money is not a factor which if u are thinking about geting a 330 its usaly not. I would go for it. I got the Fit due to i wanted something cheap to last me the next 5-6 years as a DD that would not burn all my money away. Next car though i want a 330I, S2000,EVO not sure yet maybe a subie i like the new WRX. I just want some thing with more of a grown up class to it and maybe keep the Fit to

 

If money weren't a factor, I'd be driving a '68 Charger or Fairlane Fastback with a supercharged big block. '60s muscle FTW!

--Barry

 

congrats to your friend, prufrock. he will be having fun doing donuts in the
snow going forward while you do your donuts going backwards.

jk, dont do that. you'll get arrested.

 

I know for sure that your car is going to outlast his. In the long run your car is probably going to have less problems too. Perks of owning a Japanese car. I wouldn't buy a used German car.

 

I just came back from visiting my daughter in college. I paid $2.59 for gas in Urbana, IL, and I made it back to the Chicago area (135 miles) for about $8.00. This is the first extended trip my wife and I had with this car, and it was easily over 40 MPG on the highway. Like one car reviewer said, the Fit handles like it's on rails. As for my friend, he maintains that he can fill-up with mid-grade fuel; moreover, he says that if he squeezes it, he's in the upper 20's with MPG. As for maintenance, this is where the BMW trumps the Fit: he basically doesn't have to pay anything for 4 years. I know that 1 of his tires costs what it would take to replace all 4 on the Fit, but he doesn't have to worry about this until 4 years from now. By then, even if he decides to dump the BMW, it'll still be worth much more than the Fit. Regardless, the Fit "fits" me more than a BMW ever would....

 

Owning a BMW does cost a lot. I am speaking from experience lol. I have an '07 328i and an '08 Fit Sport. I drive the Fit more often than my BMW because first of the gas difference, I do not use premium I use Super or the second one. It still brings out the best from the engine but I do not know for how long. Second, I just like the Fit in general. I bought the Fit because I am 19 yo with 2 jobs. Plus, my insurance was way too much lol. If it wasn't for the discounts at the BMW dealership brand new 328i OTD was 29k. I wouldn't have gotten it.

 

The fact that my friend has a 4-yr warranty (covering just about everything) on a very clean BMW should not be ignored. I know that in 4 years hell is coming for him; however, at the price he paid, he can probably dump it at that time and start over. At about that time, I'll be replacing 4 of the Fit's tires for the cost of 1 of the BMW's....

 

Where are you getting your numbers for the BMW's tire pricing prufrock? Are you really trying to tell us that a BMW tire costs $200-300+ for a single tire? You can get tires starting at like $80 at Discount tire direct for 18" wheels, the key point being not to buy the tires at a stealership.

Edit: I do see that the stock tires can get up to around $180-200, so I guess I'm a bit mistaken. I'd love to get a set of 4 tires for the Fit for $200 though, if that was possible.

 

BMW do not need the 300+ tires, unless you want to. They are called non-flat tires that costs $285, when my tires were punctured by a 4 inch nail , but I like them lol

 

I'm pretty much done with this car comparison. I don't want to research the cost of BMW tires. I was just going by what my mechanic told me and what a neighbor (who owns a BMW) also verified. I'm a big fan of tirerack.com and Yokohama tires....

 

If you go with the same kind of performance tires that the car came with (for the ones with the sport package), the front tires are $286 each, and rear are $345, all these before shipping and mounting, from tirerack. You can't rotate them since they're different size, and since they're performance tires, they wear out extra quick. The tire cost on a BMW 3 series with sport package over time actually does come out about 4 times as the Fit.

Compare Tire Search Results

 

Thanks for the validation of my estimate. That 4-yr free service plan still has to factor into this comparison -- especially for other mechanical issues. The power roof my friend showed me is a wonder -- until something goes wrong with it. Also, when he popped the hood, his engine compartment looked a little different than the Fit's....

 

I would take the BMW if it were me, I love the 330i

 

Umm you think these low gas prices are going to stay? The only thing the low price of gas is going to do is make idiotic people go out and buy more gas than ever, get big headed and then wonder why in the near future we're heading down the road towards a deeper hole for America.

I'm sorry, I don't think the Fits will lose their value because gas prices dropped $1 for a month or so.

 

good ol' times... my (then new) 90 civic hb could do a round trip on
a tank of gas and still hand plently left between woodfield <-> urbana.