Hi team, I've just taken delivery of a new Civic Hatch, which should replace our Fit when I get around to selling it.

Since 2012 the Fit has been a great car for us. I wanted a single car that could haul things, but be small and fun to drive. The Fit solved this with comfortable seats and a low price to boot. My dad liked it and bought one. My brother liked that one and bought a third.

I got pretty familiar with this car, doing my own spark plug safety checks and transmission fluid. Over the years the car got slightly down on power, which I attribute almost certainly to needing a valve adjustment. I could never find time to take my wife's car out of service, and the fee for the work was eventually better put towards a new car -- even though the car has only 65k miles on it still. The new one will give me a lot more comfort with her driving the kid all around Massachusetts. I know what the corner and side protection on the Fit is composed of - not a lot


... wife insisted that Civic color was the only acceptable one

 

Tell us about the Civic. What engine and powertrain? MT or AT?

 

It is a "Sport CVT Hatchback", which means a 2.0L naturally aspirated four. Most people want the 1.5l turbo (that one comes in all the trims above this), but for a few reasons I do not. One, the 1.5L suffers gas oil mixing, which can mitigated but not fixed by adding an oil catch can. Two, direct injection leads to carbon buildup which is not an issue with a port setup. Three, I wasn't the biggest packaging and design fan of the L series in the Fit; breathing constrained and difficult to access parts. The K20C2 is a very detuned type r engine, optimized for low stress instead of power. It should be an excellent motor for the long haul, easy to work on if needed, and also good for a teen driver in about 5 years. It's surprisingly quick, enough for me. Handling wise, this thing feels like it must be made of ground up NSXs, in the same way that recycled paper towels are a less nice color but do mostly the same job.

I did see listed locally a red sport hatch with 6MT. So they are out there and seem to sit waiting for the right buyer! Civics are selling below MSRP here, at least from Westford Honda (MA), which I now highly recommend for transparency and competitive pricing.

I forgot to mention, big thank U to forum member Pyts. He's provided a wealth of information to the community about Fit maintenance over the years. Specifically the spark plug problems that can be easily prevented by proper maintenance, and the need for valve adjustments if you want to keep all your power and your cat healthy. Many of the folks on the team are super valuable and far more knowledgeable than me, but I've personally benefited from all the advice Pyts shared across many threads.

 

I would have gotten that one, too, and for the same reasons, but I would have to have the MT.


Señor @Pyts is invaluable. A forum guru.

 

You guys are awful kind. If you're ever in Georgia, reach out! and the same goes for if you want someone to scratch their head with yuh for the new car.

I really like the sound of your new civic - I don't know them, but I bet it'll be a sweet ride. Have you read anything about the CVT trans requiring special care? I've been nervous about those, but from my little bit of reading it seems like people are quite fond of Honda's CVT/s.

Also, thumbs up for the blue! It's bold.

 

Good question. I haven't got up to speed yet on best practice for Honda CVT longevity. I think just change fluid aggressively, only question is does one need to care more or just follow the schedule.

My understanding is that the best CVTs use a planetary gear, like Toyota's "eCVT" models, and they'll rarely fail. I would 100% not buy a brand known for CVT failures, like Nissan. And I'm worried about my Outback, where failures seem pretty common, so I'll be changing the oil frequently. I haven't heard too many bad things about the Honda units, so far.

Driveability, no concerns. I don't mind the Subaru ones, but those aren't attempting to be fun cars. They go and that's good. The Honda one seems very well tuned and so I see why people like them. Sport mode keeps the RPMs too high for efficiency and the Eco is too sluggish, so I think Honda just dialed in what you'd want as Normal. There are paddle shifters but I suspect - like the Fit - those are just useful when you know you've got a power need coming up soon, otherwise won't be used much.

 

@Pyts I don't know anything about CVT transmissions, but I gather that Scotty Kilmer is against them. If you have run out of lunatic-sounding YouTube guys to watch, you could try him.

@fujisawa op. cit., except I think the BRZ automatic has gotten good reviews. That's a Subaru (co-authored with Toyota).

I really want to get a sports car — a Miata or a GR86/BRZ — but, money and garage space aside, the Miata has direct injection and the GR86/BRZ may have oiling issues. With no new Fit available, Fuji's Civic in a manual would be my next choice. Never had a Civic.

 

There are a lot of people with really bad car advice on the internet! Watch out for the lunatics. They generalize. Not every CVT is bad. Design makes a difference. U have to research each one if you want to have any confidence in what the longevity will be like.

My impression with Subaru, having not been able to understand how they could offer so much car for so little money, is that it's because you'll need to complete final assembly of your car's drivetrain later yourself, much like the Civic 1.5L turbo and its catch can. So, uh, I'm ready for that I guess.

My father in law, this past week, had a new Lexus RX. While he's had several Hondas he liked a lot, he told me he's been thru a number of Cadillac and Mercedes recently and he's fed up with the terrible engineering choices and the endless cost to lease that comes with cars designed to fail quickly. Decided to buy a $55k Toyota and keep it for the next 20 years instead...

 

I've been driving manual transmissions since forever, so I really know very little about CVTs. However, when I was looking at the FR-S/BRZ, ten years ago, one of the things that I heard was that Toyota wanted to keep the price down, so they spent the budget strategically, and one thing they focused on was the AT version of the car with paddle shifters. I don't think it's even a CVT. It's whatever you call the regular AT transmission. (It's definitely not a double-clutch transmission.) Anyway, I test drove it, and it was very impressive. Obviously, this may have little to do with transmissions in bottom-of-the-line compact cars from Subaru or Toyota.

 

That's a very interesting point on the BRZ, and I did not know that! It is indeed a traditional automatic, and a very interesting choice, picked from Toyota's known models. Wikipedia:

"Aisin-Warner A960Eautomatic transmission, which is modified from that used on the Lexus IS 250. The latter uses a traditional wet torque converter design, but its software has been engineered to mimic the response of a dual-clutch"

Now I'm genuinely curious how they got what has to have been a different bolt pattern to fit. But I probably won't find out any time soon.

 

I've got to add: After driving the FR-S AT, I drove a McLaren MP4-12C. The Toyota tranny was better. Granted, it was an early production MP4-12C.