Yep, I totally agree. I never understand the people who buy a car and then trade out of it in two or three years. That's such a waste of money, they would have been better off leasing. The whole point of buying a car instead of leasing is that at the end of the payment term you own the vehicle, not the bank. I plan on keeping my Fit for a minimum of 5 years after I make my last payment. It will be so nice not having a car payment anymore. I actually recently sold my Hyundai Sonata which was my main vehicle because I didn't want two payments, and I found myself driving the Fit all the time when it was originally supposed to be a weekend car only.

Hey, those are good looking Pits in your profile. I actually bought my Fit so I could haul my Pit around. I have a pet tent and I secure him in the back as he's too much to handle in a sedan. He's too hyper and he is distracting. Plus I like having him secured in the back, much safer for both of us. He's a year and half old and he weighs 60 lbs of solid muscle. I also like you didn't crop the ears, I hate that look. My nickname for him is "floppy ears" because they do flop all over the place. I love Pits, only dog I'll ever own. Mine is a red nose.

 

We got a car because we're having a baby; I had the thought that, if the car lasts 16 years, we can pass it on, so we'll see!

Edit: after looking at page 2, I see that this plan is hardly original. Hope it works out for all of us!

 

The only reason I haven't bought a Fit is because my 95 Civic Hatchback is still going strong at 210,000+ miles and my mechanic says I'll get 300,000 on it easily. And it gets better gas mileage than the Fit: I averaged 41.5 over 2000 highway miles during the holidays. But the Fit is so practical and cute and I want one soooo much. And I've had the same experience as Tigerman. Including a couple of Honda salesmen who offered to buy the car personally.

 

Considering my first Civic lasted 13 years, 256,000km(engine fire, written off), got rid of my last Civic when it needed $2000 in repairs and was worth only $2000(14 years, 272,000km) and the wife's Acura EL, a Canadian only version of a 4dr Civic is now 12 years old and has 223,000km and is still going strong, when I get my Fit, next year, my 19mth old daughter will be learning how to drive in it!

And for the record, all those cars mentioned above were purchased used, and at least 4-5 years old when purchased.

 

im keeping mine till it dies then prob a motor swap and staart aginnnnnn lol im 18 and this is my third car, my car is the one all of my friends want to drive or drive in, and its a fun car to drive and is personalized

 

I'll keep my -09 Sport MT five years max. I've already used over one year (bought new in October of '08) and racked up 60,000 kms so I expect I'll have over 150,000 kms on it by selling time (last year's huge odometer reading was a bit abnormal even for me).

It costs a little more to buy new every five years but having owned nearly 30 used cars over the last three decades I prefer not to work on them any more. Besides, I paid cash for this one so there's no payments to get upside-down on. And the difference in price if I sell privately rather than trade in can be paid out of pocket rather than financed.

I like this car and have no regrets whatsoever, but whether I buy another Fit or not depends on two things:

1. What else is available in four more years.

2. Whether or not I can find a new Fit four years from now with a manual (preferably 6-speed) transmission.

 

a long time...
my friend crashed my first fit, and i went out and bought a new one.

 

I would like to see how long it last, it may out last me ! Yikes

 

I don't know about that situation but I have a word of advice: If you want your car to last "a long time..." then don't lend it to a "friend".

 

I own for the long haul. I keep 'em 10 years and will happily go longer if the car does. What I will NOT do any longer however, is put large money into fixes. When a car starts failing, it's usually a domino effect. I tend to get caught up in that game because I like my cars. But I won't do that again because I've learned that getting a new car is actually WAY cheaper in the short term and the long term than fixing older cars that have just plain had it. If 13 years down the line my Fit tosses me an expensive fix, I'll be opting to end it right there.

Like George Costanza, if all my desicions have been wrong, then doing the opposite must be RIGHT. I'm applying this first and foremost to my car desicions. The first one was buying the Fit...and it's working our perfectly!

Dan

 

ehh with hondas a major fix usually lasts awhile depending on what your driving..

 

Barring an unforeseen close encounter (which happened between me and a deer with my last motorcycle), I run cars into the ground. Nothing else makes much sense with the depreciation on a new car, although Fits are better than most on that score.

 

For me, I guess it all depends how long I stay in Japan. I won't be able to import it legally into the US unfortunately. Though I suppose I could strip it down and take most of it with me in parts and buy one stateside and turn one back into the JDM model.

 

I absolutely agree with this. That was my plan for my car, until I learned about the 2011 CR-Z yesterday.

That will be the only car to get me out of my Fit earlier than I planned. I'm really digging the specs on that car as I posted in my thread on it.

 

It's going to be my baby through college and until I can afford to have a house of my own with a garage. Then I'm going to put it on blocks, throw in a K20 engine, redo the entire suspension and braking system, lighten it, throw the stickiest legal tires I can on it and have fun all over again.

This has to be one of the most pleasurable cars to drive around town. It's so much fun to let it wind out on a highway onramp or through the twisties that I can't see a reason to replace it.

 

Keep it as a DD for as long as I can. It's easy to work on, dead reliable and cheap to buy parts for. Wouldn't mind getting at least 150k out of it. I know its good for it, but it all depends what my finances look like, if I can afford to trade it in for a nicer DD down the road, that isn't out of the question.

 

I'd like to keep mine until the body integrity gets to the point that it needs major sheet metal repair due to rust. Mechanically, anything can be fixed, and parts will be a dime a dozen - even motors and transmissions (if they do ever need to be replaced) will be cheap used. I've got 20k miles on the car at the 6-month mark - if I keep this up, it will have 400k miles at the 10-year mark, and I hope to get a lot more than that out of it

 

I plan to keep my daily-driven pet Jazz, "Aibo," for as long as possible.

It seems a little weird for you guys I guess, but a GD Fit/Jazz has always been my dream car, ever since I saw one in a magazine back in 2002. Here and there though, the dream hasn't been 100% translated to reality (had to swap out my front seats for better comfort, for instance), but the car has delivered on 90% of its promise. Good fuel economy, cute looks, ingenious interior design, sweet handling, bulletproof reliability, low maintenance costs - I can't complain.

As some of you may already know, I also take Aibo to the track, so I probably push the car's abilities more than most will. So far though it hasn't let me down.

Corrosion is my only real issue, no thanks to Honda's ridiculously thin paint. But there's no real reason why I should let Aibo go. In my head I can see my future kids playing in Aibo's back seat - to give you an idea of how long I plan to keep him. I ain't even married yet.

 

We'll be keeping ours until our needs change. We bought the altima because we needed a mid-sized sedan at the time. Thought we would keep that one until it died. Well... we kept it for just over 2 years and realized we needed something smaller, with better economy... Actually realized we didn't need something so big with just one child.

~SB

 

Since I'm getting ready to retire and I only put about 10000 miles per year on a car this could conceivably be my last car. Oh my God what am I saying! I'll trade it in next week! I just traded my 2007 Silverado for this car which I should have got in the first place. Yesterday came home with an antique bureau 48" x 36" and the guy couldn't believe we were going to get it in the car. I like this better than my wife's 2007 Civic ( and so does she).