No you can't.

Having overseen approximately 650 car bodies per my work day assembled from a bunch of parts I think I have a little insight on automotive Body In White? The doors were manufactured incorrectly. There's also usually adhesive and anti-flutter in the doors between the reinforcements and anti-intrusion beam. These adhesives cure once through the paint oven. The outer skin won't move on the frame anymore. It's too late. At best as another poster had said some bent the door to try to make it fit better.

 

My rear right door matches up perfectly at the top and bottom but the middle section closes under flush to the rear fender. I don't see any way it could be reshaped to a perfect fit. I tried to visualize how it could work and I don't see it happening. To me it seems the door would need to be "stretched" vertically to fill the door frame properly. In other words, if you bent the middle outward to close flush to the fender the door would be "shorter" from top to bottom. It seems a very difficult task to re-shape the entire door panel and have it come out right.

 

Hey, the Honda Fit is one of the least expensive car in the market. There is a saying, "You get what you paid for".

 

The Mitsubishi Mirage is probably the cheapest in the class. I could have bought one for about $4K cheaper than I paid for my base Fit. The Chevy Spark was cheaper. Body panel alignment doesn't cost anymore or any less regardless of the MSRP of the vehicle. You're making excuses for subpar assembly and quality control. It also can't be the country of manufacture. My friends Fiat Abarth was assembled in Mexico and the panel alignment was top notch. Same for when my wife drove a Dodge Journey R/T which was also assembled in Mexico. This is Honda corporates fault for not doing anything to fix their Mexico assembly plant or it's Honda customers fault for accepting poor quality and/or making excuses for it. Honda can't fix whats broken if they don't know about it or they know about it and don't care?

 

Dodge pretty much moved out of mexico for a reason,, they couldn't get a truck to the lot the electrical issues were so bad.. Friend of mine worked as a assembly consultant and worked in the truck plant for a year down there.. The workers just didn't have enough knowledge to even identify what they were wrong.. They followed basically Ikea assembly instructions and were not given any real technical training.. Just put tab A in slot B...

 

That's how the majority of the automotive industry operates. Operations are broken down so that anyone can learn the job in 5 minutes or less.

 

The Honda Fits in my area sell for not too much off sticker, so they aren't amongst the cheapest new cars. On the contrary, they are priced more like larger and faster cars.

People, amongst which I sometimes count myself, may be willing to pay a premium for the Fit because of Honda's reputed durability and the smart use of space the Fit represents.

Surely Honda know about it, but if people buy Hondas the way people forty years ago bought Fords and Chevrolets because they weren't going to be seen in a "cheap foreign car", why would Honda change?

When someone asked for a citation to domestic manufacturers getting by on consumer preference for domestic brands, I knew that person hadn't lived through the 1970s. Even into the 1980s, the plant in Lordstown, Ohio, the one in which the Cavalier was built, had staff tossing their lunch garbage into the cars they assembled and exhibiting a toxic disregard for what they made.

That was something of an extreme, but Honda can sell cars here that Hyundai would have a tough time selling because people trust the Honda name, why wouldn't they?

My brother filled up at Costco this weekend. He drives a Jetta with the 1.8 turbo and five speed manual. He got 44mpg. I could get a Golf for barely more than a Fit LX. I know VW has reliability issues, but at least it's a nice car to drive.

 

I agree that the Honda nameplate carries a pricing premium. But the Fit does deliver some things other subcompacts do not. The Fit is rated at 130hp which is more than most subcompacts, some of which come in at around 100hp. The interior cubic footage of the Fit is better than others. The Fit is worth more than some of the cheaper cars. Not making any excuses for quality control issues though.

 

Bought our '15 LX CPO a year ago ... QC seems fine on mine - Jan '15 build, iirc (perhaps original owner got everything fixed under warranty and traded it in??? dunno, but, has been great so far ..... maybe I have low standards ? )

 

The Fit has a very small footprint, and a disproportionately large and useful interior. To my eye, it is also a good looking car.

It has unique advantages that make the flaws all the more frustrating.

 

I find it interesting that a lot of people use the argument that the Fit is economically priced and therefore a lot of the issues are understandable. Baloney. It doesn't matter how much you pay for a car, the end result should be a quality product, period. To say you're not paying much, therefore quality can suffer is a fool's game. For those saying Mexican assembly is just as good as anywhere else, maybe it is, maybe not. Honda definitely had issues starting up their new plant, but then again, quality control should never have allowed the number of vehicles with issues to leave. I find it funny that no one has mentioned another serious issue with Hondas coming out of Mexico... their Mexican suppliers. The engineering is solid in the Fit, the parts going into them, not so. A lot of the problems with Mexican built Fits has to do with substandard Mexican parts. Honda needs to get their act together and get their suppliers in line. My doors? Mexican sourced. My leaking tail lights? Mexican sourced. My dash covers that didn't fit, Mexican sourced. I could go on. If I recall my Fit had 70% of its parts locally sourced. That's a lot of potential failures with sloppy quality control by their suppliers.

 

I also reject the notion that defects are acceptable in exchange for a discount. For my part it has just come down to looking at the bright side and coping with the defects. I should not have to do that. I determined after the fact that I was able to negotiate a lower price because the dealer knew of the defects while I did not. I would have paid more for a no-defect unit. I still paid a premium for the Honda nameplate.

 

I'm hoping the Made in Japan vs Mexico debate has no merit, mainly because we have a '17 manual LX. It's early (2.5k miles) but we haven't seen and build quality issues except for the cheap paint. Everything seems to be put together solidly given its low cost parts.

Im optimistic because I recall there was a similar debate between VW Golfs built in Germany came Mexico. I read an article awhile back (anyone can google this) that there were no significant differences in quality and reliability among cars made between those two countries.

Theres been much complaints made about the GK5s made in Mexico but perhaps that it is more due to the factory being new than the country in which the car is made?