If they did that, they wouldn't be able to convince anyone to spend for the hybrid.

I mean, really- a 13 Civic hybrid is rated 44 mpg, which kicks the 29 mpg Fit's ass. It makes the $9k price jump seem like it's giving you something back. But in the 13,000 miles I've had my Fit I've gotten an actual 45.4 mpg. If Honda had really optimized the Fit for mpg with different aero, gearing and tires, who would buy their hybrids? People would still buy lots of Civics, but anyone looking at hybrids is thinking mileage- and an optimized Fit would just sit there with its EPA rating, silently mocking anyone who wanted mileage and was looking at anything else.

 

Hell no


HF's never had the full slew of creature comforts. honda still loads up all their hybrids, wasting just enough gas to not take over the market.


it would be an easy choice for most people. Save gas in comfort, or save gas without ever having to buy or recondition the hybrid battery down the road

 

I've often wondered what the market was for Honda's Insight for the exact reason you noted, Fit Charlie: If many Fit owners are apparently getting 40-ish mpg on the highway, and the Insight is rated at 41 city/44 highway, why would anyone buy an Insight, which is oddly shaped and which has far less human and cargo capacity than does a Fit?

 

The Fit's city rating of 27 or whatever it is. This is where hybrids excel. I'm hard pressed to get more than 30mpg poking around the burbs.

 

Fits excel in the city, too. With the bad aero, bad gearing and so-so tires, the highway really hurts my mileage.

 

Don't likes:

1) Side Rearview mirrors. They have a blind spot, not good.

2) "Carpet" in the backs of the seats. It's just super cheap, really some kind of felt or flocked material. We drive with the rear seats folded down most of the time. We have a dog and the FIT is great for him. But I know that this fabric will not hold up. And, as others have pointed out it holds dog hair like super glue! I am working on a DIY carpet to cover the whole area. Have seen some custom made but did not care for the materials (or price!!).

These are fairly petty complains I suppose, all cars have strong and weak points. All in all I love the FIT.

 

This made me think of something...how many of you guys with manual fits text or talk on the phone while driving?

I don't do either, aside from the occasional important call (on Bluetooth) or text at a red light. I am wondering if I never picked up these bad habits because the manual engages me and sometimes requires both hands.

I am truly astounded by the number of people holding their phone to their head or staring at it texting in front of their steering wheel. I would estimate >50% of people on the road have their phone in their hand when I see them. Seriously

I enjoy driving and every single day I wonder what is so damn important that people need to have their phone glued to their hand on their commute to and from work. I enjoy the drive, and it's fun because I can weave and pass people a lot because they drive like zombies (ok if zombies existed and drove this is how I imagine they would drive), only glancing at the road and using peripheral vision mostly, braking super early and randomly bc when they see someone ahead in peripheral vision they are looking down and instinctively hit the brakes, not realizing the car ahead is like 500 meters away. Then they match speed with each other. Fun when I am go to pass someone bc they are going under the speed limit, then they match my speed when I pull up next to them. I have to decide if I am going to speed a lot or slow down and get back behind them only to repeat the process once they slow back down. It's getting bad, the texting and driving...

 

why would they? most likely because honda has always undercut their fuel mileage ratings. I dont think I have come across any honda which hasnt overcome their mpg ratings. My mother gets 5 or 6mpgs over her CRZ sticker, my father gets 3 or 4mpgs over his sticker on his '13 accord v6, and Ive never fallen below my mpg sticker on the highway.

My first car, a 91 civic 4dr DX, got well over 30mpgs all the time, and that was factory rated at 27 or 29mpg, something like that. Even when I sold it with 340k miles on it, it still got over 30mpgs.

 

Huh. OK, fair enough. It just seems to me that the Fit is so much more practical than the Insight that the mileage advantage the Insight is purported to have isn't enough of an incentive to get people to buy it.

Plus, the Insight is a very strange vehicle to drive. Have you driven one? I took a '12 for a test drive. The engine shuts off at stoplights, and there's a noticeable lurch when you remove your foot from the brake and the engine turns on again. In a Prius, this is not the case; the transition from hybrid idle to gas engine engagement is seamless.

I see an Insight--singular--once every blue moon. I see various model-year Fits all the time (and my model-year CR-V everywhere).

Honda keeps making Insights, though. I saw a few 2015s on the dealer's lot the other night (and no Fits, despite the dealer's claiming on its website to have 14 in inventory). Somebody must be buying the Insights.

 

Are you sure your mirrors are adjusted properly? Almost no car has blind spots with properly adjusted mirrors, the Fit probably has the best visibility of any car I have ever owned!

Try this:

Adjust your mirrors OUTWARD until you can only see the side of the car if you lean considerably. If adjusted correctly a vehicle on either side of you will come into your peripheral vision before it leaves your mirrors.

Hardly anybody actually does this, they usually have the mirrors so far in that they can see the sides of the car sitting still or barely moving their head. This leaves huge blind spots!

 

Ok let's think about this guys...do you really think that MPG ratings are just stated by the manufacturer? Fuel economy ratings in the US are determined by a test procedure dictated by the US Government. The EPA tests vehicles themselves to determine accuracy on a dyno of sorts. It is not a real world test.

Now without getting into conspiracy theories and the like, I can say with 100% confidence that every American car I have driven in the last decade with the exception of the corvette has gotten worse than the EPA MPG rating and almost every "foreign" car I have driven has gotten better. Suspicious right?

One specific example: my 2013 Mustang GT 6MT was rated at 15/26. Careful driving yielded 13mpg city, 23mpg highway (cruise control set at 70). My 2013 Fit Sport 5MT is rated 27/33. I have never managed to get 27mpg. In the middle of Florida summer, sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for hours a day with the AC on full blast I still get 30mpg city.

Normal driving in the Fit gets me 33-36mpg mixed driving, highway with cruise set at 70 gets me 40mpg. I don't drive like a grandma either- I drive more aggressively than most people on the road.

I personally think that if the EPA used fair real world testing and cars like the Fit, Civic, and Corolla were rated 5mpg higher who in their right mind would pay similar money for a less reliable, less efficient, less spacious car assembled by some fat guy in Detroit chain smoking Marlboro Reds and cramming double cheeseburgers down his gullet?

Harsh maybe, but when we don't let free markets reign we dedicate a bunch of resources to things that other people can do better OR we never do things better because we don't have to. Maybe we can make a 200hp 40mpg reliable Ford Focus but we don't have to because of an endless list of subsidies, regulations and taxes designed to "keep moar jobs!!" but in the long run have nothing but net negative impacts on our country as a whole.

What's funny is on the forums for the American cars I have owned they always write off the EPA figures as being "ideal conditions" which explains why most drivers don't get those figure.

Gosh I loved my 03 Civic Hybrid 5MT. 50-60mpg almost all the time. Sometimes would drop to mid 40s if I insisted on doing 80mpg on the highway for extended periods.

I will say that Toyota, as of late, seems to be an exception with some vehicles. I worked for them and owned a 2011 Camry. I usually got right around the EPA highway rating. The Prius I never got the EPA ratings with normal driving, I was always around 45mpg city and most customers I talked to were getting even less (41-44 almost universally). With some special throttle manipulation the car would get 60-70mpg but it was tedious and irritating to do for extended periods (back off and reapply throttle just the perfect amount, constantly accelerating then coasting)

 

^I'm getting 8 MPG (average) over the highway estimate for my car.

Yeah, those damn bigwigs in Detroit.

 

Things I don't like:

-No 6th gear
-Terrible A/C (even with 15% tint)
-No sound deadening
-No sunroof
-Rear drum brakes
-Lack of options
-No noticeable VTEC crossover
-Pathetic max HP
-Upper RPMs WEAK
-Seat material attracts everything and can't be brushed off must be vacuumed
-Odd rim/tire size

Good thing this isn't a thread about what you LIKE, because my fingers would be bleeding from typing

 

All of this is stuff that you would know about prior to even going to a dealership. Why'd you buy the car?

ALSO, what's wrong with the wheel/tire size?

 

I have gotten under 30 MPG a couple of times during the summer in heavy stop and go city traffic.. 33MPG is normal on the highway.. Not bad for a supercharged engine... I recently picked up an used VW Passat 2.0T Wagon that gets 30 MPG mixed driving.. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed driving Euro cars, but I am sure I'll still drive the Fit when I want an adrenalin rush... I can't handle being in it on the highway for 2 or 3 hours at a time any more.. The Innovative motor mounts and Clutch Master's kit I need to put in it, is going to make things even more intense and uncomfortable at highway cruising speeds and at idle.

 

go to the bmw forums and see what the complaints are....
your complaints are stupid

 

Obviously, Sapper likes enough other things about the Fit that they outweighed the dislikes. Everything is a compromise, and there are going to be dislikes. He's just being honest about it.

 

he's just being picky since he has not done any work to the car.

Grab a muffler that doesnt choke, toss on a cheap intake, throw in some stiffer springs, maybe a bracing bar in the back, and you have something that feels totally different then stock. It will feel peppy, handle nice, and be responsive




Lots of these posts are too expectant of a cheap gas saving car that happens to have a shitload of cargo space for the vehicle size

 

There's NO other car I know of that provides such an amazing blend of utility (SUV-like cargo space), reliability, sportiness, economy, etc.

My must have list for a beater/DD car was:

-Manual transmission
-FUN to drive
-Four doors (for passengers)
-Good rear passenger head and legroom (need 6' friends
to ride without knees digging into the seat or head touching the roof)
-Good cargo capacity and cargo area size (so I could sell my cherokee)
-Able to tow light loads (for my jet skis and motorcycles)
-Reliable, time is money


My preferred features:
-semi-fast, 0-60 under 6.5 ideally
-30+ mpg realistic (don't care about EPA ratings, just what I will get)
-Under $25,000 (I don't finance cars and this was a a fourth car when I bought it, but if something really tickles my pickle and has everything I want I don't care what it costs within reason)
-HID projector headlights (love the visibility, I am adding aftermarket to the Fit now)
-Bottle holders in the doors
-Bluetooth
-iPod cable built in (Fit USB is ok here)
-Two glove boxes (love this on Prius)
-great visibility (Fit is amazing)
-Cooled seats (oh well)
-Sunroof (might go aftermarket some day, will prob just pick up another S2000 to get wind in my hair)
-4 wheel discs
-Aftermarket support (Fit is ok here but pretty disappointing performance upgrades available)

This car sort replaced my 2003 Civic Hybrid 5MT, AND my 2000 Jeep Cherokee (still have this one but will sell soon).

A Fit Si would likely hit all the marks by adding POWER, the HIDs, more power, sunroof, and more power. It would also handle better I am sure.

I didn't want my do not likes to sound like I don't like the car. It is the best car I have ever owned and it made me stop driving the 2013 Mustang GT premium I had JUST dropped $40k on. The Fit just drives and handles much better.

 

all this can be bought and added to the fit...