I'm on the verge of buying a Fit. However, I live out in the country, on a dirt road, and I'm concerned about clearance. I can't seem to find stats on road clearance anywhere. Any Fit owners willing to measure for me? How about base vs sport?

I'm currently in a 99 Civic sedan, for comparison.

 

The front lip is just over 7'' off the ground. It is, by far, the lowest part of the car. Without the lip (base model) it would probably be 10+''.
The front overhang (from the front of the lip to where the front tires touch the ground) is 30''. That's pretty short and seems to keep me from having any scraping problems. My previous car sat higher, but had more overhang and it scraped much more often.

 

I have driven on some of the worst dirt roads in West "by god" Virginia paddling whitewater (in my Fit sport) and have been fine.

You just have to be a bit more patient with both models on certain terrain. And by that I mean adjustment on the gas pedal. Not to light, not to hard. Other than that, it all good.

If you go with the base model, you will definatley have no worries on ground clearance

Cheers.

 

7 inches under the Sport front lip? When I looked at one in the dealer showroom, it looked like much less than that to me. I looked closely, 'cause the extra ground clearance is one of the reasons I bought the base model. I just measured the height to what appears to be the low point at the center-rear of the one I bought, and it's only about 7 inches there. The ground under the front where it's parked at the moment is very uneven (as is the rear, so I'm not being really precise). The bottom of the suspension next to the rear wheels is less than 6" off the ground. This (via google) says 5.9" in 2002, that's probably about right. Not much different than the Civic.

No problem on most roads. If it has >4" deep ruts, whether it deserves to be called a road is questionable.

 

So the base model really has more clearance than the sport? The salesman at the dealership tried to tell me that the sport was better, since it had bigger tires and the trim went out, not down. But he only had sports in stock, so I think he was maybe biased.

Thanks for the input.

 

If it really went "out, not down," that would sort of defeat the whole purpose of the thing. It's definitely less clearance at the front. Over on this thread, there's a link to Honda where you can click back and forth between images of the base and sport to compare them. So if that really is the lowest part like sortanewinatl says, it'd make a difference.

The tires are about the same overall diameter ... according to this tire size calculator the Sport tires will give you an extra 0.2" clearance not counting the ~2" less at the front spoiler.

Subject's been on my mind lately, as I get used to driving the Fit after years of having a big 4x4.