From today's online Wall Street Journal....

The Car of the Future Today

Honda's Fit Meets Fuel Economy Rules
That Are Still Several Years Away
May 5, 2008
Detroit is partying like it's 1979.
Gasoline prices are soaring. Big V-8 powered muscle machines are gathering dust on dealer lots. Sales of small cars are surging. The government is ordering steep increases in new vehicle fuel economy in the cause of reducing America's reliance on foreign oil.
What's this nasty flashback mean for the future of the automobile? Maybe you think the antidote to gas pump angst is a plug-in hybrid such as the Chevy Volt, or a new generation all-electric car such as those that Nissan Motor Corp. says it may launch in the U.S. as soon as 20101. If so, you'll need to wait, or take your chances with one of the flock of tiny upstart car companies testing their wings on the Internet.
2 JOIN THE DISCUSSION

Readers, over to you: Which is the best solution to the U.S. government's push for higher fuel mileage numbers? Discuss3.
MORE ON THE HONDA FIT

• Tiny Cars Make It Big4
• Growing Interest in Shrinking Cars5


But there are mainstream, name-brand cars you can buy today that can vault you all the way to 2011 or 2012 -- at least in terms of the new fuel-efficiency targets the Bush administration is proposing for the next seven years. One such car is Honda Motor Corp.'s Fit.
The Fit, which typically sells for about $16,000, occupies a niche in today's U.S. auto market similar to the one the early Honda Civic hatchbacks occupied during the 1979-80 oil crunch period. Standing in for the gas-guzzling Pontiac muscle cars and Lincoln land yachts of the late 1970s are vehicles like the Chevrolet Tahoe, one of the best-selling big sport utility vehicles that lorded over the highways just a few years ago.
The Fit gets about double the mileage of a Tahoe -- 30 miles per gallon combined compared with 16 miles per gallon for the Chevy, according to government fuel-efficiency estimates. (fueleconomy.gov6) The Department of Transportation is proposing that by 2015, the average fuel efficiency of all new vehicles -- cars and light trucks -- should be about 31.6 miles per gallon. If our vehicle fleet operated at the 2015 standard today -- roughly equivalent to all of us trading in our rides for Fits tomorrow -- it would be about 25% more efficient than the cars and trucks we ride around in today.
At $3.51 a gallon, a Fit would burn up about $1,753 in gasoline during 15,000 miles of driving. A Tahoe would siphon $3,291 out of your wallet, unless you could fill it up with an E85 ethanol blend, in which case the toll would be $3,136 a year. One plus for the Tahoe: After you put $82 or so into the tank, it would run 374 miles before you had to visit the gas station again. The Fit's tiny 10.8 gallon tank only holds enough for 292 miles of driving between F and E.
If you're keeping score on carbon, the Fit would put 6.1 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, compared with 11.4 tons for the big SUV.
In other ways, the Fit represents a significant advance over the tiny Hondas that got their big break around the time Jimmy Carter was making "cardigan" a political four-letter word.
Honda Is this the car of the future?
The Fit is tiny compared to the Tahoe, weighing in at just 2,551 pounds to the big Chevy's 5,233 pounds. Still, the Fit scored a five-star rating for front passenger protection in the federal government's crash tests7, and a five-star rating for side-impact protection for front-seat passengers. The rear-seat passenger side impact score was three stars.
Those are the same scores as the Tahoe, except for the rear-seat side-impact test, where the tall-riding SUV scored five stars.
That doesn't mean I'd want to crash my Fit into a Tahoe. I didn't pay a lot of attention in high school physics, but I grasped the basics about mass and momentum.
But Honda's focus on the problems presented by making a subcompact car more crashworthy has produced a vehicle that is objectively safer for its occupants than a 1979 Civic, but also feels safer and more solid on the road.
The Fit also offers clever solutions to the other problem with small cars. They're small. There's not as much room for people and stuff. The Fit uses a variety of tricks – including positioning the gas tank in the center of the car so that the seats can fold flatter and lower to the ground – to increase cargo capacity. (Other manufacturers who've focused on improving their small cars over the years work what industry people call "packaging" just as hard – including the European and Asian arms of the Detroit manufacturers.)
So are we all ready to drive cars like the Fit? A lot more of us are than were a year ago. The Power Information Network's analysis of vehicles traded by people buying Fits shows that the top three trade-ins are larger Honda models. But at No. 5 on the list is the Dodge Caravan, with the now discontinued Chevy Blazer SUV at No. 6.
Sales in the "lower small" segment as defined by Autodata Corp., which includes the Fit and rival cars such as the Chevy Aveo or the Nissan Versa, are up 33.9% through the first four months of this year, jumping even as sales of all cars and light trucks fell nearly 8%.8 The Fit isn't the biggest seller in its segment – that title belongs to the Toyota Yaris. But new Fits are selling in just 20 days after hitting the dealerships, according to Power Information Network data. That's one day faster than the average Toyota Prius and more than twice as fast as the average Yaris.
How bad is the big SUV market? General Motors Corp.'s production of vehicles like the Tahoe has been crippled for nearly three months by a strike at a major supplier, and GM dealers still had 125 days worth of unsold Tahoes nailed to their lots as of April 30. Overall, large SUV sales are cratering, down 29% so far this year, according to Autodata figures.
The asteroid has landed on the dinosaurs. Vehicles like the Fit look like the crafty mammals that will thrive among the wreckage, until something more highly evolved comes along.

 

oh yeah!!
brownie points for the Fit!

 

Sweet. The big three car companies in america had to know this was coming, but still they put all their money in the big SUV market.

 

good to know the fit is getting more and more recognition in the states

 

Exactly, but this should come as no surprise. GM is the worst when it comes to innovation. They reluctantly change because the HAVE to, are behind the curve, then rush some crap out there and pump it up with an enormous ad campaign as if to say, HEY LOOK AT US, WE'RE THE FRONT RUNNERS IN THIS NEW ERA OF THE AUTOMOBILE!!

Honda has always put fuel efficiency as of their top priorities, even when gas was cheap. GM was happy selling their trucks and pumping out Cavilers and Sunfires year after year with no changes.

I do miss the old hatchbacks. I onwed an 89' CRX HF for 9 years. I averaged 40+ mpg in that thing and loved it.

 

The sad part about all this is, in ten years, no one would consider spending $1000 on an '08 SUV because they would not be able to pay to put gas in it.

Guess the good thing is they will be recycled into some new, reasonably sized cars...

I have been told (was not born yet) people laughed at my Studebaker Lark back in 1960 because it was about 2/3 the size of a Chevrolet and no one wanted to drive a "death machine" that was that small. And to top it off, many of these cars could make 25 mpg or better...

 

i'm glad the fit's getting this kind of recognition. and even if no one else ever buys a fit again, it's still helped usher in an entire movement of fuel-efficient cars that will only keep improving as time goes on.

 

Man that Studebaker is hot Fluff! Yours? Or someone you know? Thumbs up from me on that car.

 

Thanks - I have owned the black Lark since 2003. I have known the car since about 1995 and drove it a few times to meets before it was mine.

The car was one of those "old people bought it and did not drive it much" kind of things. The PO bought it in the early 80's and it had 32,000 miles on it. It is just now getting close to 51,000 - and when I moved to PA from TX in 2004 - I drove it up with the trunk and backseat full of stuff.

It was repainted twenty years ago but still have the original interior (rubber floor covering replaced at some point) down to the sunvisors and seat covers. I did not own a car made before 1973 until 2002 - but unlike some old car nuts - I like a lot of the new stuff as well.

I guess I just like vehicles in general...

 

That article should have also cited the IIHS crash test rating, which are more realistic than the way the government does theirs. The Fit got the highest overall rating on frontal offset and side impact.

I'm happy with my Fit!

 

I had one like that except it was blue and had the V8 engine... They were like tanks with tires and were pretty quick as well as comfortable. They weighed the same as a Subaru Forester. By 1963 were available with 2 superchargers on the 305" "Duo Cento" V8 and capable of over 150 MPH. I have always thought that Studebaker Larks were too sensible a car for the American market even though the option list for them was amazing.

 

Worse, they had the right idea with Saturn, and then both labor and management took turns stabbing it in the back. My recently-retired stickshift 2000 Saturn SL had MPG comparable to the '10 Fit that replaced it, and its fuel economy was a prime consideration when I bought it. I realized Saturn was done for when they ditched the plastic body panels, turned Spring Hill into just another GM plant, and imported Opel models to sell as Saturns. I'm surprised they kept the charade going as long as they did.

What convinced me to make gas mileage a priority was a trip to the UK in 1999. I was adventurous enough to rent a car for the trip; while I realized that fuel was expensive over there, it really hit home watching the numbers rack up on the pump knowing that those were £ rather than $.

80p per liter was about $4.65 per US gallon at the time. I realized that, sooner or later, we'd be seeing prices head skyward. Even back in the mid-90s, when I sometimes saw 85 cents per gallon, I couldn't help but think that was a ploy to sucker people into buying gas-guzzlers. Nothing I've ever owned got worse than 25 mpg, but even 25 is a guzzler to me these days.

 

@.@!

In my short 16 yr driving experience, the Fit is the most fuel efficient car I'VE driven, ever (not counting the two test drives for the 2nd gen Insight).

Most have averaged in the low 20s... A couple even half of that!

 

I was terribly spoiled in the 80s when I drove diesel powered VWs... My Rabbit 4door hatchback was good for a very consistent 54.7 MPG... They were little torque monsters too.

 

Those rabbits would only get 45 mpg or so with the new diesel, Diesel by design are cleaner even when black smoke came out the pipes. The clean police wrecked the mpg of both. Thats why they are raising the compression to get some of it back and counting on electronics to save the motors. 10 percent or more lower mpg in both engines with the new fuels.