I agree, I was getting the same MPG on my 15 year old Civic (real)1.4 HB. Car is good, but expected more from Honda...

 

What has changed in the emissions, noise and safety requirements in 15 years, I wonder?

 

and the technology was standing still for 15 years? as I said, expected more from Honda.. especially with gallon being $7 down here...

 

Who said that? It's the technology that lets them squeeze those numbers out in spite of all the new regulations.

Maybe your expectations are not lodged in reality? The Fit does an exceptional job when you understand the situation.

 

my reality is 7 bucks/gallon and a 5 year old car that has shittier mpg and handling than 15 y/o car... not to mention maintenance cost..
but my reality is also a toddler and a need for reliable 5 door city car..

 

Ok, and?

Let me know when they offer a 5 door diesel-electric hybrid that handles like a caterham and has no maintainence cost in the Fit's price range.

 

These...

Shittier MPG I can believe. Shittier handling? I HIGHLY doubt unless you're on a non OEM suspension in the civic (being 15 years old this wouldn't surprise me). Maintenance costs on the Fit are NOTHING compared to any other car also...

 

Not many cars with higher mpg. The Most Fuel-Efficient Cars | Best Cars for Gas - Consumer Reports

 

Yes.
I was recently looking at an old 1980's magazine and inside was a ad for a 1980's Dodge Colt that reportedly got 35 mpg City and 41 mpg Highway. Which is impressive...only until you factor in the reality that The 1980's Colt was a rolling death trap in comparison to The Honda Fit.

So yes, I think it has a LOT to do with modern safety equipment, body construction and emission controls and standards on todays vehicles.

When I was a kid, we owned a 1980's Tercel, very reliable vehicle that got great gas mileage. But it was dangerously light. The body metal was so thin you had to be careful leaning against it.

Could the Fit be better? Well I would always strive for improvement. But I'm NOT disappointed. My Fit in the summer get's pretty much what the EPA estimates projected, and in the winter I run just a few MPG's below.

My dad recently bought a 4 cylinder Toyota RAV 4 and he has been very disappointed in the MPG. He chose the 4 cylinder over the 6 cylinder in hopes and belief he would get better gas mileage. So far he is averaging about 18 mpg, and has even repeatedly taken it back to the dealership, which claim they can find nothing wrong.

So The Fit? It pretty much lives up to it's advertising, and in comparison to most vehicles on the road, that's pretty good. I'm not going to complain.

 

A lot of the 1980's Honda cars got better mileage mainly due to being light and lack of safety equipment that is on the cars today.

57 mpg? That's so 20 years ago

Want to drive a cheap car that gets eye-popping mileage? In 1987 you could - and it wasn't even a hybrid.

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Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
December 20 2007: 1:13 PM EST

1987 Honda Civic CRX HF

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Car makers are confident they can meet new government rules calling for a national fleet average of 35 miles per gallon. But it will take a big technological push, they say.
You might wonder why, since twenty years ago the car that got the best mileage in the nation was a real techno-wimp compared to what's on the road today. It wasn't even a hybrid. But it got better fuel economy than any car sold now - even the Toyota Prius.
Looking back at the 1987 Honda Civic CRX shows us why cars use so much more gas today and about the trade-offs we've had to make.
The CRX HF got an Environmental Protection Agency-estimated 57 mpg gallon in highway driving. Today, the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid Civic you can buy gets an EPA-estimated 34 mpg on the highway. Even today's Honda Civic Hybrid can't match it, achieving EPA-estimated highway mileage of just 45 mpg. The Toyota Prius, today's fuel mileage champ, gets 46 mpg on the highway.
Why then, not now?
One answer for the mileage drop is that the rating system has changed. Beginning with the 2008 model year, the EPA began using a more rigorous fuel economy test that means lower numbers for most cars. But that's only a small part of the answer.
If the old CRX HF were tested using today's rules, its highway fuel economy would drop to 51 mpg, according to the EPA's calculations. That's still much better than any mass-market car sold today, including hybrid cars.
The bigger answer is that the Honda Civic has changed a lot in twenty years. Honda no longer sells a tiny two-seat version like the CRX. Even Civics with back seats are much bigger and heavier today than similar versions were in 1987.
It's in the nature of the car business that companies want to offer more - more legroom, more trunk space - with each redesign. As a result, cars get bigger and bigger.
Besides size, American consumers expect a lot more convenience out of a car than they did in 1985. Today, we expect power steering, power brakes, power windows and more.
The base CRX HF did not have power steering or power brakes. (As light as it was, it really didn't need them.) Air conditioning was optional, as it was on most cars in those days, so it didn't figure into the EPA's fuel economy ratings.
Today's consumers also expect safety. In the 1980s, car companies would sell cars that got one-star or two-star crash test ratings. Numbers like that would now cause car companies fits. Four out of five stars is considered the minimum acceptable rating.
The modern Civic has airbags front and side, electronic stability control and built-in crash protecting structures in the body. (See correction.)
Even the CRX's biggest fans wouldn't relish the thought of getting into a wreck in one of those cars. While actual crash test results are not available, even a Honda (HMC) spokesman admitted the car probably wouldn't have fared well by modern standards.
"Without the benefit of modern crash structure and extensive use of high strength steel, cars from two decades ago couldn't match the crash test performance of today's Hondas," said Honda spokesman Chris Naughton.
Increased safety, meaning more weight from airbags and crash structure, has meant lower fuel economy.
"It's kind of a classic engineering fight where safe cars compete with more fuel-efficient cars," said Todd Lassa, a writer for Motor Trend magazine and a CRX aficionado.
Lassa once owned a CRX DX, one step up in price and performance - and down in fuel economy - from the HF. (A 1987 sales brochure he still has provided some of the numbers for this story.)
A fun car to drive
Not that the CRX was a bad car. Far from it. Even before Honda introduced a performance version called the CRX Si, the lightweight, fun to drive Civic CRX was Motor Trend's "Import Car of the Year" when it first hit the market in 1985.
Even in its base HF trim, the CRX was considered a fun car to drive because it was small and responsive. Its zero-to-sixty time, though - about 12 seconds by some estimates - would put it well behind even a large, sedate family sedan like the Ford Taurus today.
Weighing less than 1,800 pounds, the CRX HF was powered by a 58-horsepower engine. Today's base Honda Civic weighs almost 2,600 pounds and is powered by a 140 horsepower engine. That's about 12.5 pounds less weight per pony today, despite greatly increased size.
"The lightest cars you can buy today are about 40 percent heavier than that car," Lassa said of his old CRX.
Comparing essentially similar Honda Civic sedans from the 1980s and today reveals that today's car gets considerably better fuel economy (40 highway mg vs. 32) despite having a larger engine with much more power (140 horsepower vs. 76).
Daimler is about to find out how much appetite American's now have for inexpensive little two-seat cars that emphasize fuel economy over performance. It's just begun selling the tiny Smart ForTwo here. But even the ForTwo, which is smaller than the CRX, will get about 41 mpg on the highway, according to Daimler. (Official EPA estimates aren't out yet.).
Rumors swirl today, as they have for years, that Honda is planning to bring out a modern version of the CRX. Lassa says he pushes the idea whenever he speaks with Honda executives.
This time, though, the CRX HF would have to be a hybrid, he said. (Perhaps the one the company just announced it will make for 2009.) There just isn't any other way to pull that off today.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mentioned that the Honda Civic was an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Top Safety Pick. In fact, it the Civic was removed from that list when the Insurance Institute added a requirement for electronic stability control, which the Civic does not have. (Back to story.)
Honda to roll out new hybrid in '09

 

what do I need diesel-electric hybrid, my father-in-law's diesel Skoda Octavia, which is bigger and heavier car, not to mention - cheaper than Fit, gets 50mpg without even trying too hard, and diesel is cheaper fuel here... as for the maintanance cost, skoda has comparable fault rate as fit..

I chose Honda because it proved itself to me as very reliable car in the past and as I do 18000+ miles/year I don't want to get stuck in some god forsaken place waiting for tow truck... as for the mpg's, I dealt with it by installing LPG with hope that Honda didn't cut costs with engine valve materials...

 

all OEM and it never did to me what fit did last week on 3 inches of snow - only luck and foot away from brake pad saved me from full frontal collision when it started dancing while driving 25mph with all winter tires.
In the same conditions, stop-and-go driving, back of the car swings every time I press the brake. But ok, maybe recently changed rear discs and pads need to settle in properly...
I was comparing maintenance with my old civic, but ok, it's new car with new technology so there are additional 4 spark plugs, filter, CVT fluid...

but no additional mileage

 

This is hands down the reason the Fit gets the mileage it gets, in the hands of American drivers at any rate. At highway speeds above ~60MPH the gas mileage in my Fit starts going down, fast. I get better mileage zooming around on secondary roads than I get on a long, 70MPH+ turnpike run.
And this. I have a hard time getting 40MPG average on a two-way run in winter, but in the other seasons it's not that tough. And to bring it back to the first point, the easiest way by far to push my mileage higher is to slow down.

I have a 5MT; I believe the automatics do a bit better on highway runs. This, and the ease with which I can spin the tires in 1st, makes me want a slightly taller final drive. But I honestly think it would only help MPGs by a tiny bit. At speed, aerodynamics own the day.

The best thing I ever did for highway driving was the Beatrush undertray, which greatly stabilized the car's front end and also inched the MPG's up a tad. I'd like to someday put a rear undertray/diffuser on too, for the same reasons.

 

You can't look at ads from prior years because the EPA has changed the way it calculates mileage- several times- and the old numbers are more generous (and less accurate).

 

I went from a 07 Tundra to my 13 Fit Sport AT and I'm happy.

 

Went from 2002 Silverado (15MPG) to my 2013 M/T Fit (33.7 mpg) getting exactly what was advertised. 4th fill up due today.

 

Before my 08 fit I had a 94 geo metro 4 cyl 1.3l that returned about the same fuel economy as the fit. Besides the obvious safety and comfort improvements in 14 years the fit was like a race car in comparison to the geo!
driving a prius now which feels even faster than the fit despite having about a 2 second slower 0-60 time.
Power, fuel economy, low cost. You can only have 2 of those things generally. something has to be compromised.
If they tuned the fit to be more effecient it would be slower or, as it is, but more expensive. my 2c

 

Electric motor torque down low is the reason for that.

 

Yes that makes sense. The fit has to rev pretty high to get max torque and row through the gears as speed builds up whereas the prius is always in high gear where the electric motor can lay down the torque to pull away from a stop and mix in the engine torque as speed builds up. From what i understand it works something like that.
Could also be going from a 5 speed manual in the fit to eCVT in the prius, my sloppy shifting doesn't limit my acceleration anymore.

 

I fondly remember my '92 civic VX. The thing drove like a sailboat, but I had no difficulty getting 60 mpg until California destructively reformulated its fuel over the next few years. I could use that car as a sensitive gauge for just how much ash (nonfuel atoms) they were putting into the liquid we like to burn.

That car had a weight of 2094 pounds and much less safety etc. equipment than is considered today's minimum.

I was truly hoping that by now, we'd have a car that would outperform the VX (either in outright MPG, or with a bit more performance/utility for the same mileage) ... but won't be holding my breath. The fact that we cannot get Europe's brilliant tiny Diesels here tells me a sad thing about our consumer and regulatory priorities.