"The bottom line for me, as an old fart of 39 who drives for a living, is 1) mileage, 2) reliability, 3) price. I average between 35-43 MPG, Toyota is legendary for their reliability and my S was fully loaded for almost the same price the of the base Fit."

Nigal:

My wife and I rented a brand new Yaris 3-door in Iceland last summer, and the Yaris was definitely in the hunt for us when we began looking for a new car this spring.

I can say that the center-mounted gauges didn't bother me at all -- I got used to them almost immediately. Gas mileage was great (important when you're paying about $6 a gallon for gas, which was current in Iceland in '07).

The Yaris is a neat car in many ways. I think I could have been happy with one. But I chose the Fit for these reasons:

1. It's safer, since both the sport and base models come with side-curtain airbags, which are an expensive option in the Yaris. (Does your "fully loaded S" have them? I hope so.) I was glad to pay extra for this feature. Keeping the price low by not making side bags standard is a false economy. Thanks, Toyota.

2. The Fit is much roomier and more space efficient. On our Iceland trip we had to put one suitcase/duffel on the rear seat since both of ours wouldn't fit in the Yaris's tiny trunk. That was a royal pain in the yarse.

3. The Fit is a 5-door. I've seen some Canadian 5-door Yarises here in Vermont, and they look pretty good. But the fact that only a 3-door was available in the US market helped me decide to buy a Fit.

4. Looks/aesthetics. I like the looks of the '07-'08 Fit way better than the Yaris's. One person on this forum observed some time ago that the Yaris looks like a crouching dung beetle. Yup.

I'm very happy with my Fit, which is a manual sport. I'm averaging 41 mpg. Wow, does it handle. I get admiring questions about it all the time.

I'm glad the Yaris will be available in 5 doors in the US next year. It was stupid of Toyota not to offer it that way in the first place. Yeah, it'll be a good car for the money. For the consumers' sakes, I hope the Toyota folks get their corporate heads screwed on straight and offer those side airbags.

 

Well I was gonna go with the Yaris because of the price, fuel efficiency, reliability & tuning, but I'm not so sorry for getting the Fit because it has the same stuff as the yaris, it's better looking, & it had 5 doors while the Yaris had 3. Well there was the Yaris Sedan, but I'm a hatchback person, so there we go

 

my good friend bought a yaris s hatch. i love the look of the yaris. it is fun to drive...but... i drove the fit and it is much more rigid. handling is better, feel is much "classier." quality is better. doors dont feel hollow like the yaris. dont get me wrong, i love toyota and i liked the yaris, but i drove the yaris, sneeked over to honda that same day, drove the fit, a few hours later i drove off with the fit. it did cost me about 3000 more but...

side curtain airbags
abs!!!
15" wheels
paddle shifters

all standard on fit. yaris had these as options (less the paddles) and if i put them on there it would run in the same range.

like the yaris, love the fit.

 

People like to diss Toyota because they're a more popular, everyman's car.

I dunno what people are going on about Toyota quality being crappy and such. My mom's Prius feels like it's MUCH higher quality than my Fit. Interior-wise and mechanically, the Prius is absolutely flawless after almost 80k miles. My dad's Solara is on 120k and still has a completely rattle-free interior that is really, really well-constructed. It's never had any repairs, only the occasional oil change. Our first car, a Toyota Tercel, was driven for 70k miles and also only ever had oil changes.

Then, compare it to our Fits. A LARGE number of us have interior rattles in new cars. The plastic quality is (let's not lie to ourselves) garbage. Jason L (Firebat666) and I managed to strip an intake box screw on my car with ONE turn of a screwdriver.

Now I've never driven a Yaris, but these knee-jerk "Toyota sucks" reactions are kind of nuts. People act like the Fit is made of solid gold or something. The Yaris just caters to a different audience--It IS the successor to the Tercel/Echo, after all. In a small car, the $2k difference between a Fit and Yaris is substantial for many people.