Oh car gods, which car to prick?
- Thread starter dbzeag
- Start date
I might pick one of those up somewhere down the road...I really liked my tiburon years ago and this is the next gen of that with twice the hp and rwd to boot...hyundai has been doing good things for many years now
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
thanks for the laugh.
now would be a great time for me to introduce you to the "rep" system we have in place. if you particularly like or dislike a post you can add or detract reputation points by clicking the thumbs up/thumbs down icon in the lower left hand corner of the post. the green bars (or red if you go into negative rep) under your name indicate your current status.
welcome to the forum.
i remember your initial review on the car forums or something about all the pro's and cons. guess the cons got the best of you.
Here it is
So I have owned my car for almost a year now, with 16K miles on it, and I regret buying it every time I sit down in it. Honda, you should hear why so as to avoid the same mistake in another design.
I have absolutely no qualms about the dealership salespeople or repair facility. Motorcar Honda of Mayfield Heights is fantastic and I would not hesitate to recommend that dealer for anyone looking at Hondas.
Let's start with the good bits. The car looks different from most other cars on US roads, and I think it looks great. Very interesting and well done color choices. The handling is certainly better than your average econobox. Surprising cargo space for such a diminutive exterior. That's about it.
The brakes and suspension are competent enough, if you are the only one in the Fit. I honestly put my laptop bag (about 15lbs) into the back hatch and you can see it squat a bit. The weight capacity for the car is just over 700lbs total. It might be roomy, sure, but you can only hold empty boxes with a weight restriction like that. 4 average people fully clothed with purses or laptops and you are maxed out. Fully loaded the brakes are pretty much useless and the suspension tops out very quickly over bumps.
Next are the blind spots. The A pillar holds the curtain airbags (so don't get A pillar gauges unless you disable the bags). Unfortunately that makes the pillar very thick indeed creating a wicked blind spot. Also unusual is the small window just aft of that A pillar. This pushes the side mirrors (which are quite nice and large) back on the door forcing you to take your eyes off the road to use them. If they were at the base of the A pillar like in most cars, this wouldn't be an issue. If you position the seat (only two ways of movement, back and forth and the seat back angle) and you position the rearview mirror properly, you will notice the rearward visibility a bit obstructed. You will have to peer through very large rear headrests, a large secondary tail light, the rear window wiper (which does not feature an intermittent setting), very thick C pillars, high belt line for the rear hatch, and if the middle seat belt is "installed" the belt is right in the middle of site. It is like looking through a porthole.
The gauges are nice and very easy to read, but one fault is they stay lit all the time. Not only does this wear the lights in them faster but when it is dark out and you are expecting to turn on your headlights, you might forget to do so because the gauges are already lit. The only way you know you have your lights on is a small green light in the bottom of the gauges. If it is twilight out and you have been driving for quite a long time (unlikely with the short range this car has) you will forget to turn the lights on. I do that almost every time I leave from work near sunset.
Because the gas tank is underneath the front seats (the trick to getting that much interior space) there is no foot room for rear passengers. Since there is ample knee room, this might not be an issue.
Since the seats do cool tricks, they have to be quite small and agile. To do that Honda made the padding quite thin and firm. On long trips the car is very tiring. When you do push the front seats up to drop the back seats underneath them, there is no memory to return them back to their original position; more of an annoyance really.
Nice seats, though, nice use of space, nicely sized glovebox.
No armrest/center console, no dead pedal, no sunroof option, no overhead console.
To make it ready for North America, Honda had to put on new bumpers to meet crash requirements. These protrude out a lot and collect lots of dirt as you drive along, particularly the rear bumper. It is a shelf for dirt and grime. They also make it a bit trickier to put things into the rear hatch because of how far out they jut.
I understand you can't make a car fit all markets, but to bring the car to the states, Honda took out every addon feature like an armrest and roof console and turn signals on the side of the car and transmission options, and engine options, and brake configurations that would have helped some of these issues. Honda basically took the highest end model, gutted the features out of it (but it still has quite a few truth be told), tweaked the suspension for a softer ride (they didn't quite get that right), modify the front and rear to meet crash requirements, and put the For Sale sticker on it. That's not what I would have done with it. I guess for sampling the market that is good enough, though.
Tach is on the left side of the gauge cluster, blocked by your left arm as you use your right arm for shifting. Most cars have this issue, but I would still like to see a car maker do it right once, like in my old Mazda Protege.
I have a manual and shifting into 5th is an "adventure". All of the other gears snick into gear wonderfully. 5th requires me to backhand the shiftknob and do some interesting arm movements. Reverse is geared badly as well, forcing you to floor the gas and taking off much more aggressively than you want to in order to keep from stalling. 1st gear is very quick indeed (up to 25mph maybe) but 2nd gear is so deep, you have to rev in first very high before the shift to not lug. You cannot start from a standstill in 2nd very easily if at all.
Let me spend some time on the biggest gripe I have with this car, the fuel economy.
Gas mileage is quite awful. 109hp and I am barely getting more gas mileage than my 7yo Mazda with 130hp and 131K miles and the Fit is 400lbs lighter. In the Fit, I average 32mpg with 90% highway driving. That's appalling for an economy car from the most frugal and environmental car company on earth., specifically geared for economical driving. From the same manufacturer (Honda) you have a car with 82% more hp and 27% more weight and meets emissions tougher than LEV that gets only 10% less mileage. (Accord I4) Or even 28% more hp and 17% more weight and meets emissions tougher than LEV and gets almost exactly the same mileage? (Civic LX) Could you imagine what that engine in the lighter shell of a Fit would do; what the Fit should have got mileage-wise in the first place.
The engine platform was designed from the ground up to be independent from other cars in Honda's stable. It was to be a platform engine for the world-seller car (the Fit/Jazz) to go into as many countries as possible as an economy car. The design was fresh and new from the ground up which is rare for a platform engine; how many rehashings are there of the beloved LSx block? On the technology/economy front, what I was expecting was the latest gadgetry Honda had in their bag of tricks thrown into this new platform. That being the shutoff at idle and seamless restarts of the engine as seen in their hybrids, regenerative braking to charge the battery, easing the alternator a la hybrids, better gearing for economy (this only redlines at 6500, not very high at all especially for Honda), trick VTEC and fuel management maps.
Yet the engine is weak, thirsty for what little power it provides, and not-so-good with emissions. Were Honda engineers asleep during that platform design? They certainly weren't asleep for the B series or K series. My coworker's 1995 Civic with 422,000 miles on it (yes, that's 422K) with the AC on and 80mph gets 40mpg consistently, every day. That mpg measurement isn't out of ordinary, either, from the CRX or other cars of that vintage. What happened? There was no trickery then. No hybrid, no crazy lean burn, no regenerative braking, no trick valve timing. That Civic is the same weight as the Fit and with almost same hp, it gets MORE mpg, 10 years ago. Even today the Fit gets worse than a current Civic and the Civic weighs more. I don't like the excuse cars are heavier now so they are "allowed" to use more fuel. I don't buy it. A Civic then is the same size as a Fit now. An accord then is the same size as a civic now. Does the new civic get as good or better mileage than an old accord? Yes. Does a fit get better gas mileage than the old civic? No. That is my issue. Honda should have taken just as much engineering and time that went into that trick interior and spent that money for the drivetrain technology.
When cars that are much bigger (at least a foot longer, 400 lbs heavier), more powerful (140hp vs 109), and better emissions (SULEV vs. LEV) are getting better gas mileage, the engineers of the 1.5L platform need to be replaced.
Shoehorn the old Insight engine in there for cripes sake. At least then after 20 people have asked me if the Fit is a hybrid I can say yes. And it would get the gas mileage an entry level economy car from Honda should get.
Of course my wishful thinking is for a very small turbo diesel hybrid running biodiesel but has been converted for SVO use in the future and I would have gladly paid $5000 over the purchase price for it.
Part of the issue is the gearing. 70mph is 3500rpm, just at VTEC band. This is just stupid high, making for a tiring drive listening to the spin of the hamster under the hood. And I am worried about longevity of this engine spinning that high because the maintenance minder only has you replace the oil every 6500 or so miles. If this engine is spinning that hard all the time, I don't feel comfortable with the first change of oil being that far into the cycle.
Also the gas tank is quite small. 10.8 gallons does not go very far at all.
The drive-by-wire is ridiculous as well. There is a delay every time you press the petal. Not only that, but the throttle doesn't even open all the way at WOT. Tests have shown on the Fit that pedal position is more or less an approximation. The same pedal placement can open the throttle body differently depending on speed, acceleration rate, and other characteristics depending on how the ECU wants to open it, almost independent of where the pedal is. Even at full on WOT in the best case people are seeing 72% opening of the throttle body intake.
The car is too narrow to have 3 people in the back shoulder to shoulder comfortably.
Liftoff at 75mph. Anything faster than about 70 the car feels like it is ready to take off. Above 75 the car is very squirmy because of aero lift.
The paint is really thin. I mean really thin. Scratching is really easy and rocks thrown up while driving nick all the way through the paint to the metal, which is barely thicker than foil. I have tons of dents everywhere on my doors. It looks like I have hail damage. There are also places near the wheel wells that actually collect dirt and salt and water. This is a bad combination for rust prevention.
Because the car is light and high, crosswinds are brutal. A slight gust on a bridge and you are inadvertently doing a lane change. This is only exacerbated when it is icy or snowy on the road. This car is the pits in the snow, too. It has unusually wide tires for such a small car, and since there is no weight to push through the snow, the car acts like it has snowshoes on, just skimming over the top of snow instead of pushing down into it to get traction from the road.
The AC is anemic. Barely able to cool such a large cabin with lots of glass area on an 80F overcast day. I couldn't imagine a 100F+ day in Arizona.
I have also had one recall and 3 recommended fixes as well as Honda's misrepresentation of mileage on the odometer. Keep in mind, however, that this car has been on the market for 6 years already in other countries so these issues should have gotten fixed prior to it reaching North American shores. I have had the fuel filler light come on as well without any advice from the service department as to what it was from; they just reset it and sent me on my way.
Now keep in mind I am quite a negative person. I am a software tester for a living so I am quite critical. I have similar critiques for any car I drive. It is just that I am beyond frustrated with this car because of what I read and the promises this car gave me. It has not lived up to any of them. My 7 year old Protege was a better car in every way over this Fit. My insurance even went up with this car.
I wanted a car by Honda for reliability, cheap price, high resale value, terribly gas efficient, and a bit of fun every so often on a corner. I don't need the car to handle like it is on rails. I don't care if the car doesn't ride like a Lexus. I couldn't care less if it has AC or power anything. If it does, I will critique it. I was hoping the Fit would at least be reliable (1 recall and 3 recommended fixes + long interims between oil changes + thin paint + spots for water and salt to collect + fuel filler issues != reliable), cheap (the Mazda3 is $1000 more and much more substantial, the civic is the same price), frugal (the Fit is not compared to every other small car), and one part interesting. It has the interesting part right with the size of the interior for the given exterior, but it is unusable. That vast interior can only hold 700lbs of material which isn't much at all. Why have such a big space and limit what it can hold? Make the body lower so it is more aerodynamic for more efficiency and less likely to get blown to the side. I didn't complain that it didn't have GPS. I didn't complain that it didn't have leather option. I am complaining it didn't meet very simple requirements for affordable transportation such as a cheap price and cheap running costs.
A $13K Kia gets similar gas mileage and seat comfort and it doesn't promise anything more than basic transportation. The Fit promises a bit more than that with more equipment and lots of reviews expressing awesome handling and cargo room and such. It is $5K (at least) and isn't worth that price difference over a Rio. The Fit isn't $5K better than a Rio.
I have absolutely no qualms about the dealership salespeople or repair facility. Motorcar Honda of Mayfield Heights is fantastic and I would not hesitate to recommend that dealer for anyone looking at Hondas.
Let's start with the good bits. The car looks different from most other cars on US roads, and I think it looks great. Very interesting and well done color choices. The handling is certainly better than your average econobox. Surprising cargo space for such a diminutive exterior. That's about it.
The brakes and suspension are competent enough, if you are the only one in the Fit. I honestly put my laptop bag (about 15lbs) into the back hatch and you can see it squat a bit. The weight capacity for the car is just over 700lbs total. It might be roomy, sure, but you can only hold empty boxes with a weight restriction like that. 4 average people fully clothed with purses or laptops and you are maxed out. Fully loaded the brakes are pretty much useless and the suspension tops out very quickly over bumps.
Next are the blind spots. The A pillar holds the curtain airbags (so don't get A pillar gauges unless you disable the bags). Unfortunately that makes the pillar very thick indeed creating a wicked blind spot. Also unusual is the small window just aft of that A pillar. This pushes the side mirrors (which are quite nice and large) back on the door forcing you to take your eyes off the road to use them. If they were at the base of the A pillar like in most cars, this wouldn't be an issue. If you position the seat (only two ways of movement, back and forth and the seat back angle) and you position the rearview mirror properly, you will notice the rearward visibility a bit obstructed. You will have to peer through very large rear headrests, a large secondary tail light, the rear window wiper (which does not feature an intermittent setting), very thick C pillars, high belt line for the rear hatch, and if the middle seat belt is "installed" the belt is right in the middle of site. It is like looking through a porthole.
The gauges are nice and very easy to read, but one fault is they stay lit all the time. Not only does this wear the lights in them faster but when it is dark out and you are expecting to turn on your headlights, you might forget to do so because the gauges are already lit. The only way you know you have your lights on is a small green light in the bottom of the gauges. If it is twilight out and you have been driving for quite a long time (unlikely with the short range this car has) you will forget to turn the lights on. I do that almost every time I leave from work near sunset.
Because the gas tank is underneath the front seats (the trick to getting that much interior space) there is no foot room for rear passengers. Since there is ample knee room, this might not be an issue.
Since the seats do cool tricks, they have to be quite small and agile. To do that Honda made the padding quite thin and firm. On long trips the car is very tiring. When you do push the front seats up to drop the back seats underneath them, there is no memory to return them back to their original position; more of an annoyance really.
Nice seats, though, nice use of space, nicely sized glovebox.
No armrest/center console, no dead pedal, no sunroof option, no overhead console.
To make it ready for North America, Honda had to put on new bumpers to meet crash requirements. These protrude out a lot and collect lots of dirt as you drive along, particularly the rear bumper. It is a shelf for dirt and grime. They also make it a bit trickier to put things into the rear hatch because of how far out they jut.
I understand you can't make a car fit all markets, but to bring the car to the states, Honda took out every addon feature like an armrest and roof console and turn signals on the side of the car and transmission options, and engine options, and brake configurations that would have helped some of these issues. Honda basically took the highest end model, gutted the features out of it (but it still has quite a few truth be told), tweaked the suspension for a softer ride (they didn't quite get that right), modify the front and rear to meet crash requirements, and put the For Sale sticker on it. That's not what I would have done with it. I guess for sampling the market that is good enough, though.
Tach is on the left side of the gauge cluster, blocked by your left arm as you use your right arm for shifting. Most cars have this issue, but I would still like to see a car maker do it right once, like in my old Mazda Protege.
I have a manual and shifting into 5th is an "adventure". All of the other gears snick into gear wonderfully. 5th requires me to backhand the shiftknob and do some interesting arm movements. Reverse is geared badly as well, forcing you to floor the gas and taking off much more aggressively than you want to in order to keep from stalling. 1st gear is very quick indeed (up to 25mph maybe) but 2nd gear is so deep, you have to rev in first very high before the shift to not lug. You cannot start from a standstill in 2nd very easily if at all.
Let me spend some time on the biggest gripe I have with this car, the fuel economy.
Gas mileage is quite awful. 109hp and I am barely getting more gas mileage than my 7yo Mazda with 130hp and 131K miles and the Fit is 400lbs lighter. In the Fit, I average 32mpg with 90% highway driving. That's appalling for an economy car from the most frugal and environmental car company on earth., specifically geared for economical driving. From the same manufacturer (Honda) you have a car with 82% more hp and 27% more weight and meets emissions tougher than LEV that gets only 10% less mileage. (Accord I4) Or even 28% more hp and 17% more weight and meets emissions tougher than LEV and gets almost exactly the same mileage? (Civic LX) Could you imagine what that engine in the lighter shell of a Fit would do; what the Fit should have got mileage-wise in the first place.
The engine platform was designed from the ground up to be independent from other cars in Honda's stable. It was to be a platform engine for the world-seller car (the Fit/Jazz) to go into as many countries as possible as an economy car. The design was fresh and new from the ground up which is rare for a platform engine; how many rehashings are there of the beloved LSx block? On the technology/economy front, what I was expecting was the latest gadgetry Honda had in their bag of tricks thrown into this new platform. That being the shutoff at idle and seamless restarts of the engine as seen in their hybrids, regenerative braking to charge the battery, easing the alternator a la hybrids, better gearing for economy (this only redlines at 6500, not very high at all especially for Honda), trick VTEC and fuel management maps.
Yet the engine is weak, thirsty for what little power it provides, and not-so-good with emissions. Were Honda engineers asleep during that platform design? They certainly weren't asleep for the B series or K series. My coworker's 1995 Civic with 422,000 miles on it (yes, that's 422K) with the AC on and 80mph gets 40mpg consistently, every day. That mpg measurement isn't out of ordinary, either, from the CRX or other cars of that vintage. What happened? There was no trickery then. No hybrid, no crazy lean burn, no regenerative braking, no trick valve timing. That Civic is the same weight as the Fit and with almost same hp, it gets MORE mpg, 10 years ago. Even today the Fit gets worse than a current Civic and the Civic weighs more. I don't like the excuse cars are heavier now so they are "allowed" to use more fuel. I don't buy it. A Civic then is the same size as a Fit now. An accord then is the same size as a civic now. Does the new civic get as good or better mileage than an old accord? Yes. Does a fit get better gas mileage than the old civic? No. That is my issue. Honda should have taken just as much engineering and time that went into that trick interior and spent that money for the drivetrain technology.
When cars that are much bigger (at least a foot longer, 400 lbs heavier), more powerful (140hp vs 109), and better emissions (SULEV vs. LEV) are getting better gas mileage, the engineers of the 1.5L platform need to be replaced.
Shoehorn the old Insight engine in there for cripes sake. At least then after 20 people have asked me if the Fit is a hybrid I can say yes. And it would get the gas mileage an entry level economy car from Honda should get.
Of course my wishful thinking is for a very small turbo diesel hybrid running biodiesel but has been converted for SVO use in the future and I would have gladly paid $5000 over the purchase price for it.
Part of the issue is the gearing. 70mph is 3500rpm, just at VTEC band. This is just stupid high, making for a tiring drive listening to the spin of the hamster under the hood. And I am worried about longevity of this engine spinning that high because the maintenance minder only has you replace the oil every 6500 or so miles. If this engine is spinning that hard all the time, I don't feel comfortable with the first change of oil being that far into the cycle.
Also the gas tank is quite small. 10.8 gallons does not go very far at all.
The drive-by-wire is ridiculous as well. There is a delay every time you press the petal. Not only that, but the throttle doesn't even open all the way at WOT. Tests have shown on the Fit that pedal position is more or less an approximation. The same pedal placement can open the throttle body differently depending on speed, acceleration rate, and other characteristics depending on how the ECU wants to open it, almost independent of where the pedal is. Even at full on WOT in the best case people are seeing 72% opening of the throttle body intake.
The car is too narrow to have 3 people in the back shoulder to shoulder comfortably.
Liftoff at 75mph. Anything faster than about 70 the car feels like it is ready to take off. Above 75 the car is very squirmy because of aero lift.
The paint is really thin. I mean really thin. Scratching is really easy and rocks thrown up while driving nick all the way through the paint to the metal, which is barely thicker than foil. I have tons of dents everywhere on my doors. It looks like I have hail damage. There are also places near the wheel wells that actually collect dirt and salt and water. This is a bad combination for rust prevention.
Because the car is light and high, crosswinds are brutal. A slight gust on a bridge and you are inadvertently doing a lane change. This is only exacerbated when it is icy or snowy on the road. This car is the pits in the snow, too. It has unusually wide tires for such a small car, and since there is no weight to push through the snow, the car acts like it has snowshoes on, just skimming over the top of snow instead of pushing down into it to get traction from the road.
The AC is anemic. Barely able to cool such a large cabin with lots of glass area on an 80F overcast day. I couldn't imagine a 100F+ day in Arizona.
I have also had one recall and 3 recommended fixes as well as Honda's misrepresentation of mileage on the odometer. Keep in mind, however, that this car has been on the market for 6 years already in other countries so these issues should have gotten fixed prior to it reaching North American shores. I have had the fuel filler light come on as well without any advice from the service department as to what it was from; they just reset it and sent me on my way.
Now keep in mind I am quite a negative person. I am a software tester for a living so I am quite critical. I have similar critiques for any car I drive. It is just that I am beyond frustrated with this car because of what I read and the promises this car gave me. It has not lived up to any of them. My 7 year old Protege was a better car in every way over this Fit. My insurance even went up with this car.
I wanted a car by Honda for reliability, cheap price, high resale value, terribly gas efficient, and a bit of fun every so often on a corner. I don't need the car to handle like it is on rails. I don't care if the car doesn't ride like a Lexus. I couldn't care less if it has AC or power anything. If it does, I will critique it. I was hoping the Fit would at least be reliable (1 recall and 3 recommended fixes + long interims between oil changes + thin paint + spots for water and salt to collect + fuel filler issues != reliable), cheap (the Mazda3 is $1000 more and much more substantial, the civic is the same price), frugal (the Fit is not compared to every other small car), and one part interesting. It has the interesting part right with the size of the interior for the given exterior, but it is unusable. That vast interior can only hold 700lbs of material which isn't much at all. Why have such a big space and limit what it can hold? Make the body lower so it is more aerodynamic for more efficiency and less likely to get blown to the side. I didn't complain that it didn't have GPS. I didn't complain that it didn't have leather option. I am complaining it didn't meet very simple requirements for affordable transportation such as a cheap price and cheap running costs.
A $13K Kia gets similar gas mileage and seat comfort and it doesn't promise anything more than basic transportation. The Fit promises a bit more than that with more equipment and lots of reviews expressing awesome handling and cargo room and such. It is $5K (at least) and isn't worth that price difference over a Rio. The Fit isn't $5K better than a Rio.
I should also add that my gas mileage is going up, now to averaging 34mpg. This is much more acceptable. However I was driving through WV mountains this weekend and unloaded this thing couldn't make it up some of the hills very easily and the AC is still anemic. Also it's looking like I will be needing new brakes and tires very soon, near the 30K mile mark.
More importantly, that 4-cyl block is the one codesigned with Mistubishi for the Evo X. The Hyundai CEO said with a little bit of tweaking, you can get the 300hp out of it easy.
I can't see over the hood, the visibility is shit, the interior looks like someone with a bazooka shot molten plastic everywhere at random colors and set the gauges into a canyon for hiding. The platform is nice (the G8 underpinnings) but very very thirsty for what you get powerwise. And very heavy, and large, but the interior is claustrophobically tiny.
Oh and the expense.
And I am not in a mid life crisis to warrent a car like that, yet.
And the rear tail lamps look angry.
I can't see over the hood, the visibility is shit, the interior looks like someone with a bazooka shot molten plastic everywhere at random colors and set the gauges into a canyon for hiding. The platform is nice (the G8 underpinnings) but very very thirsty for what you get powerwise. And very heavy, and large, but the interior is claustrophobically tiny.
Oh and the expense.
And I am not in a mid life crisis to warrent a car like that, yet.
And the rear tail lamps look angry.
but it is very puuuuurdy.
(i can drool over cars because i'll never own a hot one, therefore i dont' have to post intelligent posts about them.
)but it is very puuuuurdy.
(i can drool over cars because i'll never own a hot one, therefore i dont' have to post intelligent posts about them.
This is true
Not really. Do you have any idea how many bolt ons are available for that block?
Expensive, small, terribly distracting dash design and implementation, awful sight lines, terribly useless ground clearance in snow