Honda's Fit, the little guy. It's been a big hit for that company, but I had some misgivings about it when I first drove generation one. The tech was a little too low, the interior a little too chippy-tacky, the driving position was really uncomfortable for me and the engine was just the side of gutless. Let's see if they've handled my needs and we'll check the tech while we're in there in the '09 Fit Sport.
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>> I'm really pleased with what happened in here. Ugly got foreclosed on and kind of Honda spacey attractive moved in. That's a good thing in a cheap car 'cause folks who buy cheap cars don't wanna be reminded they bought a cheap car every time they drive their cheap car. The head unit, you better like it. That's not gonna be a fun one to replace with something on the aftermarket. Luckily I kind of like this radio. You got six-speakers are on the cabin, 160 watts for powering them and it sounds particularly good. It's got good low-end, nice and tight, nice in control, it's just, you know, it's just good. You've got an aux jack right here living under a particularly Honda tightly little dust cover. Of course AM, FM, there is no satellite radio going on here and no HD radio, but to make up for that, we've got an optical disc drive here for store bought CDs and notice MP3 and WMA CD you burn at home. And we've also got over here on the glove box something all new for the Fit is this little USB pigtail. Now, I've got a USB drive there with a bunch of music on it. To get to that, well I just hit aux and there I am, there's my USB logo. And if you wanna look at some texts you got a title button right here that allows you to go through the various types of tagging information on there, but it gets even better. Look at this, I pull out my USB drive and look who gets to get in on the act, an iPod and again you've got the same sort of tag information you can reveal. It's really simple. Now driving this Fit feels a little different than the first generation that we had. First of all that was a Fit Sport with an automatic and paddle shifters. Now, there's a five-speed manual which is the base gearbox. The clutch on this car is really light. I almost feel like the weight of my shoe can depress it, but I can probably used to that. The gear box is nice and crisp. Now for '09 the Honda Fit power and torque are up, 117 horsepower up a handful or so, 106 foot-pounds of torque, also a little bump, not much. Mileage is now rated at 27 City 33 Highway. Good numbers. We're not talking you know, crazy good, but that should give you an average of around 30 we hope in the real world. The first Fit struck me as a little bit coarse which is weird for a Honda engine. This one is very silky, cruise control is standard, it's basic cruise, not adaptive of course. Nothing over here on this side of the wheel you'll notice where you might expect Bluetooth buttons, not standard, not optional, that's a big screw up. I know it's their base car, but Bluetooth is now a base technology folks. Every car should at least offer it specially when you're a Honda and you're kind of a tech forward. Now broadly speaking there are two schools of thought when it comes to lean, green little cars. One says, go for the hybrid, all that high tech and the incrementally improved gas mileage. Other school of thought says, no go with the leanest proven in-line four conventional modern. This represents the later. If you're thinking that way, an '09 Fit Sport is about sixteen-seven base with the manual transmission, add 850 for the automatic, which I might do. Add 1850 for the navigation built-in, which I probably wouldn't do. Keep it lean, that's the idea.
