Waaaa-Hoooo!! I haven't had this much fun in a small car since I traded in my old BMW Z3 years ago!

Now I'm not gonna stand here and tell you that the Honda Fit is any BMW, no sirree, Bob, but I will tell you that this is one seriously well-engineered ride. And I will tell you that it's a shockingly agile and solid vehicle that "gets right" just about every factor that a family guy like me looks for in a car.

I've heard the folks who've driven these Fits heapin' a whole big helping of praise on these cars, but I really didn't believe how well Honda could do in so many critical areas until I actually saw it for myself and put some rubber to road for myself. Driving is believing, and I believe y'all owe it to yourself to go take a Fit out for a spin and see for yourself.

I'll betcha a chilly brewski that you'll love this athletic little dollar saver just as much as I do. Honestly? I think the new Honda Fit is the best small car sold in America today.

Let's roll up our sleeves and roll down the windows and see just why I love this car so much.


Drive the Fit For FUN??
Compact cars don't exactly have a reputation for tripping the triggers of motorheads, and if you go just by the numbers on the Fit, I can see why you might not see a whole lot of potential for driving thrills. After all, just how seriously can you take an econobox with a a four-banger that pumps out a mere 109 horses?

The numbers might justify a little scoffing, if you thought the Fit was going to be some kind of street dragster. Heck, the 10 second zero-to-sixty time that a Fit can do isn't going to outrun any performance vehicles, but it is still enough to outrun most small cars of its class. But let's be for real here, it's not straight-up, straight-line performance where the Fit shines....it's in anything that requires agility.

You see, the Fit is more like a nimble, lithe gymnast --- light on its feet and able to spin, and twist, and duck and dodge like a welterweight prize fighter. Lots of sedans have 200 horses lurking under their hoods, and all performance-oriented cars can turn in quicker 0-60 and quarter miles times than a Honda Fit.

But seriously, folks....how many times in your typical day-to-day driving do you need to have your subcompact outrun a Corvette in a straight-line power acceleration race? Probably not that often.

On the other hand, I seriously value a car than dodge obstacles quick enough for me to avoid an accident, and I know a car could do that if I can take it through twisty roads with authority and grace, and if I can do a fast U-turn without the car feeling like it's gonna roll on its side like a truck load of logs.

Agility. Fit has it. Period.

The car feels utterly stable and sure-footed on turns. It sits low and it stays low, with only a light sway on most turns. Although the turning radius by the specs is a fairly unremarkable 34 feet, the numbers don't tell the whole story. The car won't turn a 180 much tighter than its competitors, but it will turn it faster and flatter, and all it takes is one quick run through a slalom coarse to prove it. All right, all right, so you don't have very many slalom courses in your neighborhood. Come to think of it, neither do I. Guess a few quick runs through an empty parking lot would be safer and more practical for most of us, wouldn't it?

Might be a good place to test some braking too, since we probably don't want to actually try slamming on the brakes just for fun on a typical city street. If that didn't earn us a ticket from Officer Hardass, it would probably at least get us a few middle fingers waved in our general direction (or handguns, if you're a fellow Texan --- shotguns, if you're a West Virginian).

When you do stomp on the brakes, note how much shorter the total stopping distance is than it would be with whatever big hulking land cruiser you might be used to driving. Honda does ABS standard all the way around, and I don't always like the way ABS systems kerchunk their way to a stop on some cars, but on this little Fit, I find the ABS remarkably smooth and firm.

I've never thought of myself as a shiftless kind of guy. Most of my cars have been sticks, and I prefer a manual transmission over an automatic. I'm pay extra to have a stick, but I'm glad that Honda gives me the 5-speed standard (though the automatic won't add too many greenbacks to the bottom line, if you are one of those shiftless kind of folks).

I absolutely love the feel of this transmission. Love it! It's got a precision to the mechanism that lets it just effortlessly snap into its proper position with zero play in the handle and zero errors in the movement. The clutch engages so smoothly that I just can't seem to make the Fit jump, no matter how quick I try to pop the clutch or how badly I try to shift. It's a car that's not going to stall easily and that a practiced stick driver will be able to make move smoother than any automatic. Great shifter. Great feel. Great response.


Inside the Car...
Alright, so it doesn't exactly have the living room feel of a Jaguar XJ8...the Honda Fit still feels very good inside --- especially for a car with a $13K and change price tag. To be fair and compare apples to apples, I like the feel of the Fit and the ergonomics better than I like most Honda and Toyota interiors, and better by a country mile than the interiors on most domestic or Korean econoboxes.

Lest you think I'm pullin' some wool over your eyes, keep in mind that I drive Toyota's Scion xA on a near-daily basis, and that's the easiest car for me to compare to the Fit. As luck would have it, it's also probably the closest competitor to a Fit in pretty much every department you can name. Though having compared the xA directly to a Fit, I'd have to say the Fit beats the Scion on most counts.

General layout of the dash is better on the Fit, the seats feel better on the Fit, the back seat passenger space is configured better on the Fit, and the cargo area is better designed on the Fit. The Fit generally feels a bit higher end and better equipped than the Scion, even though both are priced almost identically.

Okay, specifics...

Sitting in the drivers seat of the Fit, I feel like every control and gadget is optimally placed for near-perfect usability (not words you usually hear uttered by mouth). The gauges are crystal clear and free of extraneous gimmicks (except for the cool looking blue glow at night, but hey, even I can't resist a dash of useless aesthetic glitz here and there!) Window controls perfectly placed on the door ledge and arranged correctly to reflect window placement. Climate controls are simple and free of limiting notches or click settings. Two drink holders placed ahead of the shifter is actually very nice --- I often find that I hit the drinks pretty often when shifting on cars that put the drink holders behind the shifter. Good thinking, Honda! Vent controls are likewise flexible enough for real world driver preferences (unlike a Chevy Cavalier I recently got as a rental --- couldn't even point one of the center vents towards the driver on that beast!)

The seats feel good. The material is a bit rough and scratchy, but then, I did mention that this is a $13K econo car and not a $45K luxury car, right? Compared to cars of its class, the Fit has better feeling materials than its competitors, and the seat is sculpted well and sufficiently firm at the edges to provide real world support (unlike a Dodge Neon I recently got as a rental --- with seat sides that sagged like boobs on a 50-year old hooker).

The Fit doesn't have any console or armrest like the Scion does, but I never really cared too much for that dinky little console thing anyway...

I have plenty of leg room in the front seat and maybe 3 fingers worth of space over my head when I sit in a normal driving position (I'm 6' tall). Likewise, even with my seat pushed back to a comfy position, the rear passengers would have enough space to not have their legs amputated just by squeezing in.

The back seat is comfy enough for two adults and the door setup gives plenty of space for a Dad kind of guy to wrestle a child seat in there. Naturally, you have the little strap thingy to keep kid carriers from flopping around while you're zipping through the parking lot obstacle course and testing out all that handling pizzazz I told you about.

Of course if you do too much zipping, the kids' drinks are probably going to go flying anyway since the drink holders in the rear center console area aren't particularly deep. Oh, yeah. That's another thing I like about the back seat here....a genuine pull-down center console, and a pretty nice one too --- looks about the same as the one I had on my 2002 Volvo S40 --- wide and with space for two good-sized drinks. There's also a scooped out kind of cubby place in the doors for the kids to hide chicken nuggets and fries til they dry out, though they're really just about the perfect size and shape for a chilly bottle of brewski.


The Utility Factor...
Speaking of chilly brewski, the Honda Fit would be a great car to use for making a run down to the Beverage Barn. With those totally fold-flat (seriously --- totally flat) 60-40 split back seats, you could easily pack 16 or more cases of beer in there. I say "or more" because Honda's literature claims that the Fit has 42 cubic feet of storage space when the rear seat folds down, and looking at it, I just might believe it. Come to think of it, you might even get over twenty case of beer back there.

That's a lot of beer, but I know you can do it, especially since the Fit costs under $14K, so you won't have to rob the beer budget just to make the monthly payments.

Lift up the little flap thing, and you'll be disappointed to find one of those lame temporary spares. Oh well. Even a car as great as the Fit can't be perfect at everything.

Overall though, it's a very practical little car. Seating for four adults, never mind that PR hogwash about "seats 5". If you want to use the car for basic family hauling, it'll get the job done there too. The back door flips up, so you actually can fit a pretty wide box inside. Didn't measure the back cargo area, and I don't see a spec for it on the Honda web site, but it looks to me to be just a shade shy of 4 feet --- probably won't be able to lay a sheet of plywood flat because of the wheel humps, but anything smaller than 4' wide is gonna fit.


The Safety and Reliability Factors...
Honda touts its NHTSA 5-star crash test rating. So do a lot of other car companies. To compare them all for yourself and to get totally unbiased safety info, go to: www.safercars.gov or www.iihs.org

For the reliability info, do yourself a huge favor and just skip the nonsense and go straight to Consumer Reports. They're the only game in town if you believe in large enough samples to get statistically meaningful long-term reliability data. Of course you won't find any long-term reliability info about the Fit, since this is its first model year and it's only been sold for a few months. Instead, you'll have to wing it and go by company reputation, and as you'll see from Consumer Reports, no other company consistently does as well across the board as Honda does. Probably the Honda Fit will give you astounding reliability at remarkably low cost. My personal experience has reflected that: my current Honda has had zero defects or days in shop in two years, and my previous Honda went over 270,000 miles with no mechanical failures of any kind (still had original trans, original clutch, no engine overhauls --- not even a rust spot). Your mileage may vary, but I'll bet it won't...and I'd be willing to bet that I could get well over 200K trouble-free miles on a Fit too.

Yeah, I love me some Hondas, and I might be biased when it comes to discussions of their reliability, but hey, ya gotta go with what ya know, and I know Honda has treated me right in the past.


Buying the Fit...
Honda offers the Fit in two trim packages, the basic Fit and the "Sport" package.

In my opinion, the Sport package is not worth the money. Why not? Well, because it strikes me as a lot of window dressing but no real beef to back anything up.

All Fits have the same engine, same two transmissions, same power steering and ABS brake systems, same suspension, same basic set of creature comforts. Ponying up the bucks for the "Sport" package will not get you any more horsepower or any more "get up and go". It's basically just an aesthetics package: a spoiler (big whoop-D-Doo), alloy wheels instead of steel wheels with covers, body-matched underbody. You also get cruise control and a stereo upgrade (essentially 2 extra speakers and an MP3 jack), though it's not a true premium upgrade and it still doesn't give you any satellite radio capability, so if you're a real audio-head, I'd get the basic package and then go after-market, just like you always do.

So what will prices be? MSRP is a relative bargain at $13,850. For the money, you get a car that's roomier, nicer, and sportier than Toyota's Scion xA for about the same price. Automatic trans adds $800 to the sticker. The Sport package will tack on $1300 or so. My recommendation on this car is to get the basic vehicle --- that's where I see the real value on a Fit.

Warranty is 3 year/36,000 mile with 5 year/60,000 mile on the powertrain.

EPA rates the Fit at 33 city, 38 highway. The 10 gallon tank is dinky, but look at the bright side --- it'll sure make you smile when you go to fill it up!


So How COULD The Fit "Save America"??
38 mpg. Does your current ride do better?

Gas prices are up and basic laws of supply and demand say its unlikely to ever come back down. Realistically, it probably shouldn't. Not in a country like the U.S., where people are willing to pay as much for a simple bottle of water as they do for a gallon of gas.

It's no news that America is the gas hog of the world, and that per capita consumption has spiraled upwards even while other first world industrial nations have managed to reign in their consumption levels. Europeans live at least as well as Americans, but they do it on less gallons. One reason they do is that they don't have a penchant for unweildy SUVs and pickup trucks. They drive smarter cars. They drive cars that are more like the new Honda Fit.

Last month, there were some articles in the news about how AAA had estimated that if everyone could reduce their driving by 3%, gas prices could tumble down.

Well, I know that most folks probably aren't planning to give up trips to work, soccer camp, or even summer vacation, so we might have a tough time with keeping our driving down by 3% (which is really only 30 miles a month, if you drive a typical 1K per month).

BUT, if you traded in some gas guzzling behemoth like a GMC Yukon (EPA rating of 14/18) on a new Honda Fit (EPA rating 33/38), you could double the amount of driving you do, and still do your share to help America hit that hypothetical 3% savings goal.

Cheap gas. Wouldn't that really be a great way to save even more money off the already lower acquisition and maintenance and insurance and deprection expenses that Honda Fit gives you.

Heck, you might even be able to drive more and actually start saving some cash! After all, America has also become a poorer nation over the past few years, with most Americans having absolutely no savings whatsoever.

Honda Fit can give us a sound energy policy and help cure our economic woes! What a car!!

Now if only it could find me a good $5 cigar...