Vehicular Fitness: The 2015 Honda Fit

The 2015 Honda Fit.

If you read other automotive publications, you're likely to find more than a little whining about the new-generation Honda Fit.  My TireKicking brethren and sisteren tend to think the styling has gone soft, so has the handling and thus, it's now no good.

This is why I started TireKicker seven years ago...to stop the madness and to evaluate cars on their own merit, in a way that is actually of some use to the people who spend their own money to buy them.  And for those people, the 2015 Honda Fit is still a solid choice and a strong value proposition.

2015 Honda Fit.

The styling is fresher and more contemporary than the last one. Judicious use of brightwork makes the Fit seem a bit more upscale.   The 130-horsepower, 1.5-liter 16-valve i-VTEC engine's 130 horsepower is enough to move the Fit in an energetic way.  I'll concede that the CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) is not the best I've ever driven, but you can get a six-speed manual in the LX (base price $15,650) and the EX (base price $17,650).

Our tester, however, was the top-of-the-line EX-L (base price $19,925...with navigation, as ours was, $20,800).  And that comes only with a CVT with paddle shifters. Not a deal-breaker, though I'd absolutely get the stick if it were available. I'd probably fall back to the EX just to get it.  If you can't drive one, learn.  Seriously. You'll thank me once you get the hang of it.

2015 Honda Fit interior.

The interior has had a complete re-do, with materials that look and feel better than they photograph, a revised infotainment system that is still behind the rest of the world, but an improvement (note to Honda tech: The touch-sensitive volume control surface needs work...it simply doesn't get the message half the time, and more than once, ours simply froze, requiring the car to be turned off to re-boot and change volume, stations or audio sources), and a return to Honda's long-standing practice of clear sightlines and controls that fall naturally to hand exacly where you'd expect them.  They're not all the way back yet, but it's better.

The Fit EX-L comes with a huge list of standard equipment.  You can see it here. It's so exhaustive that there simply isn't anything left to add.  Our tester came with no additional options.  With $790 for destination and handling, the bottom line was $21,590.

Mileage is stellar, at 32 city/38 highway (and we found those to be very realistic estimates), space utilization is tremendous and  it'll likely never break.  It's still probably the best car Honda makes.