2010 Honda Fit - 10Best Cars - Car and Driver

2010 Honda Fit - 10Best Cars

Brilliance at a budget price.





The overachieving Fit is one of our quick-draw answers when people ask us which car to buy. It’s all the car anyone needs—big fun, and as cheap to own and operate as a hamster. Despite the Fit’s microbial footprint, it takes truly Sasquatchian dimensions to be discomforted inside, and all that space is surrounded by quality materials and thoughtful design unmatched in many vehicles costing much more.


While the 1.5-liter’s 117 horsepower won’t much squish the seatback foam, keeping the four-pot revving can make for an engaging game with either of its two available transmissions. With short shifts and direct, mechanical movement, the base five-speed manual should be studied by the world’s finer sports-car makers. Pairing the automatic with the Sport model nets an obedient paddle-shifted slushbox that does the cheapest F1 impression on the market.


If momentum isn’t particularly easy to summon up, it’s a riot to conserve. The Fit zips through corners with an agile, balanced manner directed by quick and accurate steering. Thick bolsters on the front seats keep occupants comfortable and in place while reinforcing the idea that the Fit is not just an economical car but an entertaining one, too. It is engaging enough to inspire back-road thrusts and parries, but it won’t alert police.


Everything about this Honda feels like a more expensive, more upmarket vehicle. It is the marriage of a number of seemingly paradoxical concepts, but its greatest accomplishment is the association this little runabout dissolves: The Fit proves more decisively than any other vehicle that affordable and cheap are mutually exclusive concepts

 

I knew I was reading Car and Driver for a good reason!

 

I may have to vacuum and warsh mine in tribute to its awesomeness when I get home.

Ford's Hybrid Fusion is looking awfully good. who'da thought?

Toyota is conspicuously absent. heh.