Love this: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines car classes in terms of their combined cargo and passenger space. By their standards, the Fit's cargo volume of 20.6 cubic feet and passenger volume of 90.8 cubic feet (111.4 total) means that it's not a subcompact or even a compact, but a mid-size car! (To be honest the Nissan Versa would also be classified as a mid-size.)

I guess this is what happens when you do your job too well!
Frequently Asked Questions

 

Interesting. This car continues to surprise me.

Note that the Civic sedan with its 102.9 cu. ft is "compact". So the Fit IS bigger than the Civic. Mind blowing.

 

maybe they should add an extra section for 5 doors. would the fit fall under station wagon? I don't think so, but I wouldn't really consider it a sedan either.

maybe it's a minivan!

awesome find...

 

Oh, and the Prius just made it into the midsize class with 110 cu ft.

 

The yaris sedan makes it into a compact size at 100.8 cu ft

 

I like to call it a mini-minivan. I called it a hatch when I was signing, and my sales person (extremely knowledgeable, and trustworthy) said it was more of a station wagon.

I guess hatch = 2 door (+1 for the hatch -- 3 dr)???
and station wagon = 4 door (+1 hatch --- 5 dr) ???

Regardless I thought its like a compact with the room of a mini - mini van, but if EPA says midsize, it dont matter to me. The cargo space is unbelievable for the mpg we get.

As mentioned "I guess this is what happens when you do your job too well!"...
Yah!

 

Agree 100% with those definitions.

 

To me, a hatchback looks like a "cut-off" sedan, a station wagon is an "extended sedan."

IMHO, the fit is clearly a hatchback... not a station wagon.

 

We call it our Micro Suv or microvan

 

I typically thought of a station wagon as having side windows behind the rear doors, whereas a 5 door hatchback did not.

The Golf, Versa, Yaris, and most models of yesteryear fit this criteria. The Fit, technically, does not.

Maybe it's a qualified "large" windows behind the rear doors.

*moc

 

Oh, please. The whole premise of this thread is flawed.

If you actually look at the Honda Fit listing at the EPA web site, it's categorized under "Small Station Wagon," not under "Midsize Sedan."

If you click on the "Frequently Asked Questions" link at the top of this thread, you'll see that the poster wants you to compare the Fit under the "Sedans" header, and not under the "Station Wagons" header, where small station wagons are given as <130 sq. ft.

Which sounds about right to me. My wife is still not convinced you can actually fit all the gear you need for a baby into the back of a Fit (and we have a five-year-old Civic, with apparently just over half the cargo space but an ample-enough-looking trunk). She remembers the old domestic station wagons the US made in the '70s, before the SUV came along, and wonders: what exactly can you fit in a hatchback, in real-world terms? Particularly one in which you can't open the rear glass separately?

I'd love to see photos of this, but even on this web site they're in very short supply. Nevertheless, my point is that the EPA doesn't consider trunked cars to be the same as trunkless cars. So I claim that this thread is based on a distortion of the truth.

 

well good job to the honda designers who figured out a way to make the fit smaller on the outside than other cars in its class and yet bigger on the inside than all other cars in its class.

 

I have a different definition of "wagon vs. hatchback"...

A hatchback is not defined by how many windows or doors it has, but rather how short the rear overhang is.

A wagon traditionally has an extended rear overhang. That means the body extends rearward past the rear axle by a significant amount. A hatchback body abruptly stops just aft of the rear wheels.

For example, the previous generation Ford Focus bodystyles: The Ford Focus ZX5 5-door hatchback, vs. the Ford Focus Wagon. The ZX5 was the same as a ZX3 but with 4 small (side) doors instead of 2 large ones. But the Wagon clearly had more rear overhang.

Another example, by my standards the Kia Rio Cinco was a true wagon, where as its replacement, the Rio5, with much less rear overhang, is a hatchback.

Edmunds confuses things even more by calling the Rio5 both a wagon and a 5-door hatchback. But that is because the EPA and others don't have a clear definition of what distinguishes the two.

 

I wish we had more compact and subcompact models to choose from. Cars nowadays are getting way too big.

Why must cars have to get progressively larger with each generation?