Fit 2009 comes out next week, month earlier
#1
08-22-2008, 04:48 PM
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: san francisco, ca, USA
Posts: 1,092
Fit 2009 comes out next week, month earlier
2009 Honda Fit will be available early next week - one month earlier than planned - AutoblogGreen
I posted this link at the "news" but it's taking forver to get approved. I think people should be aware of this.
Basically...they ran out of 2008 fits, and demand is too high, honda cannot waste this opportunity (high gas price). Every year, honda intended around 35k fits a year. July, honda sold 11k of fit, almost 1/3 of the annual supply, and almost outselling some acura models. The 2009 fit they expect 80k of sales per year.
Honda needs a beter marketing team. They always mis-predict their numbers. Especially after the recent cancellation of the hybrid fit for the US, they're just way off. They also orignially thought 5% of fit owners woudl get the MT. For the 2009 version, after the 2007 and 2008 numbers, 20 or 30% of fits will be MT.
I posted this link at the "news" but it's taking forver to get approved. I think people should be aware of this.
Basically...they ran out of 2008 fits, and demand is too high, honda cannot waste this opportunity (high gas price). Every year, honda intended around 35k fits a year. July, honda sold 11k of fit, almost 1/3 of the annual supply, and almost outselling some acura models. The 2009 fit they expect 80k of sales per year.
Honda needs a beter marketing team. They always mis-predict their numbers. Especially after the recent cancellation of the hybrid fit for the US, they're just way off. They also orignially thought 5% of fit owners woudl get the MT. For the 2009 version, after the 2007 and 2008 numbers, 20 or 30% of fits will be MT.
#4
08-22-2008, 05:01 PM
#5
08-22-2008, 05:12 PM
Who are you buying from, and what color are you getting? (I'm in Houston too.)
#7
08-22-2008, 05:13 PM
Dropped by one of the local Honda dealerships this morning to pick up a brochure. Was told that none available yet and no 09 Fit's till October 1st. I guess he was absent from the latest sales meeting.
#10
08-22-2008, 06:06 PM
I don't under stand this at all. I was at my Honda dealer today [I'm a long, long time buyer] and 1st on a list to get a 09 Fit. I have a black sport AT on order but Jim knows if a red or blue comes in he is to call me. He look on his computer and said look, I'm not going to get any until the first week of Oct. He is getting 8 that week and 12 more in Nov. He told me that he is not saying that they can not just show up sooner but, don't look for it to happen.
#11
08-22-2008, 06:19 PM
After working for an Acura dealership for 4 years with a Honda dealership as a sister store and seeing how flawed the vehicle tracking is, just because the computer says the car will be there on a certain day doesn't mean a thing. It is usually +/- 2 weeks on average. Sometimes the cars show up on the lot 2 weeks before the computer even showed it in the US. Sometimes the car shows to be in the inventory and not even make it on the lot for 2 weeks. This is on average. I've seen it dead on and even 1 month apart at the extremes.
Last edited by Cosmo; 08-22-2008 at 06:27 PM.
#12
08-22-2008, 08:47 PM
After working for an Acura dealership for 4 years with a Honda dealership as a sister store and seeing how flawed the vehicle tracking is, just because the computer says the car will be there on a certain day doesn't mean a thing. It is usually +/- 2 weeks on average. Sometimes the cars show up on the lot 2 weeks before the computer even showed it in the US. Sometimes the car shows to be in the inventory and not even make it on the lot for 2 weeks. This is on average. I've seen it dead on and even 1 month apart at the extremes.
I just called the dealer in Clear Lake and he said the same thing...he has no idea when they are getting in, and that you can't go by the TBD printouts the sales guys show you. He also said that "it hasn't been determined" whether they will sell for MSRP or not.
#13
08-22-2008, 09:14 PM
I talked to the dealer today and I switched from silver to Blue Sensation the build date was 8/18 the silver build date was 9/5. I like both colors but I want to get the car sooner. Hopefully I will get the car soon but my guess would be around 9/15 but who knows.
Mark
Mark
#15
08-22-2008, 09:44 PM
I also posted on the News with no approval?
Email Picture
The best subcompact on the market is slightly larger, vastly stiffer, noticeably more quiet and comfortable, and every bit as dorky-looking as the previous edition. But what a view from the cockpit.
By DAN NEIL, RUMBLE SEAT
August 22, 2008
» Discuss Article (10 Comments)
Honda is the guy selling umbrellas on the corner when it starts to rain. The lady selling flowers when you're late for an anniversary dinner. The vendor selling fire extinguishers when your underwear bursts into flames.
Shrewdly anticipating the utterly obvious and inevitable, Honda was ready for the recent surge in gas prices in all ways but one: It didn't have enough cars on the lot. Honda has had the highest U.S. fleet average fuel efficiency for the last 15 years and has, with admirable restraint, avoided stuffing gas-aholic V-8s into the trim little noses of its cars.
So when people started panicking about fuel prices this year, there were the brightly lit and cheerful Honda dealerships, arising like Homer's rosy-fingered dawn. I went by my local Honda store a month ago and it looked like it was hosting a cockfight.
The company's hottest product is the Fit, a small, modest, lumpen prole of a car that just happens to be one of the best-engineered vehicles on the planet. It tells us something fundamental about the changing tastes of the American market that Fit sales are up 73% this year, while you couldn't give a Cadillac Escalade away if you filled it with mermaids.
Honda has basically sold out of the 2008 model-year Fits and is rushing the new, redesigned 2009 models to dealerships now, a month earlier than planned. Honda projects that Fit sales in the U.S. will be around 85,000 units this year. I shudder to think how hard management is caning those poor devils at the plant in Suzuka, Japan, where U.S.-bound Fits are made.
The brief: The Fit is a subcompact hatchback, in the same aquarium with minnows such as the Nissan Versa, Scion xD and Suzuki SX4 Wagon. The base price for the 2009 Honda is $15,220 (including delivery) -- $600 more than the 2008 model. The top-shelf Fit, the Sport model with navigation and stability control, will sell for $18,760. And -- here it is, drum roll please -- the fuel economy is 35 miles per gallon highway, 28 mpg city for the base model, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Sport won't do quite as well, with 27/33 mpg, city/highway. That's what bigger wheels and tires (rolling resistance) and spoilers and side sills (aero resistance) will do for you.
After spending a day test-driving a 2009 Fit Sport in and around Malibu and Pacific Palisades, I can report that the new Fit is slightly larger, vastly stiffer, noticeably more quiet and comfortable, and every bit as dorky-looking as the previous edition. Honestly, this thing couldn't get a date for the prom with duct tape and a burlap sack. But that's part of its counterintuitive charm.
I will say one thing for the looks. In the engineers' desire to give the Fit "Man-Maximum" ergonomics -- their phrase -- they have expanded the forward cabin area and raked the front window like the futuristic Honda Clarity fuel-cell car. It's cool. Also, by raising the headliner height, slimming the A pillars and enlarging the quarter windows, the designers have increased the outward visibility by 10%.
What's that all mean? The vibe from the cockpit is open, unoppressed and glassine, a luxury of dimension in what is really a very small car.
When the Fit appeared in the U.S. in 2006 (it was already selling well in Japan), Honda rhapsodized about the car's "Magic Seat," which sounds like an endowed chair at Hogwarts but is actually the clever, multi-position rear seat mechanisms. These have evolved somewhat. Now, thanks to new flip-down headrests, the rear seat backs can be folded flat with just a turn of a latch, even if the front seats are pushed all the way back (i.e., you don't have to remove the rear headrests).
The 2009 car's additional millimeters of wheelbase translate directly to rear knee and leg room. I'm 6-foot-1, and I had no trouble moving from the driver's seat to occupy the left rear seat, what's called "sitting behind myself."
The Fit's rear seat bottom still flips up vertically against the rear seat back to allow stowage of tall items, such as plants and bikes, up to 50 inches in height. Even with the rear seats upright, the Fit's rear cargo space still measures a huge 20.6 cubic feet.
As for driving, the Fit has the metabolism and genetic code of all Hondas: well made, well tuned, well sorted, invested with the lifeblood of a thousand nameless Japanese engineers suffering from acute insomnia. Nothing is casually decided in a Honda, nothing is temporized. Some number-haunted wretch has agonized over every yen and millimeter of these cars. I love that.
The little four-cylinder pepper grinder under the hood (a 1.5-liter dual-stage VTEC) is keen and eager and completely floggable.
Peak horsepower comes at mezzo-soprano range (6,600 rpm), and peak torque (106 pound-feet) arrives at 4,800 rpm. Fits come with either a five-speed manual or a five-speed automatic transmission with paddle-shifters behind the steering wheel. The steering is quick, the brakes are powerful.
I know, I know. What about a Fit hybrid, you ask. Well, Honda is about to go on a hybrid tear, with a new Toyota Prius fighter and a new sporty hybrid coupe based on the CR-Z coming in the next 18 months. And early in the next decade, a gas-electric Fit. Eco-hearts go pitty-pat.
You may have guessed: The Fit is pretty near the top of my favorite-cars list, and not because it's so fast and awesome-looking, because it oh-so ain't. It has the beauty of a certain well-wrought urn, exactly what it needs to be -- self-defined, lightly perfect. One of these days I'll buy one, if I can ever get near the dealership.
Email PictureThe best subcompact on the market is slightly larger, vastly stiffer, noticeably more quiet and comfortable, and every bit as dorky-looking as the previous edition. But what a view from the cockpit.
By DAN NEIL, RUMBLE SEAT
August 22, 2008
» Discuss Article (10 Comments)
Honda is the guy selling umbrellas on the corner when it starts to rain. The lady selling flowers when you're late for an anniversary dinner. The vendor selling fire extinguishers when your underwear bursts into flames.
Shrewdly anticipating the utterly obvious and inevitable, Honda was ready for the recent surge in gas prices in all ways but one: It didn't have enough cars on the lot. Honda has had the highest U.S. fleet average fuel efficiency for the last 15 years and has, with admirable restraint, avoided stuffing gas-aholic V-8s into the trim little noses of its cars.
So when people started panicking about fuel prices this year, there were the brightly lit and cheerful Honda dealerships, arising like Homer's rosy-fingered dawn. I went by my local Honda store a month ago and it looked like it was hosting a cockfight.
The company's hottest product is the Fit, a small, modest, lumpen prole of a car that just happens to be one of the best-engineered vehicles on the planet. It tells us something fundamental about the changing tastes of the American market that Fit sales are up 73% this year, while you couldn't give a Cadillac Escalade away if you filled it with mermaids.
Honda has basically sold out of the 2008 model-year Fits and is rushing the new, redesigned 2009 models to dealerships now, a month earlier than planned. Honda projects that Fit sales in the U.S. will be around 85,000 units this year. I shudder to think how hard management is caning those poor devils at the plant in Suzuka, Japan, where U.S.-bound Fits are made.
The brief: The Fit is a subcompact hatchback, in the same aquarium with minnows such as the Nissan Versa, Scion xD and Suzuki SX4 Wagon. The base price for the 2009 Honda is $15,220 (including delivery) -- $600 more than the 2008 model. The top-shelf Fit, the Sport model with navigation and stability control, will sell for $18,760. And -- here it is, drum roll please -- the fuel economy is 35 miles per gallon highway, 28 mpg city for the base model, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Sport won't do quite as well, with 27/33 mpg, city/highway. That's what bigger wheels and tires (rolling resistance) and spoilers and side sills (aero resistance) will do for you.
After spending a day test-driving a 2009 Fit Sport in and around Malibu and Pacific Palisades, I can report that the new Fit is slightly larger, vastly stiffer, noticeably more quiet and comfortable, and every bit as dorky-looking as the previous edition. Honestly, this thing couldn't get a date for the prom with duct tape and a burlap sack. But that's part of its counterintuitive charm.
I will say one thing for the looks. In the engineers' desire to give the Fit "Man-Maximum" ergonomics -- their phrase -- they have expanded the forward cabin area and raked the front window like the futuristic Honda Clarity fuel-cell car. It's cool. Also, by raising the headliner height, slimming the A pillars and enlarging the quarter windows, the designers have increased the outward visibility by 10%.
What's that all mean? The vibe from the cockpit is open, unoppressed and glassine, a luxury of dimension in what is really a very small car.
When the Fit appeared in the U.S. in 2006 (it was already selling well in Japan), Honda rhapsodized about the car's "Magic Seat," which sounds like an endowed chair at Hogwarts but is actually the clever, multi-position rear seat mechanisms. These have evolved somewhat. Now, thanks to new flip-down headrests, the rear seat backs can be folded flat with just a turn of a latch, even if the front seats are pushed all the way back (i.e., you don't have to remove the rear headrests).
The 2009 car's additional millimeters of wheelbase translate directly to rear knee and leg room. I'm 6-foot-1, and I had no trouble moving from the driver's seat to occupy the left rear seat, what's called "sitting behind myself."
The Fit's rear seat bottom still flips up vertically against the rear seat back to allow stowage of tall items, such as plants and bikes, up to 50 inches in height. Even with the rear seats upright, the Fit's rear cargo space still measures a huge 20.6 cubic feet.
As for driving, the Fit has the metabolism and genetic code of all Hondas: well made, well tuned, well sorted, invested with the lifeblood of a thousand nameless Japanese engineers suffering from acute insomnia. Nothing is casually decided in a Honda, nothing is temporized. Some number-haunted wretch has agonized over every yen and millimeter of these cars. I love that.
The little four-cylinder pepper grinder under the hood (a 1.5-liter dual-stage VTEC) is keen and eager and completely floggable.
Peak horsepower comes at mezzo-soprano range (6,600 rpm), and peak torque (106 pound-feet) arrives at 4,800 rpm. Fits come with either a five-speed manual or a five-speed automatic transmission with paddle-shifters behind the steering wheel. The steering is quick, the brakes are powerful.
I know, I know. What about a Fit hybrid, you ask. Well, Honda is about to go on a hybrid tear, with a new Toyota Prius fighter and a new sporty hybrid coupe based on the CR-Z coming in the next 18 months. And early in the next decade, a gas-electric Fit. Eco-hearts go pitty-pat.
You may have guessed: The Fit is pretty near the top of my favorite-cars list, and not because it's so fast and awesome-looking, because it oh-so ain't. It has the beauty of a certain well-wrought urn, exactly what it needs to be -- self-defined, lightly perfect. One of these days I'll buy one, if I can ever get near the dealership.
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