My wife needed a new car to replace her 2003 Mazda Protege5 after it was totaled a month ago, and we've ended up with a 2007 fit with ~75,000 miles. Her family has always had Hondas, but this will be the first one that I'll get to experience working on. I'm no stranger to maintenance (My other cars have ~212k and ~186k), but this will be a bit of a learning curve. I'm glad it has a timing chain though! First things will be fixing the stupid/strange things the first owner did. Owner number two bought it for his mom and she only put 3k miles on it in the last year. For $8800 though, I could ignore some of the silly things that have been done to it. The local Honda dealer gave it a (mechanical) clean bill of health before I agreed to purchase it. Around here it's impossible to find one for less than $10k that isn't salvaged.

Carbon fiber has its place, but not on my wife's car... This thing will be put up for trade on the classifieds after I meet the requisite number of posts At least it fits!




Part of the condition of the sale was that the seller would purchase a new emblem for me. I don't know what possessed owner #1 to paint it flat black!



I guess this explains why the right rear speaker doesn't work



I'm also in need of a new door panel. Who cuts holes like this At least there were Infinity Reference speakers installed.



Time for some more reading and a few small tasks: sparks, trans fluid change, a new tail light, a 2nd key (yay eBay!), and some clay/wax

 

Congrads on the new to you Fit - we are called Fit freaks for a reason! LOL! Although I have a 2007 MR Fit that looks like this:



I am 54 years young and love my modded out Fit. I've been showing the car for 2 years and we've won 14 trophies including 2 Best of Shows and the rest for Top Tuner/Import. Tell your wife to enjoy her Fit and this car is made for modifying. Just enjoy the great gas milage and driving a car that doesn't quite look like everyone elses. I love the CF hood which will not show rock chips like the stocker one - I also have a lot of Mugen on mine and CF on the interior and manifold cover - yup! I am a tuner!

Cat

 

lol... a lot of kids these days have bad taste and no talent, yet they are cheap and tries these mods on their own without any supervision.

hope they didn't mess with the ECU and other electronics... suspension, exhaust system, etc. etc. etc. im sure your dealer gave it a clean bill of health (to sell the car)...

 

I actually bought it from a private party but had the dealer check it out. It was in the dealer's best interest to find anything and everything wrong and try to sell it to me!

There was aftermarket exhaust on it at some point, but it has as a relatively new OE-style muffler and the original flange is still intact. There is a cheap aftermarket intake on it (no brand name on elbow or filter), but it's attached correctly and is just a bit louder/deeper than what a stock intake should be.

Thankfully I don't think the 1st owner was bright enough to do much more than that. Shocks/springs are still original and the great majority of the car has been untouched. I was able to see everything when it was up on the lift and I (and the tech) had no mechanical qualms about it.

Cat, your Fit looks incredibly clean and done in good taste. On my wife's otherwise stock looking car though, CF just looks silly If I want to be noticed a bit more, I'll drive my car

 

Lol... I'll take that CF hood off your hands if you don't like it! welcome to the forum btw!

 

Ha! If I could find someone with a red (MR?) Fit that wanted it, I'd trade the thing in a heartbeat. </shameless plug>

 

MR stands for milano red... you'll find A LOT of interested people here! just too bad i have a Storm Silver Metalic... and maybe that i live in canada!

but srsly, CF is great, it's lighter than OEM so better MPG for your wife! maybe you could have it painted instead...

 

wat is that?

 

Flat black looks better than oem chrome IMO. Keep the hood, or have it repainted, it's probably lighter than oem.

 

looks like a mitsubishi 3000

 

The emblem on the side should help a bit... it's an older emblem though. I was wondering when the day would come when someone had never seen one before They're not all that common anymore--especially with that bumper. It was only made with that bumper for 2 years.

Nope... try again!

 

my other guess would've been a Dodge Stealth

Lol, thinking about it... don't paint the CF hood red, trade with mine and then you can paint it red!

 

i think it's missing the KITT kit.

 

trans am? damn i can't recognize it i think i'm too young for this

 

I can't believe someone made a Saturn look hot!

Definitely a 1st Gen S-series coupe (SC? SC1?)

GM had a real winner with Saturn, and they destroyed it. Real shame - everyone I knew who owned one loved it - they had the same kind of owner loyalty Honda had for a while there, and they let the bean-counters suck the life out.

 

Saturn mistaken for a TransAm? Man card, hand it over!!!

Dunno if you remember, but GM tried to give Oldsmobile a huge makeover in the 90's. The old rocket logo was replaced by a sort of Infinity ripoff, and the cars were all basically resculpted Pontiacs without the plastic cladding. In the 2000's, they tried to reinvent Pontiac, with RWD cars like the Solstice and G8. They had some serious investment and equity in the Saturn brand, almost an aberration: "This is what an American company can do if they put effort into it.". The UAW didn't like the loose, laid-back factory (it was the googleplex of autoplants) and the management didn't like this renegade arm pulling engineering resources from the GM mothership. They proved the grand experiment, and GM's boardroom of incompetent apes said, "Yah, K, whatever. That's nice what you've built. Now it's time to start acting like a real GM marque.". They tried to rescue t at the last minute as an outlet for near-Euro-spec Opels, something that might have paid off but by then the company was teetering on insolvency.

Imagine if they'd kept investing in Saturn back then.

 

Winner!
It's a 95 SC2. SC2s had popup headlights where SC1s had fixed ones. You can tell the "refreshed" 95/96s apart from older ones by the oval bumper cutout in the front or the full trunk reflector panel in the rear.

They're stupidly easy to work on and mechanical parts are plentiful (and cheap!) since the chassis and drivetrain were shared between the coupes, sedans, and wagons for all years (1991-2002) except for some subtle differences. The 1st gen engines tend to burn oil like crazy if not treated to religious oil changes with synthetic oil, but hey, it still gets 32 mpg around town and 35-36 on the highway. Not bad for something 15 years old!

If there had been a bit more refinement through the years, and if Saturn had been allowed to keep it's Spring Hill, TN factory all to its little self, GM may have had a fighting chance with at least one brand. What other car company can you think of that had "homecoming" gatherings at its factory for owners? Instead, you're right, it became just another GM product, and sent people like me to the Japanese Well,here I am!

 

Ha ha i know i was like WTF?!? that can't be a trans am?!? Is it the reference to KITT i got wrong? wasn't it a speaking trans am in K2000???

 

lol... it's not a TA but since it's black and looks american i thought i throw that out there.

 

Great choice in color. I'd trade hoods but mine has black paint on it! :P. And rock chips.

The black badge looks way better than OEM I had painted mine black until I spent the money on the honda JDM badges. Good luck with the new fit!