I just wanted to say that I am extremely impressed that my previous car, a 97 Honda Odyssey, still runs despite losing most of the oil in the engine! I hope the Fit's engine is as robust :).

The story: After an oil change, the oil filter was replaced, but the gasket from the old filter wasn't removed... so it had a double gasket, which, as you might imagine, doesn't seal very well. But there were no leaks initially (I've done that before myself, and the oil usually just comes pouring out right away), so we take it on the highway. 5 miles down the highway, we see smoke pouring out the back of the car, and it smells like burning oil... uh oh.

I tell the driver to pull off at the next exit, but he says there's nothing there that will help us, so we keep driving. 2 miles later, the engine oil light starts flashing. At this point, we're on a section of highway with no shoulder and no exits, so we continue on for another 2 miles to the next exit. At this point, the oil light is now lit solid. Nothing immediately off the ramp, so we drive down another mile and find a gas station -- by this point, the engine is making some pretty sad noises, and the guys at the gas station tell us to shut it down and they push the car into the service bay. I checked the dipstick, it was bone dry when I pulled it out.

Anyway, after a filter change and filling it up with oil, the engine still works fine -- it recently went on a 400 mile trip with no issues. And the engine has 200k on it!

TL;DR: Somebody put oil filter on incorrectly, dumps out oil in a plume of smoke. Drove 5 miles at highway speed with the oil light on. Engine still works.

So here's a question -- did we just get lucky, or are Honda engines really that awesome? :)

 

A bit of both! Honda @ 200k should have some wear already - mostly on the rings. When I tore down a Civic engine (DB15) @ 100k, there was so little wear on anything else that the ink was still legible on the main bearings, and the cylinder walls were as straight as I could tell with a steel straightedge. The reason I tore her down was she had become an "oil more often then gas" car with visible exhaust smoke, and a couple small gasket leaks. A new set of rings and she was good as new - 41mpg. And this was on a car that had taught 5 new drivers how to use a stickshift. The engine's design is such that it retains small puddles of oil in all the critical areas against just such a calamity as you experienced. The biggest immediate issue becomes heat dissipation - that's where your luck came in, that nothing got hot enough to break down the oil film. The horrible noises you heard were most likely coming from the valve train, where oil normally is present in enough volume to cushion the rocker arm / valve contact and quiet it down.

Congrats on your good fortune and excellent choice of brand!