Cool Tech

Honda Fit: I have wheels again

After 5 years of sharing a car with Jean, I've finally got my own wheels again:

In the fall of 2001 when the world was in much upheaval I was laid off and faced with a tough decision: Keep my beloved Honda S2000 Roadster and move to the bay area to pay for it or sell the car and stay in SLO to work on MusicBrainz. Needless to say, I sold the car.

Even though every S2000 I see reminds me of that decision, I feel that it was the right one. Buying a Honda Fit reinforced that feeling, because the Fit was purchased with money that I earned from working on MusicBrainz or MusicBrainz related contract work. This car embodies that my grand plan from 2001 is working and that makes me smile and happy.

Returning to Honda has also been very fun. The Turbo Bug was a fiasco! (Don't buy VW, even the cars made in Germany suck at the moment. :-( ) The WRX that I've been sharing with Jean has been fun, but in the end it felt like it was more like a toy than owning a real Honda. The doors feel like cheap econobox doors and some of the controls are plain counterintuitive. But overall the WRX is a good car. But my Honda Fit is a better car.

Granted, the car isn't going to fly like the WRX. It also won't suck super gas at 27mpg -- the Fit gets 38mpg on the highway and 33mpg on the street. But the Fit has plenty of power to get around town and around California on the cheap. The sport version of the Fit has everything you need: Power windows, mirrors, locks and cruise control. A pretty good stereo with AUX input (for the iPod) standard. The seats in the car are amazing! They fold up and out of the way in ways I never thought possible -- I think in the end I will be able to haul just as much in the Fit than the WRX.

But, its the little innovations that are getting rave reviews from me. For instance, the service minder is something that really speaks to me. The service minder watches how I drive the car and based on how I drive the car it calculates how quickly the oil wears down and presents the answer to me on the dashboard:

The service minder starts getting in your face when its time to change the oil. The manual doesn't even really state when I should change my oil! For quite some time I've been following what the car manual says for oil change intervals and ignoring the conventional wisdom of changing oil every 3000. Why should I change it more often when the manual tells me to change it every 5000? In the end it feels like everyone uses that convenient 3000 figure to sell you more oil changes whether or not you need them. I'm glad my car (which should know best) will tell me from now on.

Thanks Honda! I'm looking forward to driving the car once its broken in. And I'm already looking forward to buying a new one in 5-10 years to see what else you'll come up with! And also a big thanks to Albert at Barber Honda in Bakersfield. Thanks to their waiting list and willingness to keep me informed I purchased two weeks after calling them. I purchased a week earlier than promised and at MSRP ($16,307 FYI) while Sunset Honda here in SLO wanted to mark the car up by $1000 and put an unnecessary clear coat on the car. Screw that -- I'm all for buying local, except when I have to pay $1,500 extra!

Posted by Mayhem at April 16, 2007 09:42 PM