Cars are the stuff of dreams. Not only is the automotive industry a filthy rich affair, but so are the multi billion dollar industries that seek to emulate that experience for the common folk, what with a multitude of racing simulators across different platforms, and no shortage of wheels and peripherals to take that experience even further. Heck, reviewing cars is a dream job in and of itself, which is an experience I've personally sought to emulate for about the past thirteen months, though I don't really think I'm very professional with how I write, seeing as I tend to write more for myself than others, and thus my reviews tend to be long, drawn out, geeky crap no one can possibly be interested in reading. I also don't have to subtly advertise for manufacturers or fondle their testicles for them to provide me cars to review, nor do I have a realistic fear of souring working relationships with them. I think I've come to slowly realise that that's the selling point of something that isn't paid for: I get to be more of myself, try new things, and be as brash or cringey as I like to be without worrying about publishers, manufacturer relationships, and so on.
I have to admit, though, that reviewing cars in GT Sport is a little... disconcerting, sometimes. Dissatisfying. Like I'm missing a huge portion of what a car can convey to a driver and its owner. All we do is to take it around a desolate racetrack and run the crap out of them, which is yet another dream scenario, yes, but one that's also so selective, and in the grand scheme of things, almost pointless. After all, how much of even a sports car's lifetime is spent on a track? Even if you track it weekly, chances are, the vast majority of the time, it's bringing you places, sitting on your driveway, or even causing you grief. I feel like to judge a car based solely on how it performs on a track is a bit like falling in love with a rock star or AV actress, because I'm choosing to like or dislike a car based solely on an unrealistic scenario. Yes, it's a rock star, wow! But how is it to live with when it's not on stage, being a rock star? Will it make me pull my hair out? Will it be horrifically unreliable? Will it bankrupt me? Will it break my spine just for the hell of it? Does it have a fetish for sticking my head in a ditch? Wringing the crap out of cars is a lot of fun, and it's a huge factor in deciding if a performance oriented car is good or not. But I can't help but to wonder if I'm putting too much emphasis on something that's trivial and unattainable to most people, myself included. After all, that's the only metric I have in the game to assess cars. Maybe I'd really have loved some of the cars I wrote off in the past thirteen months if they had more of a chance to "talk" to me in person, to coexist with me. To show me all their quirks and features. Maybe then I'd come to understand them more, and find their shortcomings on the track more understandable. Hell, maybe I'd utterly despise an FD RX-7 if I ever got the chance to live with it. After all, a car is more than just on-track performance. If it can make you smile on the street, doing otherwise boring chores, then is that not just as valid an asset as being exhilarating to drive on a track, if not more?
I guess, in essence, what I'm trying to say is, what's a car like if I were to wake from this dream?
Hey, I figure, if I'm trying to make something of writing about cars, why not start my career in a Honda Fit Hybrid?
Now, before I get started singing praises for the car or ripping it a new one, there are a few things I need to mention: The first is that this is a 2019MY Fit Hybrid, and the Fit Hybrid that's represented in Gran Turismo Sport is a 2014. As such, there are some minor differences between the cars, which I'll get to later. Secondly, this is only a rental. I've no idea how badly it's been ragged on by the previous driver, or how meticulously babied it has been, and thus I don't know if the faults I note are a result of prior abuse. Third, my car seems to have the centre screen, which controls the nav and audio, replaced with a local aftermarket system, so I can't comment on how well the original JDM spec screen works, or how the speakers in this car sound like someone trying to give an eulogy in Minnie Mouse's voice through five plastic gas masks. Fourth, this appears to be a bone stock, basic as base model with zero options. I mean, for the love of all that can be considered dear and holy, I don't even get proper wheels on my car, instead having to make do with those hateful steel pieces, so don't ask me how well Honda SENSING or the rotating passenger seat works. And lastly, I really don't have much experience driving in the real world, so I can't really tell you how it compares to other sensible, realistic cars, and thus can't tell you how it stacks up against its competition, both from a sane and practical standpoint and a crazed performance standpoint. In essence, I'm just here to talk about my personal experience with the car.
So basically, there's a lot I don't know. Which is probably why it feels like nothing's really changed with this review. You still with me? Good.
The first thing about the Honda Fit Hybrid that catches the eyes of crazy people like us is its lean kerb mass: Electric vehicles are all sinfully heavy monstrosities, and you'd be forgiven if you thought that some of that would rub off onto a hybrid car, but at 1,080kg (2.381lbs), it's only 10 kilos (22lbs) heavier than a pure ICE Fit with the same engine displacement. Weighing in at less than the final Exige, the Honda Fit Hybrid barely even exists on the road among other sedans and "sports" cars, let alone SUVs and crossovers or whatever sub segment in a sub segment they'll come up with next. The featherweight mass of the car coupled with its well judged and easy-to-use power steering make the Fit come to hand and fit like a glove the moment you ease it out of a parking lot, filling the driver with confidence and trust with how intuitive and no frills, no strings attached it is to maneuver, and as with any hatchback, parking and reversing this car is as straightforward and easy as it gets. Even within a parking lot, the Fit already feels as if it were a 1/61 TOMICA toy car than an actual 1.1 ton car capable of killing somebody if mishandled.
But, don't let its diminutive size lull you into a premature conclusion that it's a spitefully slow econobox with a torturous and cramped interior; the Fit punches above its mass — almost literally — with a combined max output of 110+29.5=139.5PS (81+22=103kW) from its 1.5L Inline Four Petrol Engine and Electric Motor respectively, both of which hooked up at different ends to a 7 speed DCT to ensure a more than peppy punch — in an econobox! And if that's somehow not enough for you, the Hybrid variants can be specced with AWD if you're enough of a moron to squander away its two most outstanding strengths: it's featherweight mass and JC08 37.2km/ℓ fuel economy. And no, I'm not converting that into MPG for you; you Americans and Britons can go fight amongst yourselves to finally agree on how much a "gallon" is while the world moves on and live their lives with metric, 402.3m at a time.
But, surely a small and lightweight car has to be cramped on the inside? Maybe if you're Caucasian, sure, but the Fit is a perfect fit for us Asians, even the bulkiest and most unwieldy of us: e.g. me. I weigh 120kg and am about 175cm tall (265lbs, 5′ 7″), and I can even sit behind myself with more than a fist between my knees and the driver seat.
The Fit's 363ℓ boot may sound lacking in comparison to those of SUVs and even sedans, but it wastes little space with its mostly cuboid layout, and even a child could load and unload it with the tailgate opening at only about 600mm (2ft) off the ground (as measured by me, take with an unhealthy grain of salt), though they might struggle to get the tailgate closed if you do entrust your nine year olds with your mountain bikes, seeing as there's no power tailgate option to go along with your fancy UV shielding tint and "sporty" spoiler if you do choose to outfit your Fit with those to even out its 61/39 F/R weight distribution. Its large tailgate is cavernous enough to swallow folding wheelchairs, most of which will stow upright even without setting down the rear seats if you're willing to sacrifice most of your rear visibility, though even small golf bags will require some finessing to fit if you insist on keeping the rear seats up. Go get a 911 if golfing is your thing.
Beneath that almost flat boot floor, you get a small concealed cubby hole, and this is where the Hybrid and AWD versions of the car compromise on in comparison to the pure ICE cars, which have the largest under floor cubby holes because those don't have to accommodate battery packs, driveshafts and rear differentials. In fact, with the AWD car, you don't even get a under floor cubby hole; further proof that you really do have to be a moron to spec it if you don't absolutely need it. The Hybrid has a comparatively smaller cubby hole, but it's nonetheless very useful to stow away a cloth, bottles of disinfectant, some biscuits for a long journey, or even a tyre plug kit, because no Asian variant of the Fit gets a spare tyre to my knowledge.
To give such generous boot storage, the Fit's petrol tank is actually situated right under the front seats, instead of being at the rear like most family cars. This allows the rear seats to be set lower to the cabin floor, letting them fold flat and flush with the boot floor for some truly obscene swallowing capabilities (I need to get my mind out of the gutter after taking that photo above). Most Fits, regardless of being Hybrid, pure ICE, FF, or AWD, come (goddamnit) only with a 40ℓ tank, though the base Hybrid car — a.k.a. the one I have — only has a 32ℓ tank, for... reasons, I guess? Even then, with my very obnoxiously heavy body and a very unscientific mix of passengers spanning city driving, start stop jam creeping, and smooth highway cruising, I've always managed to attain well above 23km/ℓ on 95 RON gas, resulting in a range just north of 700km (435mi) before I've to refuel. Heck, because the fuel tank is so far away from the fuel cap in the rear, there might be about eight litres of pipe between the nozzle and the tank itself, because the fuel gauge doesn't start to dip until somewhere past 200km each drive, and even more if you fill it to the cap. Now, my phone constantly needs to be charged while I'm on the job, and I'm horrendously allergic to the inhumane heat of Singapore, which means that the car is always charging my phone and the air con is always working very hard. If you've no such needs and allergies while weighing half of what I do like a healthy adult should, you ought to get way better mileage than me even without much trying. If we were to extrapolate my 23km/ℓ onto a 40ℓ tank, that's easily 920km (572mi) of range right there, and why wouldn't you get a car with the 40ℓ tank? I can't seem to find where that 8ℓ of space goes in my car, aside from spiting me for being poor.
And don't think for a moment that it skimps on safety to bring you an easy-to-place exterior and roomy interior either, because it attained a five star NCAP rating in 2015. The Fit feels like a car that somehow, truly compromises on nothing while somehow being able to fit ample amounts of everything. Driving it has made me really question what exactly the hell other carmakers are doing with the space in their cars. "Why can't all cars be as good a package as this?", I wonder all the time in my Fit. If you've heard Gordon Murray talk about the minuscule T.50 Hyper GT car, he states that "I think car design is packaging. I really do. I'm not talking styling; I'm talking actual design of the car. You know, 20 years in Formula 1 teaches you how to shrink wrap." It might be a hell of a stretch to say this, but I truly think the Fit is the econobox version of that. But you don't have to take my unprofessional word to be convinced that the Fit is a one size fits all car to suit every need of the common folk; all you need to do is to take away its excellent visibility, a big chunk of its fuel efficiency, jack it up a bit, make it a tad bit bigger on the outside and somehow smaller on the inside, and give it nonsensical plastic fenders for the Fit to pass off as an omnipresent eyesore of an "SUV". I really think you'd need to be mentally challenged, drunk, high, and with a fresh blunt force trauma to your head to buy a Vezel, a "car" that's based on the Fit, but worse in every measurable aspect.
*cough* sorry, that rant had been pent up in me for a very long time.
It's light. It's powerful. It's extremely economical. It's roomy. It's safe. And it has yet to give me any me any trouble thus far aside from speeding tickets and a blown front right position light. With prices starting at ¥1.74 million for the base Hybrid model (about 15,895USD at the time of writing), it's cheap to buy and even cheaper to run. Is the Fit the perfect car for the common folk and crazed enthusiasts alike?
...maybe not so much for the latter. In fact, even the former might find some problems with it.
While on paper, the Fit is seemingly the perfect car with unbelievable bang for your buck, this is unfortunately still the real world, and compromise has to exist somewhere in a cheap product. Just like an Evo, what you gain in performance pyros for your pound, you lose in equal measure in the interior. While the fit is good, the finish of it... not so much. There isn't a single surface in the interior of the Fit that feels any more expensive, premium, or engineered than it needs to be simply to function and nothing else. Every surface that isn't interacted with when driving is hollow, noisy plastic that you can drum out Master of Puppets on, most of which will bend with even moderate force applied. Even that metallic looking chunk on the steering wheel that seems lifted straight out of a 200k USD NC1 "nsx" is barely coated, hollow plastic.
The only closing storage compartment is the glovebox on the passenger side, which means that if, say, you're renting a Fit to be a glorified taxi driver, you've nowhere to keep your fat stacks of cash to cater to the clowns that still choose to transact with cash post-2020, aside from literally having to reach in between their legs, resisting the urge to gouge out their reproductive organs in the process. There's only one option for non fabric seats in the car, so the vast majority of Fits will be fitted with cloth covered seats, which means that customers drenched in sweat, rain, or both will effectively put an end to your stint for hours until it dries, and pets and drunkards are all the more disconcerting to have on board. And, this might be a very recent problem even my 2019MY car couldn't have been engineered to deal with, but cloth seats are a pain in the butt to disinfect, as even spray based disinfectants leave a rather unpleasant, damp feeling in the fabric surfaces. Also, if your kids are aspiring to be the world's next Rob Van Dam, best tie them up and chuck them in the boot, because these seats don't feel like they've much structure to them at all, transmitting each kick with the tactility and precision the rack and pinion electric steering could only dream of possessing.
The only good thing I can say about the interior is how it's absolutely flooded with cup/ bottle holders: two in the transmission tunnel, one bottle holder in each door, two under the centre console positioned perfectly for a drink to block off your power outlet, and one more on the driver's side in the perfect position to block an air con vent. Understandable, seeing as you'll probably convert four bottles of water into four bottles of pee before having to stop at a petrol station with the ridiculous range this car gets with just a 32ℓ fuel tank.
Speaking of air con vents, it doesn't have any in the rear. As previously mentioned, Singapore is a horrifically, inhumanely hot country all year round, and I've had more than a few customers request that I turn up the air con more because they're hot in the rear seats. What this results in is that the front occupants have to freeze for the rear occupants to be comfortable, and the air con has to work harder and make more noise to please everybody while increasing the risk of the windows fogging up at night with the temperature differential, requiring the use of the demisters, both of which will make more than a dent on your excellent fuel economy. And while on the subject of noise, the Fit feels barely insulated as a whole. You really do need to be picky with which tyres to fit on your Fit, because the wrong ones will make conversation completely impossible at highway speeds, where the omnipresent drone of the road noise becomes nothing less than a savage, constant roar to quell any attempts at communication on anything but the most freshly paved of asphalt — a rarity here in Singapore, given how often our roads are torn up and repaved, and thus don't have much effort put into them. I don't even bother with music or podcasts when driving in the Fit, not because the engine note is a holy orchestra (it isn't), but because the road noise completely drowns out any audio you play on the expressways anyway, not unless you want to pump up the volume loud enough to tangibly rock every thin plastic surface in the car.
The suspension of the car... works, I guess? The Fit is a small car after all, so it's inevitable that it'd get tossed around by road imperfections and become a medieval torture device on the cobblestone driveways of condominiums rich people pay to suffer through in their DB11s. The car transmits the ebb and flow of every single grain of asphalt with shocking clarity into the cabin, so much so you can feel every iota of imperfection as vibrations in the cabin floor and steering wheel, which I suppose is a nice substitute for actual steering feel in this video gamey electric rack and pinion setup, which offers feel barely better than what my entry level Logitech G29 can manage on a simcade that is Gran Turismo Sport. The rears are awful Torsion Beams, and aside from being crashy, they give a very odd, disconcerting sensation over certain bumps if you go over them at the right angle and speed: I feel the rear of the car... sways around sometimes. It almost feels like the wheels have camber pulled and pushed into them over bumps, creating some yaw angle in the rear while the fronts stay straight and true, resulting in a sensation that feels like the car is trying to sift poop from your intestines onto the cloth seats, and that's felt at sane, sensible speeds from the driver's seat in the front! I can't imagine what that must feel like as a rear occupant. I'm not sure how the De Dion rear axle feels like in the AWD variants of the car, but if they're any better than this awful setup, the De Dions by themselves constitute the aforementioned "absolute need" for an AWD as far as I'm concerned.
Okay, but as the Evo proves, crazed enthusiasts will happily put up with a plastic prison if the performance is good enough, right? Yeeeeeah, about that...
One would think that any road car that makes it through the 6 months of work PD goes through to fit a car into the barren car list of an e-sports focused title like Gran Turismo Sport would be exhilarating to drive, or be historically significant. Something like a 911 or a Roadster, perhaps, or even the aforementioned Evo. While the Fit seems to fit the bill with its impressive power to mass ratio, everything else about the car dynamically falls flatter than its boot floor. First of all, the car doesn't even have a permanent tachometer, and can we please just agree that any car that doesn't have a tach front, centre, and large should automatically be disqualified from consideration for being sporty? In the Fit, you actually have to go digging for the tachometer in the display to the right of the speedometer, and even then, I suspect even Stephen Wiltshire would have a hard time discerning how much revs the engine is doing at any given instant just from a quick glance at THIS:
And it's not like the dash is starved for space, either; there's a huge circle in the middle of the speedometer that's just black and unused. You'd think they could've made a digital speedo in that space and used what's now the speedo as a tach. Somehow I get the feeling that whoever did the stellar job of packaging the mechanical bits of the car weren't in charge of the dash, because there's so much wasted space in the centre I could almost stick a whole post-it note there without obscuring anything.
While I've already ragged on the cloth seats earlier (aha, get it?), they're awful not only for your average driver, but they're even worse still for the enthusiast; the seats in this car feel to be engineered entirely for safety, cost effectiveness, and being an easy fit for most shapes and sizes of people, with no regard for actual support. The headrests are steadfast in preventing whiplash in the event of a collision, and thus jut out obtrusively against your head, meaning I can't ever lean back on the headrests and relax at red lights. On long driving stints, head, neck, and shoulder aches are not a rarity; they're to be expected. During hard cornering, you best hold onto dear life and clamp your butt cheeks HARD on however much of the cloth seat you can fit in between, because the only thing that seems mildly interested in keeping you in place is the seatbelt, and as such, your body will let go way before even the crappiest of economy tyres.
Okay, sure, the seats are easy to swap out. The throttle response, mapping, and pedal placement, not so much I suspect. While the Fit on paper punches above its mass as previously mentioned, in practice, it'd struggle to even overtake my lingering regrets and persistent fantasies about my high school sweetheart. You would think that the free breathing engine coupled with the lightning immediacy of an electric motor would give throttle response better than those of an S2000 or an EK9, but in reality, that couldn't be further from the truth. I swear to god the freaking throttle mapping changes with speed, making you travel farther and farther down the pedal for the same amount of power, while increasing the resistance to pedal travel with speed as well, making it that much more a strenuous chore to squeeze a downshift out of the car. Due to the whack throttle mapping, varying resistance, and stereotypical reluctance to downshift in every AT car, I often end up sandbagging the fast lane or shoot out like a misfit whom puberty had just found when I attempt to pass someone at an expressway. You could do your taxes in the time it takes the car to finally cave in and begrudgingly give you a downshift and power, with a side of plasticky whining from the transversely mounted Inline 4. All this reluctance, and I don't even engage Eco Mode in my daily drives! Eco Mode really doesn't feel like it does anything other than screw with your throttle mapping even further, because I don't really notice an increase in my fuel economy when I just stab the throttle harder for the power I need. Sport Mode isn't very good for city driving, because it ensures that the ICE never turns off, and it'd hold onto a gear long after it's needed, like how I held onto my ex sweetheart long after she got her birthday gift from me. And just like my ex, the Fit can adopt multiple personalities at once: it can engage both Eco Mode and Sport Mode... simultaneously. I don't even.
Happily however, you can better request for power with manual shifting via paddle shifters in the Fit, as they are available as standard... for the "S" grades of them, with no other grade even getting the option for paddles. The S grade, by the way, isn't even the grade represented in Gran Turismo Sport, meaning that the Fit in the game doesn't have paddle shifters either, despite its in-game description literally cockteasing you by mentioning them. I don't suppose it's a big deal to your average buyer, but when all Hybrid Vezels come with them no questions asked, it really does call into question why the car the Vezel is based on doesn't have that luxury. Besides, if you're a try-hard enthusiast whose dad drives a Citroën Berlingo that actually has paddle shifters... it really, really, really stings to not have them on your "sporty" car.
While the throttle pedal is a mess to operate, the touch controls of the centre console is another level of infuriating altogether. If you've waded through the cesspool that is my Taycan "review", you'd know I have a burning, passionate hatred towards touch controls in a car, which is only solidified further in the Fit. The long and short of it is that, to operate a touch control, you have to take your eyes off the road for an extended period of time to visually locate the control you want, when, with a physical button or dial, you could easily feel for them and get instant, tactile feedback when you've done the thing you wanted to do, all without once taking your eyes off the road. I almost feel like someone at Honda knows that touchscreens in a car are stupid, but are pressured by upper management to include them because of part sharing or having to look hip and trendy or something. I mean, one doesn't even have to look far to find evidence of this: the important buttons, like the Park, Sport, Power, Folding Mirrors, Window Switches, Traction Control, and Hazard buttons are all physical buttons, and as such they become so intuitive they become second nature after a few weeks with the car, yet the air con, radio, demisters, and nav systems are all touch screens or surfaces. I never feel it safe to operate them on the move even to this day, and even when at a standstill, I often touch something with my stray ring finger when trying to fangle something with my middle finger, resulting in cultivating a habit of literally flipping my poor rear view mirror the bird every time I want to operate the air con. Also, for some dog poop reason, the entire touch surface almost seems to magnetise dust to it, and on such a glossy, black surface, the dust becomes just as painfully obvious as the actual controls.
Indulge me for a second more on this rant, okay? If someone at Honda truly believed that touch surfaces are the best way to control something, why wouldn't the shift lever be touch controlled, instead of being a physical stalk? Why wouldn't they make the steering wheel a touch surface that requires you to draw circles along the wheel instead of turning it to steer the car? Because it's stupid! My time with the Fit has fueled my burning hatred for touch controls in a car so much, I think I might hate them more than pure EVs that attempt to pass off as sports cars.
...but that's also partially because my time with the Fit has mellowed me out on my opinion on EVs in general. In fact, my time with the Fit makes me wish EVs would replace ICE cars as the mode of transport for the common folk. Outside of Sport mode, the Fit moves off from a standstill up to 15km/h using only the electric motor, with the ICE kicking in thereafter unless you happen to be Mother Teresa reincarnated into a ballerina of a water strider with your footwork. As I spend more time with my Fit, the more of a game it becomes to me as to how long I can go without engaging the ICE, because there is a lot going on under the hood of the Fit Hybrid, and you'll sometimes catch it sleeping, making it trip over itself. I think most of us as drivers, especially those who have spent most of their time in manuals, have a habit of "rolling into" the throttle and brake pedal to drive smoothly. However, the Fit hates this, because it seems to think you can't make up your mind as to how much power you want, and it will always throw a hissy fit in protest while begrudgingly giving you the power you request late, especially around the magical tip over point around 15km/h, which is annoyingly the speed that I take most speed humps at, making them that much more a literal pain in the butt than they already are. If you lift off just as the ICE engages, engine braking will jerk the car for a few cycles before the gearbox comes to its senses and gives you smooth, gentle regen braking in lieu of engine braking. The car as a whole likes consistency and gentleness, and as with any non learning machine, requires you to learn in its stead about its ins and outs. But, if you can learn how to accommodate its programming, it can be a truly smooth drive, the likes of which no one from the passenger seats can reasonably lay any complaints against. However, because it requires such deliberately smooth (and slow) inputs, it's almost like an emotional mirror, for the better or worse. I find that if I'm ticked off or flustered when behind the wheel, the drivetrain of the Fit tends to beat me up for it, and it's perhaps a good sign I need to take a break, step out, stretch, close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. But of course, that's an experience very specific to me; if you've toenails made of Osmium, the Fit might not be a good fit for you.
At a standstill with charge, the engine is completely shut off, resulting in some peaceful and much needed silence from all the noise the Fit doesn't insulate from you on the move. When moving off, the power is delightfully instant and linear. Experience this enough, and you take it for granted, almost forgetting what an ICE feels and sounds like at idle until it's forced to come online to recharge the batteries. That's when, for the first time in my life, I loathed that feeling of a pure ICE powering my car. When you do run out of electric juice, the car isn't programmed to anticipate the occasion, and thus for about half a second, you get a sudden, neck snapping retarding force as the gearbox seemingly tries to engage an engine that hasn't even started, almost as if it's using your wheel speeds to jump start the engine instead of the starter motors, and needless to say, it's a horrible experience, and one that you've no way of preparing for or anticipating unless you literally keep one eye glued to the powertrain display at all times, which is dangerous and stupid. When the engine comes on to recharge the batteries, attempting to move off gives you yet another set of throttle mapping and response to learn and deal with, and in comparison to even the puny 29HP from the electric motor, the 108HP ICE from its barely awake 2,000rpm charging speed is simply woeful when having to split whatever power it sputters out near idle to propel the car and charge its batteries. At speed however, the car is seamlessly smooth at all times, with shifts from the 7 speed DCT being appreciably quick, and the drive loss being masked by the electric motor ensuring power output to the wheels isn't disrupted. So unnoticeable at speed are the transitions from hybrid power, pure EV power, and the ICE multi tasking that even I as the driver don't notice them unless I look at the display, and just like any other car, the Hybrid Fit likes highway cruising the most, as that ensures it always has ample charge in its batteries, unlike with city start stop driving.
I feel like I've been drinking cheap, supermarket beer all this time with internal combustion engines. I know exactly what I'm looking for in a beer. I know which brands I like and which I don't, and I'd be more than glad to tell the world about it. But, finally experiencing electric power in the Fit is almost like I had my first bottle of smooth Whiskey, and from then on my world is forever changed, and I can't ever find that same admiration I had for supermarket beers, even the best of them. Electric power is quite literally in another class of its own, the likes of which no econobox engine and gearbox pairing can possibly hope to compete with, no matter how advanced technology becomes.
With all these complications tied to one pedal, the throttle pedal in the Fit honestly feels nothing more like a mild, gentle suggestion for what the car should do, instead of an absolute command like what enthusiasts want in a sporty car. It's only when I drove a Hybrid that combined two worlds while letting me experience the pros and cons of both did I find myself surprisingly preferring electric power to internal combustion, because if it means everyone can have this smoothness, this quietness, this linearity, and this precision that no econobox engine and gearbox can give, I'm all for electric power. Of course, I still don't think pure EVs are good for sports cars, but driving the Fit has made me really curious and excited about the Honda e of all things.
Thankfully, the brake pedal is still pretty straightforward mechanically, and doesn't suffer any odd mapping issue like the throttle pedal. The only slight complaint I have against it is that it's positioned juuuust a tad too high off the floor for my liking, and annoyingly for a car that's more electrical than mechanical, the only way to adjust the pedal height seems to be with nuts and pliers, which I'm not willing to risk in a rental (translation: I'm lazy and have no skill). Now, with running shoes and right foot braking, the brake pedal is in the perfect position, don't get me wrong. But when I'm off the clock and in sandals, I do like to drive barefoot because I'M AN ENTHUSIAST and I like that feeling of BEING ONE WITH MY CAR!!! That's when I like to left toe brake, because I feel it's safer with lessened reaction time in the off chance things come to that, and my left foot not doing anything just feels weird and lonely, okay?! I have to set up my left sandal just so to support my heel just so my toe can reach the brake pedal, because the brake pedal feels a bit pushed out to lessen the time taken for a right foot to transition from the accelerator to the brake pedal, and thus there's an expectation that the foot is lifted when it happens. When you want to left foot brake though, your left foot is always resting on the brake pedal itself, and it's just not built with the ergonomic consideration of supporting a foot that's resting on the floor. I know most people don't left foot brake, and that all cars come with top mounted pedals. It's just... after you've owned a G29 for 6 years, it's really hard to understand why top mounted pedals are the norm.
How is it to drive at ten tenths, then? Well, I can't really tell you that from real life experience, because nowhere in Singapore can you legally go over 90km/h, and you'd be hard pressed to find a desolate stretch of road to test the cornering prowess of a car without another car or police camera waiting around the corner in the second most densely populated country... *ah-hem* in the world. And so I can only do what I usually do, which is to flog the car around in Gran Turismo Sport and tell you what it feels like from there.
As mentioned earlier, the Fit in Gran Turismo Sport is a 2014 Hybrid model. Puzzlingly for a car that is in the barren car roster of Gran Turismo Sport seemingly only as a marketing exercise, the Fit in this game appears to be the "L" grade in FF configuration, just one step down from the sportiest "S", which means it has unwelcome buttons on the steering wheel, plasmacluster ion air filtration, LED headlights, Honda SENSING safety things... zzz... o-oh, hello, what was I doing? Oh, was I writing a car review? That's weird, I've never fallen asleep writing before.
Aside from this, the 2014 Fit has slightly different bumpers, lights, and less colours to choose from. Sadly, this generation of Fits as a whole is my least favourite stylistically, being way too over designed with complicated lines, creases, angles, and meaningless aggression, all while having the gall to drop the single most manliest colour in all of recorded human history, Iris Red Pearl, from the colour list. I at least prefer my 2019 car to the 2014, because the 2014 has obnoxious angular vents on both the front and rear bumpers, all of which are fake. As if fake vents and intakes aren't offensive enough on their own, they feel like they're there to make the Fit fit into the design language of the NC1 "nsx", and that's a car that I would be better off not envisioning any more than I need to. Yes, my car has fake vents in the front as well, but if you don't like them, you can at least spec fog lights to make them disappear completely. My car is coated with the subtly beautiful Midnight Bluebeam, which is a new colour offered on Fits 2015-2020. It's an extremely dark shade of blue, with sparkly, multicoloured flakes visible only in the strongest of neutral lighting, and impossible for my phone's camera to photograph. Luckily, B3 Dark Flakes S in the game replicates not only the hue, but the sparkles in the real car almost perfectly, though it does seem to be a lot shinier than my car (maybe I ought to wash and polish mine more). Most importantly I think, the 2014 Fit has sliiiightly worse fuel economy than the facelifted 2015 models — not that it'd matter much in this game I suspect, seeing as the game estimates I had enough fuel for almost 15 laps of Nürburgring 24h flat out (no idea how much fuel the game dumps into all cars by default, probably 100ℓ). And trust me when I say that you're not going to sit through 15 laps of even Horse Thief Mile in this thing.
As you can probably already tell from the lack of people writing about it, the Fit is pretty bland to drive at ten tenths. There isn't much more to the experience aside from pointing it in a direction and stabbing the throttle pedal completely through, because on even the slightest of uphills, the Fit will struggle to do any more than to hold onto its current speed, even with charge in the batteries. If you've played racing sims for any length of time, it would have long since become a habit that you steer the car tighter towards the inside when initially putting power down past the apex of a turn, anticipating the understeer that grows when the car picks up speed. In the Fit, that's completely nonexistent, because there's no speed and no power, so oftentimes you can actually carry more speed into a turn than any other car, seeing as you can take a wider line on exit with no penalty. Just like it behaves on public roads, the Fit on the track offers a very basic, easy to maneuver driving experience well suited for beginners to learn the ins and outs of driving with. The most it will ask of you as a driver is when you overspeed into a corner and the car pushes wide with understeer, and even then, there isn't much else to it other than backing off the throttle and waiting for grip to return, which doesn't take very long with the car's lightness and excellent brakes. I guess the A Pillars in the car are just in the right position to block your line of sight to many right turn apexes, such as Tsukuba Turn 1. Turn your head a little when the time comes, I guess. Couldn't be that hard, right?
One thing that remains a highlight even when translated over to the digital realm is, of course, its featherweight mass. At the aforementioned 1,080kg, unchanged from the 2019MY car I have, the Fit is a properly agile car to toss around in corners. It'd take the crappiest of Comfort tyres and the most challenging of corners down Brock's Skyline for the Fit's front mass bias to translate into understeer, even with meager 185 sections at all four corners. The suspension setup is surprisingly taut, allowing very little body movement even under hard driving, while being stiff enough to appreciate even Sports tyres unlike most cheap cars in the game. Unlike in real life, the Torsion Beams in the rear don't seem to present any noticeable problems in the game, nor are the abysmal seats and pedal mapping any issue. Plus, in the game, you can even manually shift the Fit with the power of your mind! So athletic and zippy is the digital Fit that it makes a comparable Mazda of all things feel like a cumbersome sack of riders and horses to haul around in comparison.
When driving yet another rental, a turbo diesel 6MT Demio for the race at Miyabi this week, I was getting outgunned on the straights and corners... well, "corner", I suppose is more accurate, seeing as you only need to brake once in the entire sub 1 minute lap in these lightweight compacts. In the above embedded video, after a good launch in the Mazda, I was constantly getting swamped and swatted away by the mob of angry Fits, all the way up to a sharp tipping over point in lap 4 where the Fits all ran out of battery power, allowing my dirty diesel car to catch back up to them. However, even in this state, the Fits still proved to be fighting fit, as there's no taking away their cornering advantage, and they still do regen some charge on Turn 4, allowing them to harass my Demio up to most of the home straight. I specifically chose to bring out a wildcard car (a wildcar...? Anyone...? No?) on a track like Miyabi, because I think it brings out most clearly the inherent shortcoming of any Hybrid car, especially one that's set up for generic street use and not tailored for a specific track like Le Mans.
At only 108HP from a 1.5L however, the Fit's power output is so tragic without its electric juice that, if I could adequately describe it with words, I could instead write the next Violet Evergarden or Clannad storylines instead of wasting weeks of my life writing this review for free. The 1.5L pure ICE Fits, such as the sportiest RS, only make about 8HP less than the combined output of the Hybrid cars, while weighing 10kg less. The big difference here is that a pure ICE car will always have that power and always weigh less, so if you're looking for a track weapon in the compact car class, it's paramount to take into consideration what circuit you're running on, and for how long; the Hybrid cars will arguably be faster for a (very) short sprint, but for anything else? Go with a pure ICE.
The eagerness of its lightness will surprise many for the first few corners, but after that, the novelty wears off quick, and there's nothing else even remotely exciting about its driving dynamics to help pad out the experience. While its driving dynamics do quickly get stale, the fact that it was even capable of putting a smile on my face for the first five minutes of hard driving is commendable in its own right. Not to mention, it nonetheless provided us with some of the most heated, nail biter, down to the wire racing in our weekly meetups.
All this for a car that does all the daily, boring crap so exceedingly well, while being more reliable than some paperweights, make the Fit a hell of a bit of kit that I would heartily recommend to anyone without any hesitation.
I can't argue that the Fit is about one of the most boring cars you can drive in this game. I can't romanticise the car, saying how its so full of character, soul, or misunderstood quirks. I don't love it in the way I do an FD RX-7 or NA NSX, but I'd sooner forget my phone at home than my car key, even if I'm not planning to drive. It's a reliable tool that never asks for anything in return for its servitude aside from sips of fuel and routine servicing. It's a tool that has become a part of my body, my being, my mindset. And that I think is something that's too easy to take for granted and be blissfully ungrateful for until the day when I lose it, just like the pen that has seen me through a decade of education, written down my answers to my most important exams, and even been lent to my sweethearts before. In the same way, this Fit has opened up so many doors for me, personally and professionally, physically and emotionally. I've eaten meals in it, I've slept in it. I spend almost all my waking hours in it. I've transported patients and nurses to and from hospitals in these hateful times. I've met so many energetic furbabies and their proud parents because of my job. My job has allowed me to explore and get to know better my home country of Singapore, while giving me the perfect excuse to give you guys a peek at this beautiful country. If I can't make it on time for our Wednesday afternoon races, most likely I'm still driving around in it, being baked alive. I've managed to help haul my friends and family around in times of need, circumventing the need for gross public transport in times of COVID.
Don't mind the awkward pose; the surface of the car is hot enough to sublimate eggs.
As irrational and out of place in a review as it may be, the only way I know of to express my gratitude for such a tool- no, such a car, is to tell the whole world all I know about it and my experiences with it, topped with an unhealthy amount of cheese and cringe. Its name, the "Fit", can simultaneously be the perfect description of the car or a misnomer, and its petite silhouette tends to lead people into thinking the latter until they load up the car and sit in it, only to realise how wrong they were about the car. In a similar way, I think I have been lulled into thinking that this unassuming Fit wouldn't do much for me, someone who thinks he's so critical, picky, philosophical, and irreversibly spoiled by video games and delusions of grandeur. Yet, slowly but surely, this "little" Honda has stirred my soul so deeply that I really did need to pause and take a deep, deep look into myself and the car to realise it, and it's only when I was allowed to choose it for Car of the Week could I have convinced myself to take this pause and reflect. In other words, in my own, weird way that I don't quite understand yet myself, I feel the need to proclaim publicly, "I love it". That, and thank you everyone for the past thirteen months of close, clean racing, and most importantly, the warm acceptance I've enjoyed as well.
I don't usually give "Beater or Sleeper" verdicts in my reviews, because I think cars fall into a lot more categories than just those two can fit (plus, I'm not even sure what the heck Beater or Sleeper is actually supposed to mean. Surely it means more than just "good" and "bad"?). For the Fit however, I think I'll bestow both titles of Beater and Sleeper onto it, as it's a car you can beat on as a daily, yet will pleasantly surprise many both on the public roads and on a track. In fact, I think a Fit of some generation in some trim with some subtle mods has just driven itself into my dream garage, for when I don't want any attention, I don't want any hassle, I don't want to refuel, and I just want to get into a car that just quietly and assuredly works every time to fit most needs while still being receptive to being hustled through bends. And, you know what? Midnight Bluebeam is the perfect colour for that as well.
