Everything fits in the Fit and the Fit fits everywhere
When I was in grad school, my wife and I needed to buy a car. I did a heavy amount of research to determine the best car to buy based on gas mileage, maintenance, cost, and resale value. The tricky issue was having a right budget and an unsure future due to the recession. The Honda Fit stood out in all accounts, and we went to see it.
The Fit is a beautiful, little car without the one issue little cars have : storage. I was surprised to see the backseats could go all the way down leading to the amount of truck space as an SUV. It really felt like a miniature SUV, and little did I know how much I would use that space.
Everything fits in the Fit
Packing for trips was easy with the Fit, and it really started to shine when I moved to DC for a summer internship. I packed the car with a recliner, clothes, pillows, an inflatable mattress, and my wife.
The next winter, we went to Boyne, Michigan to go snowboarding. We had four people, 3 snowboards, one set of skis, four pairs of boots, four bags, four sleeping bags, four pillows, and four sets of jackets and snow pants. It all fit, and even though it was packed tightly, we all fit.
There have been only two things that didn’t fit: a circular table wider than the car and a dress that was longer. I have fit a few different bounce houses (at different times of course), a 20 x 40 foot tent with the poles, maxed out with moving boxes/items, many different large IKEA pieces, two kids+wife+stroller+bags to Disneyland.
The Fit fits everywhere
The other bonus of a small car was fitting into parking spaces. I didn’t consider the size of the car with respect parking spaces until we moved to Washington DC. In a crowded city where parking spaces are limited, I was able to find one almost everywhere I went because there was always a tiny spot. This was particularly true for the Fit because the back window was flat, and where the glass is located is where the end of the car is.
As time wore on, I even measured the car against the standard length for cement curbs so I had an easier time eyeballing if I could fit in a space. Eventually, I determined empirically that I only needed a total of six inches of clearance for the front and rear bumps. That gave me amazing advantages in DC and then in San Francisco. This is key for pickup at school as we can squeeze into tight spaces that other cars can’t.
Oh the Fun
The car actually seats a lot more than one might expect. The Fit seats 8 people: 2 in the front, 3 in the back, and 2 in the trunk. Just joking! There’s only 5 seats.
True story: we went to a holiday party with some friends up in San Francisco, and they missed the bus to go home. We were going to go out to some club as an after party, but we only had so much room.
Everyone crammed in: a pregnant woman in the front, three full adults in the back, and two in the trunk. She’s also holding the toddler potty which was been a total win for road trips and potty training on the road.
We crammed in, drove around San Francisco, got lost, finally found the club, but we certainly didn’t fit the profile of “cool people” they wanted. They refused our presence. So we dropped one person off in the city and drove back to San Jose with my wife in the trunk. She actually slept quite comfortably, but I don’t think we’re doing that again.
The car still runs great, and it greatly exceeds my Expectations of what a tiny car should be able to do, especially for road trips. We put 30,000 miles on it each year for two years, and in the 10 years we’ve had it, we’ve put 170,000 miles on it. It has also survived a drunk driver messing up the front paneling, being rear-ended, and a hit and run (only a few scratches luckily).
Here’s to another 170,000 miles!
