Fit To Be Tied

First it was the next-generation base Volkswagen Golf that was in jeopardy of being dropped from the U.S. auto market.  Now it's Honda's Fit model. 

Pictured above is the fourth-generation Honda Fit, which has just been unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show and is due to go on sale in Japan very soon.  It will show up in some global markets as early as February 2020.  But all indications are that the new Fit will be a poor fit for the rapidly changing American market, which is bending more and more toward monster wagons, and so Honda will likely drop the car from the U.S. lineup.

Like the Golf, the Fit is a hatchback, a car Americans associate with austerity and economy - the very sort of car that most of them don't want to be seen in.  And the Fit is indeed economical; it's one of the cheapest cars you can buy, unlike the Golf, and - and bear in mind, I say this as someone who thinks Hondas are boring and mundane - it's a high-quality, basic-transport vehicle that is a good value for the money.  Also, unlike the Golf, it's a subcompact, which means it's way too small to be a status symbol like a Jeep Grand Cherokee.  For those reasons, the Fit has been flopping in the ten-day sales figures; Car and Driver reports that Fit sales down 17 percent through September of 2019 compared to 2018, being outsold two to one by the HR-V crossover.  Honda discontinued production of the Fit in Mexico, where it was being made alongside the HR-V, so it could make more HR-Vs south of the border.  The Mark 4 Fit will be made only in Japan.

This is yet another slap in the face to the small but passionate number of Americans who still recognize the value of a small car and appreciate its economy and nimbleness.  And just as Volkswagen, which sixty years ago urged Americans to think small, is now encouraging us to "drive bigger" - bigger SUVs, apparently - and seems to be ready to let the Golf wither away in America by not even advertising it, Honda doesn't seem to promote the Fit so much, either.  It's too busy pushing Pilots.  Like Volkswagen, Honda made a reputation for itself by selling small cars that drove like go-karts (and were just as fun) and sipped gas like a hummingbird sips nectar.  When the first Honda automobile sold in the U.S., the N600, below, came out fifty years ago, the joke was that you needed to buy two of them - one for each foot.

It may have been a flop, but this little roller skate of a car paved the way for the Civic, which wasn't all that much bigger when it first debuted for the 1973 model year but caught on soon enough and helped Honda as an automotive brand as well as a motorcycle brand. Over time, the Civic has gotten bigger and somewhat more mature, like the Golf, and Honda allowed the Fit to take over from the Civic in the subcompact field.  But Honda still remained committed to selling cars that were small and economical, even as its Accord evolved into a large, comfortable fairly sedan and as SUVs entered the brand's U.S. product mix, by offering the Fit here.  Now it seems less so, if its priorities for the United States going forward are any indication.

Honda has had a checkered history with offering hatchbacks in the States of late, incidentally.  For the Civic's seventh generation, the trunked sedan was offered in base form but the hatchback was only available as a high-performance Si.  So, there's a precedent for Volkswagen to follow if it only sells the Golf GTI and Golf R when the eighth-generation Golf arrives in the United States and sells only the Jetta here for base-model customers.  (The Civic hatchback came back to the U.S. only with the current tenth generation.)  But even if a trunked Fit existed, Honda probably wouldn't plan to offer that here either, given the car's minuscule size and the observation that even sedans are falling by the wayside in favor big family haulers.

The Fit is too good a car to die in the U.S. market.  It may be small on the outside, but it is cavernous on the inside, and from a Volkswagen fan like myself, that's high praise.  Don't expect similar praise from me for the American mainstream's automotive tastes or the automakers' disregard for anyone who hates SUVs and crossovers.  I'm growing even more disgusted with these horrible trends in the U.S. market.

I've done this for the Volkswagen Golf. Now I'm doing it for the Honda Fit.  Contact Honda at American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Honda Automobile Customer Service, Mail Stop 100-5E-8A, 1919 Torrance Boulevard, Torrance, CA 90501-2746 or call Honda at (800) 999-1009 of you want the esteemed Japanese automaker to keep the Fit in its U.S. lineup.