Our New Car - 2009 Honda Fit

My friends and family know me as someone who strongly dislikes cars. Not to the point of randyhate, but I certainly randyhate lots of things that come along with cars:

• Car alarms
  
• Drivers that pass on the right when there's a lane free to your left
• Tailgaters
  
• Responsehonks

Still, with a little one on the way and virtually all of our family living just outside of the city, we needed something that we could use to shuttle around our new, little family every now and then. And so the search began. Extensive research led me to two options: a used, certified Honda Civic or a new Honda Fit. The cost is pretty much the same.

I made my first trip to Bay Ridge Honda here in Brooklyn expecting to leave with a used Civic - probably a 2005 or so. I was surprised to find that the salesmen weren't really working the prices down at all, so I left by subway. This could have something to do with a communication issues: working the used lot was a Russian guy, a Chinese Guy, an Indian guy and an old-school Brooklyner. None of them could understand each other.

This gave me a bit more time to do some extra research, and that's when I started leaning towards the Fit.

• Both cars score exceptionally well when it comes to fuel efficiency and emissions, though I had read that proper use of the Fit yields phenomenal results. (This is true, more on that later.)
  
• Both cars score very, very well in safety ratings. There are so many airbags, these things could be deployed to Mars a la "Red Planet" and land safely.
  
• Despite being smaller (four inches longer than a Mini Cooper), it has almost twice as much cargo space as a Civic, even with the back seats upright. (Cargo space matters when kids are involved, I'm told.) 
  
• Thanks to the fact that it's smaller, the Fit would be easier to park here on the street in Brooklyn.
  
• If, for some reason, we had to sell the car in a few years, we'd be selling an excellent few-year-old car rather than a four-plus-few-years-old car.
  
• Finally, the Fit has 11 cup holders. That was the deal-maker.

We've had the Fit for a week... and while we have not used it much, we're really happy with it. So far we have parked in spots that would have been too small for a Civic. On Sunday, we drove from here in Brooklyn, New York, out to Middlesex, New Jersey, and back. The average MPG for the trip was 40. It drove well. It's a good Fit.