A tale of 2 dealerships: AKA I think I bought a car?

Mrs. Pete is a smart lady. Beautiful Fit. 
 

Sadly I live with someone less than a 1/4 of your wife's intelligence :( 

we had 1980 Subaru Dl wagon. Then moved to 1988 Subaru Loyale wagon. Realizing now E36 M3 quality they are, as a 3rd Tier Japanese manufacturer, we bought the grandpa of your Honda Fit

we had 1986 civic wagovan and a 91 4wd civic wagovan. Excellent cars 

we moved on to 92 accord ex wagon (best quality USDM Honda wagon ever made), replaced with a 96 accord wagon and replaced with a 2012 TSX wagon bought new 

really tried convinced the wife a few times to bring a Fit home, to no avail :( 

I know if we got the Fit Shuttle in the US, wife would be game, but till then TSX Wagon stays. 
 

Congrats on the new Fit. I had an 07 and would buy another in a heartbeat.

I had time today to open the hood. 

That’s new. 

I’ve never heard of “Earth Dreams” before?

Also new - there’s finally room to access the spark plugs!

I read the Owner’s Guide, then got online & read through the actual owner’s manual - they’ll mail you a free copy if you want one, but I didn’t find anything useful in it that wasn’t in the guide. 

A couple things that did stand out:

1. There is no published maintenance schedule. It’s all set by the Maintenance Minder. Though it does state that if you don’t drive enough to trip the oil change indicator within a year, you should get it changed anyway. 
2. Per the owner’s manual online, on CVT cars equipped with paddles shifters(Sport & LX models), placing the shifter into “S”(Sport mode) is used for “Better acceleration” and “To increase engine braking”.

Hmm... I might just have to try that out sometime.

I finally got a chance to put some miles on the Fit today. We took a 230-mile round-trip to Dauphin Island to visit the Estuarium & Fort Gaines. 

A few impressions on driving the Fit:

1. It sure feels like it has more torque than either of our girls’ ‘07 or ‘09.
2. Unlike the ‘09, the a/c seems to work really well.
3. The CVT operation feels seamless - I didn’t notice it at all unless I decided to pay attention to it. 
4. The electronic throttle tip-in is calibrated far better than the one on the ‘09.

Lastly, I received both a text and email asking me to complete a survey about our dealership experience... 

What is 0-20W oil ?

If it is like our Accord’s CVT, you will want to change tge fluid at 60k intervals.  Use tge Honda stuff.  It is not cheap, but we have had great luck with our so far at 140k miles.

In reply to californiamilleghia :

From what I’ve seen it’s pretty popular among more modern 4cyl imports, as all-3 of our Fits & the 2 Accents we’ve had have all required it. 

In reply to einy :

I’ll probably take it to a(nother) dealership for service when that comes due. 

Pete Gossett said:

I had time today to open the hood. 

That’s new. 

I’ve never heard of “Earth Dreams” before?

It means its a Direct Injection motor. They started throwing it on cars with the 2013 accord if memory serves correctly.

In reply to spacecadet :

Ah ok, that makes sense.

One other thing I just discovered today that carried over from the previous 2 generations: when you flip the rears seat backs into their upright position, you still need to lift the handle & push them all the way into the latched position, or else they rattle like crazy. :-/

I ordered a $230 set of floor mats for the car... It included one for the hatch, and a single piece the covers the entire rear floor area. All of the mats have lips the are as tall as the footwells are deep, so I think they’ll do a decent job of keeping the crud out. Our street has been torn up for over a year, so everything is a mess of sandy dust, or white mud. 

I also got a decorative plate plate for the front mount - I’m sure why this car even has one, as the nearest state that requires one is TX.

I’m really thinking that no one really prepped the car either. I had to adjust the rubber bumpers for the hood & hatch, then yesterday the TPMS light came on. I found all-3 tires were a bit lower than they should have been, but the rear two were the lowest. There’s no sign of nails/screws/etc. so I think the colder weather lowered the pressure just enough to trip the light. 

I also discovered this car doesn’t use TPMS sensors, which is nice. Though the instructions to recalibrate it - there is no “reset” - in the online manual was incorrect.

Well yesterday was our 1-year anniversary with the Fir...and today we just turned 4000-miles on it. 

Of course it's not popped up yet stating it's time for an oil change, but I'm wondering if I should get one anyway? 

I would. 

Can't hurt really. I actually like driving my 17 LX more than my 07 Sport when I had it. Definitely more oomph to it.

In reply to tremm :

Funny enough my wife had been saying she wanted a small SUV so I showed her the HRV. She instantly shot that down because she thought it was ugly. In reality I'm just not comfortable paying more than $20k for ANY vehicle, so this may end up being out last - and only 2nd - new car. 

So my daughter drives a 2009 fit that we rescued from the junk yard.  Great little car, 170 k miles.  My wife drives a 2015 fiesta st.  Now my wife wants a fit, "with all the bells and whistles".  My problem is she wants to get rid of the fiesta.  My wife loves the fit because it's more comfortable than the fiesta, which in truth is really tight.

I think the fiesta would be perfect with two to four more cylinders, but it really is a great little car.  You can fit a mustang rear end in one, did you know that?

In reply to thedoc :

I did not know that! I'm surprised you think the FiST could use more mower though. They're certainly not the fastest car, but I felt like the whole package just worked really well & would love to own one if it made any sense to do so. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Sorry, I meant the FIT!  The fiesta st is awesome.  My son and I cannot believe she likes the FIT better .  She likes driving the fiesta more than being a passenger. In truth, the back seat is awful.

In reply to thedoc :

Ah yeah that makes more sense!