2017 has been a rough year for subcompact cars. Year-to-date sales are down drastically compared to 2016, and there’s no sign that they’ll recover anytime soon. Only Toyota’s Mazda2-based Yaris iA has managed to post a sales gain. Every other car in the segment is down for the year.
Compared to the metaphorical bloodbath some of its competitors are experiencing, the Honda Fit’s 5 percent sales slide for the year looks like a win. But Honda has no interest in comparative wins. It’s given the Fit a refresh for 2018, tweaking and updating the diminutive hatch in ways it hopes will help end the year in the black.
As you can see in the photos, Honda hasn’t made drastic changes to the 2018 Fit. This is a midcycle update, not a full redesign, after all. Instead, it’s taken a great car and made it incrementally better across the board.
The prerefreshed Fit really was a great car. It didn’t have the power of the Ford Fiesta ST, but we found our long-term tester to be spacious, comfortable, refined, and surprisingly fun to drive. For a such a small car, it got used for a surprising number of moves and road trips. Thanks to features such as Honda’s trick Magic Seats, the Fit really was that practical.
Without any glaring flaws to fix, Honda’s engineers were instead able to focus on improving the Fit wherever they could. Perhaps most importantly, that meant adding a good, old-fashioned volume knob to the infotainment system. It’s a small change, but the old volume slider was frustrating to use, so it’s an important one.
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