Monday, April 25, 2011

2009 Honda Fit Sport

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 The 2009 Honda Fit Sport is the closest thing Honda currently offers to the classic tuner-favorite Honda sport compact hatchbacks of the late 1980s and 1990s. As first generation Honda/Acura Integras, Civic Hatchbacks and Honda CRX sport compact cars continue to be popular with the tuner set 20 years or more after they were originally released, much of Honda's current lineup has grown in size, weight, sophistication and... boredom.

The snarly little 2009 Fit Sport is the hot hatch most like the CRX that we will probably see from Honda any time soon. Its base price undercuts the Civic by less than one might think, but the Fit is a different character of car. For 2009 Honda has added a little size, but the Fit is still one of the smallest cars on the road. With this extra size and room, though, the Fit's curb weight is only upped by 40 lbs.

Why are we covering the Fit, with only 117 horsepower coming from a 1.5 Liter Inline 4, on RSportsCars.com? The Fit Sport, with Navigation system and standard 5 Speed Manual, comes in at a curb weight of 2600 lbs. Other sport compacts of today weigh hundreds of pounds more. With some Honda tuning magic, the Fit Sport has the potential to be a true hot hatch daily driver, in the vein of the Civic hatchbacks, VW GTI and CRX of old, before small, cheap, replaceable cars had to be comfortable and boring.

We've seen some truly magic things done to the D15 Series of 1.5 Liter Honda motors. The powerplant in the 2009 Fit is significantly more advanced, and loves to rev with a redline of an outstanding 6800 rpm. Will the Honda tuning community pick up the 2009 Fit Sport, throwing their factory warranties in the garbage in favor of a balanced, fun-to-drive small car with real power? Bet on it.

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