Granted, I have not looked at the 2009 Fits, and from what I understand, they made some changes. The 2009s were not available at the time I made the purchase.

Heck, I passed on a new Civic (and bought a hatchback Versa instead) for three reasons: the Civic had no leather steering wheel, the most unpleasant beige interior I’d ever personally witnessed, and a trunk. And now when I look at my car at the curb, it makes me smile in a way my trunk-based transportation of the past (Jetta, Sentra, Regal(!)) never did — probably because I used to own a Rabbit.

Oh, and I skipped the Fit because the available worldwide crash test scores, esp. in side-impact, weren’t up to those of the Versa (although both were beaten by the Civic.)

How many times do we need to see the sales numbers like for the Fit or Prius with people still repeating that this is a hatchback-averse country? It isn’t. People like hatchbacks, just not crappy ones.

The Civic does not have far better fuel economy. The combined ratings are as follows:

Automatic Fit: 31 (28/35)
Manual Fit: 29 (27/33)
Automatic Civic: 29 (25/36)
Manual Civic: 29 (26/34)

People probably do wrongly assume that the Fit has significantly better fuel economy than its larger brother, but it does not have worse fuel efficiency. Also, the Fit costs a couple grand less than the Civic similarly equipped.

The Civic has taken the Accord’s old place as a mainstream sedan. The new Accord is for people that used to buy Acuras for luxury, and the Civic Si is for people that used to buy Acuras for performance.

If Honda isn’t willing to develop proper RWD platforms then they should probably take Acura out back and shoot it, although that could be expensive with state franchise laws.