#HondaFit

(N.B. This review was penned by my grandmother, Yvette Lerner, posted under my account)

When my husband, daughter (Derek’s Mum) and I left England in 1961, we left behind a beautiful MG Magnette. Upon arriving in Canada, my husband went out and bought the first car he could find with a V8 engine. We had left behind the damp flats, the rationing (which still went on when we got married in 1953) and the grey weather for a new life, and my husband felt that the transformation wasn’t complete unless we had a big, 8-cylinder American car to go with it. We wouldn’t drive anything smaller than a V8 until 1973.

Late last week Zipcar announced their ONE>WAY service, a point-to-point rental product and a clear challenge to Daimler’s successful Car2Go program.

By now, you’ve heard what driving the new 2015 Honda Fit is like. You’ve seen what riding in a new Fit is like, too- and, maybe, you’ve figured out how they got one into a tiny bar (I haven’t). Still, we haven’t spent much time actually talking about the nuts and bolts and whys and hows of the new Honda. Until now, that is.

There’s really no way to lead into this, so I’ll just come out and say it: the 2015 Honda Fit is a fantastic car. Around town, at speed on Southern California’s twisty canyon roads, on the highway, stuck in traffic- there wasn’t a single situation we put our EX and EX-L testers into that it didn’t handle with aplomb. Even some light off-roading didn’t twist up the Fit’s rigid frame.

In a few days, TTAC’s editors will present their best and worst automotive picks of 2013. Today, Sajeev Mehta brings you his winners and losers in the field of design. Winners and losers below the jump.

The most interesting part of Honda’s new Fit – a hybrid drivetrain mated to a dual clutch gearbox – won’t be coming to North America. At least not in this form.

The days of having to wait for a new model to roll out across different regions may be over. Honda is using its regional R&D centers to help speed up introduction times for the next-generation Fit, something that could become the norm over the next few years.

A weakening yen and a rebounding economy have occurred just in time for Honda. The auto maker is opening its first new Japanese plant in 49 years, bucking a trend by Japanese auto makers of opening new plants in every locale but Japan.

Apparently, Honda invited some journalists to Japan so they could go check out new technology carefully packaged into existing cars, lest anyone reveal super-secret things like what the next Acura RL looks like. No matter, we’ve got everything below.

TTAC’s fascination with all things Chinese mandates that we get our hands on the first Chinese car to be sold on North American shores, lest we betray our mandate. That first example happened to come from Honda – and the Made In China Fit you see here might be the one vehicle most true to the company’s roots.

Honda is hoping that the next-generation Fit subcompact will see its volume nearly triple, going from 64,000 units per year to 200,000 by 2016.