Refreshed 2018 Honda Fit Launches Next Month with More Aggressive Styling, New Sport Trim

Also new is the 1L, 3-cyl turbo-charged Honda Dream engine with 120 deg offset cranks. Revised gear ratios in the 6MT bring cruising rpm at 65mph down to 2200rpm. A new 7-speed DCT with lockup torque converter is offered as an option...

just kidding.

Honda is asleep at the wheel with the Fit. C'mon Honda, how about something other than "bold new graphics".

 

They're a lot more awake than the folks who bring us the Toyota Corolla. But you had me going for a moment with that 1L 3-cyl , lol. We DO have an option to buy a Fiesta with a 1.0 EcoBoost , but few people have one. I'm guessing that Ford dealers don't even order them. And "bold new graphics " don't do much for me, either. C'mon, Honda.

 

Going back the 80s, Mitsubishi had a "twin stick" manual transmission - a four speed with a separate lever for "power" and "economy" - assumed to be an extra reduction gear just before the final drive (differential).
I have to wonder why this can't be done today. Take the ordinary five speed, add an extra gear selectable via lever, where "power" is existing gearing and "economy" is a 0.6:1 overdrive. That'd be enough to lower the 3500rpm highway engine speed to 2100. Add big scary warnings to the owners manual - "When using the Economy range, you will very likely have to downshift to accelerate aggressively or climb steep hills. If you are too lazy to do this, we have a nice belt-drive setup that we'd love to sell you for about a grand more."

 

I drove the TwinStick in a Colt. I thought it was a poor gimmicky substitute for a decent 5-speed.

 

Maybe enough people are still buying these older designs, making it worth it for the car manufacturers to just do cosmetic changes?

So, you'd go back to a standard ICE car after experiencing your 70 MPG tank? We can all wish the smaller, more efficient engines and taller gearing on the rest of the buying public, but they're voting with their wallets on CUVs and more power. The majority of the automotive journalists are no help, with the 0-60 time being more important as well as the car's ability to cruise at 75 MPH.

I sat in a brand new RAV4 recently, to watch over a friend's kids while the adults poked around a property they're looking to buy. Granted it was a hot day and the engine was idling for the AC for the young boy and a baby, but the MPG average was about 15. It would likely be double that with the RAV4 hybrid even with the AC running. They probably got a good lease deal going from their CR-V to the RAV4. Can't force change on people...

 

You are absolutely correct. I remember reviewers agreeing, saying that the power/economy lever was a band-aid for odd gearing in the 4 speed.
But the idea is sound and cost-efficient.
Imagine being able to change the Fit from its current gearing, where the engine sounds like an electric weedwhacker plugged into a 220 outlet when it's driven down the freeway, to a proper gearing where you can loaf along at the speed limit and have the engine speed cut in half and engine life virtually doubled.

 

In the 70s, Suzuki had a dual-range 4-speed on a 120cc motorcycle. You could kick a lever on the side case with your heel to select "street" or "trail" gears. The idea didn't catch on. Instead, manufacturers went to 5 and 6 speed transmissions.

Very good question. I'd like to know this too.

 

And in the 60s (or maybe earlier), International Harvester had a dual-range 4-speed in farm tractors to obtain 2×4=8 forward "speeds." Putting two transmissions in series is not a new or clever idea. Derailleur-equipped bicycles use the same principle (except primitive ones that lack front derailleurs).

Incidentally, the silly twin-stick Colt appeared in the 70s, not 80s.

 

Actually, no, Bill. BUT if I could have another car just for weekend highway trips , I'd like something with a manual trans. Maybe a Civic 1.5T 6MT.

 

How is it cost efficient to add a selectable gear to the differential than to just change the ratios in the existing transmission?

Because GM, and maybe others, does that?

 

It would be interesting to know the actual power required to move a Fit vs. Civic Hatchback vs. Civic Sedan down the road at specific speeds (say 65 mph and 70 mph) --- I'm guessing the Civic Sedan would come in the lowest by a noticeable margin.

Does anyone know if when you read HP off of a scan gauge ii --- does hp produced = hp required?

/For a fair 'scangauge-monitored hp required' comparison, you would (of course) want all conditions the same (wind temp) and all accessories (A/C) off, and manual transmissions (or at least the same type on each (the relatively inefficient CVT would be using up some (5-10%?) extra hp, imo).

 

Not a direct comparison, but the hi/lo range method has been used successfully in off-road vehicles for a long time. Maybe there is a durability aspect to the equation? And of course manufacturing volumes also matter. I loved that stump-pulling lo-range for rock crawling. That was 20 years ago for me...

 

But that is part of a 4WD drive system. What margins do the companies get on that option?

 

Fair point.

 

Have you played with the ECO-modder calculator? If you can fill in or estimate enough of the blanks, the calculator will give hp required for a certain speed and a bunch of other stuff.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/tool-aero-rolling-resistance.php

 

Simply changing a ratio should cost next-to-nothing, aside from intial tooling to put different numbers of teeth on a pair of gears. Adding another ratio (e.g., 4 to 5, or 5 to 6 speeds) is another matter entirely.

The aforementioned Mitsubishi 2×4-speed deal was a special case. On normal transverse-engine FWD cars, the engine "faces" right and rotates in the conventional direction (i.e., clockwise as viewed from outside the belt-pulley end), so no extra stage of gearing is needed to make the wheels turn in the proper forward direction with a manual transmission. There's only one parallel rotating shaft (the transmission output, which is also the final-drive input shaft) between the transmission input and the axles, therefore the wheels turn the same direction the engine does. (Honda has been known to achieve the same simplicity by facing their engine to the left, then compensating by designing their engines to rotate "backwards.") Not the Colt; it required an additional intermediate shaft because the engine faced left and rotated "forwards." (Or vice versa) Evidently they found it more expedient to add a 2-speed tranmission to the extra stage than to squeeze a 5th ratio into the primary tranmission. For context, around the time that generation Colt was designed, base models of other small economy cars typically still had 4-speed tranmissions, and only higher trims featured a fifth "overdrive" ratio.

 

Yes. And two-speed axles were offered in on-road medium-duty trucks at least as far back as the 1950s, I believe.