The vehicles I drove were both Sport models: one with five-speed manual, the other with optional five-speed automatic.

Fit is bigger on the inside than it seems when you look at it from the outside and it puts an end to the idea that you have to give up creature comforts and convenience to drive a small car.

The differences are readily apparent. The wheelbase has been stretched 50 mm and overall length extended by 106 mm. On the inside, the space has been widened by 30 mm on an overall width that’s up 13 mm. There’s more headroom, too.

With its large window, the Fit is not a place to give claustrophobics fits.

The thinner A-pillar, which made room to enlarge those little triangular windows, can still block your vision at an intersection.

They’ve done a lot to this car... // SLAM! Sports

I like the new Honda Fit. A lot. It's an object lesson in small car packaging, delivering maximum interior room and functionality relative to its overall size without looking -- or, more importantly, driving -- like a boring baby minivan. Although there's just a 117hp 1.5-liter four under the hood, it's an absolute hoot to hurl along your favorite winding road; almost as much fun as a Mini Cooper.

But I wonder: Does this Honda fit America?

The... // MotorTrend Magazine

Cars.com (Enlarge photo)

While senior editor Joe Wiesenfelder got the first look at the new Honda Fit for his full review last month, the rest of the editors at Cars.com recently landed some extended seat time in the 2009 Fit to see how the popular hatchback improves on the past generation. They take on the car’s utility, family-friendliness and, oh yeah, the driving experience. 

Mike Hanley: One question kept coming up when driving Honda's redesigned Fit: Why would someone choose this four-door hatchback over the more substantial — and similarly priced — Civic? The first reason is rather obvious: If you're a hatchback fan and want the extra utility this body style provides, you're going to go with the Fit, as the Civic is only offered in coupe or sedan form. Another reason, interestingly,... // Cars.com

Auto Racing Daily (Enlarge photo)

Open the dictionary to “right car for the times,” and you’re likely to see a photo of the all-new Honda Fit subcompact. Though brought to the U.S. market in 2006 almost as an afterthought, Honda’s cheeky five-seater quickly began selling far beyond its projected rate of 50,000 units per year. With the new, Generation II model, Honda may well move nearly twice that many.

Click Here For More Honda Fit Sport Pictures

And for good reason. We’ve already taken a long first look at the updated Fit , but at last we’ve had the opportunity to take a series of extended drives—and to run the Fit through our full battery of instrumented tests. Our high opinion of Honda’s smallest model has only grown.

The Fit’s mission profile may appear to place efficiency above all else, but... // Auto Racing Daily

DetNews.com (Enlarge photo)

We love it without question.

We can't help ourselves. It's cute and cuddly and if you cock your head just right it has either big ears or a jaw line that looks like a ship's bow. The seats fold up in so many directions it's like you're practicing origami when you lean into the second row. And then there's the high gas mileage, the 1.6-liter inline four-cylinder engine and lots of cool interior features that just woo us into nearly passing out... // DetNews.com

For good measure, the Honda Fit is worth the hype. It's a fantastic little daily driver that can carry five people -- though they should be fit and thin if you want three in the second row.

The mileage is true to the label; in one week of testing, I averaged 31 miles per gallon in a good mix of highway speeding and urban thrashing. The sticker says you'll get 28 mpg in the city and 35 mpg on the highway with the five-speed automatic transmission. The manual gets slightly worse mileage at 27 mpg / 33 mpg.

The Fit has hoot-like drive qualities. Those little 15-inch wheels (in a day when most cars come with 18s) and go-kart like turning ability make it fun around town. It can... // DetNews.com

DetNews.com (Enlarge photo)

Shrewdly anticipating the utterly obvious and inevitable, Honda was ready for the recent spike in gas prices in all ways but one: It didn't have enough cars on the lot. Honda has had the highest U.S. fleet average fuel efficiency for the past 15 years and has, with admirable restraint, avoided stuffing gas-aholic V8's into the trim little noses of its cars.

So when people started panicking about fuel prices this year, there were the brightly lit and cheerful Honda dealerships, arising like Homer's rosy-fingered dawn. I went by my local Honda store a month ago, and it looked like they were hosting a cockfight.

The company's hottest product is the Fit, a small, modest, lumpen prole of a car that just happens to be one of the best-engineered vehicles on the planet. It tells us something... // DetNews.com

If the Honda Fit only went on sale here in 2007, why are we getting a new model already for 2009?

Good question, and here's a good answer: The Fit has been sold in other countries for seven years, and only came to the United States when Honda decided it needed a car smaller and cheaper than the Civic to counter Toyota 's Yaris and Nissan 's Versa. So everywhere else, it was time for a redesigned Fit, so we get the new one, too.

That said, this new Fit is not that much of a departure from... // Orlando Sentinel