Car Question

[willowisp]

Andy and I are looking for a small, new car for me. We've narrowed down to a Honda Fit Sport (aka llama-mobile) or a Hyundai Elantra Touring. The llama-mobile has enthusiastic recommendations from my sister, who owns one.

If anyone has test-driven or compared these cars, do you have any recommendations for one over the other?

Comments

[ljedi.livejournal.com]

When I was doing my car shopping, I cross-referenced safety, reliability, gas mileage, and.. something else I can't remember ATM. The Honda Fit was in the top 5. I was especially looking at Hyundai, and I forget why I eliminated it as a choice, but I do believe it was because it had either a poor repair record (which would be taken care of by the warranty) or a poor safety record. I'm not talking about your Hyundai specifically - no models of Hyundai made my criteria. Then again, I was looking at mid-price cars, so if that's one of the upper rank in quality, I may not have looked at it.

In case you were wondering, the other cars in my top 5 were the Kia Optima 07 or later(which I got), Ford Fusion, Honda Civic, and Pontiac Vibe. The Optima and the Fusion were both highly recommended by Consumer Reports, although my own research confirmed that - the Ford was my second choice. FWIW.

Hope that helps!

[willowisp.livejournal.com]

Thank you; I was hoping you'd weigh in since you had been looking for a car in the vaguely recent past. I don't think the problem was safety, IIRC Hyundai has always rated high in that, and the Elantra is neck-and-neck with the Fit crash-rating wise. It might be repair record (even if the warranty covers it, it sucks if the car is in the shop all the time); I'll check it out. Between my sister and our history with Hondas, it will probably end up being a Fit. I'm mostly looking at the Elantra just to keep options open.

[kater-kat.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried the Fit, but the last 10 years with my Civic has created a good bit of Honda loyalty in me. I'm casually looking too, and a friend recommended the Fit highly, from her experience with one.

[willowisp.livejournal.com]

Likewise -- the only cars we've owned since being married were a Honda Civic and, after that was totalled, a Honda Accord. We love us our Hondas, but I wanted to keep the options open.

[clubjuggler.livejournal.com]

I've been looking at the Honda Fit myself, mainly because of it's ability to carry a string bass. If you can, however, you might want to hold off on buying it until the end of the year since Honda is supposed to be coming out with a hybrid version of the Fit then (apparently for only about $2000 more than the non-hybrid version). I haven't test driven it yet, but I'm planning on looking this weekend. I'm not actually planning on buying until hopefully next year though, but I'm trying to figure what I want now in case my Subaru (with 262,000 miles on it!) gives out on my unexpectedly.

[willowisp.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately we need to give the Fit hybrid a miss for two reasons -- not wanting to try a first-generation car, and Andy doesn't want me to lose the momentum I picked up in college.