It’s wild how the traditional subcompact car is officially dead in America. Sure, there’s the Mini hatchback and the charming electric dinghy known as the Fiat 500e, but when it comes to honest bargain-basement transportation, there are no subcompact cars left. No more Nissan Versa, no more Mitsubishi Mirage, and it’s been ages since we last saw a new Toyota Yaris or Ford Fiesta. Maybe that’s why examples of the final-generation Honda Fit have enjoyed astonishingly slow depreciation, such as this ridiculously nice example that just sold on Bring A Trailer.
It really is a shame that America will probably never see another generation of Honda Fit because it kind of was just the perfect small car. Over three iterations, this sub-Civic-sized hatchback had a strong reputation for offering the space of a small van in the footprint of a midsize refrigerator with the fuel consumption of a large scooter. Honda’s patented Magic Seat flipped and folded up and down like a circus performance so you could cram pretty much anything in the Fit. A huge yucca plant? A full kegerator setup, complete with the keg? A mid-length surfboard? Check, check, and check. The HR-V small crossover that effectively replaced the Fit wishes it were this genius, so it’s not a huge surprise that the Fit has a serious cult following today.
Admittedly, part of this is due to motorsports. From SCCA B-Spec to Gridlife’s Sundae Cup, there have been people competing wheel-to-wheel in these little hatchbacks for more than a decade. However, a big part of the Fit’s appeal is that for everyday use, there really isn’t anything that quite replaces it. It’s just so versatile for its footprint and resource needs, so it shouldn’t be surprising that nice ones still fetch respectable money.
Take this 2015 model, for example. It’s a mid-range EX trim in the fantastic shade of Mystic Yellow Pearl, which means it comes with toys like push-to-start, a seven-inch touchscreen, a sunroof, and a 180-watt six-speaker audio system. It’s a good spec, although whoever optioned it new went with the continuously variable transmission rather than the standard six-speed manual. Good for fuel economy, with a combined rating of 35 MPG, but not the best choice for engagement or acceleration.
This particular Honda Fit looks nearly new because it basically is. With a mere 1,558 miles on the clock, it’s averaged just 141.6 miles per year since it was first registered in 2015. That’s shockingly little mileage, and it really makes you wonder what sort of life it led. Was it only driven to church on Sundays? Was it a runabout for a scarcely-visited vacation home? Tell me your secrets, low-mileage Honda of the Sunshine State.
However, despite rolling on tires with 2015 date codes and only having two service entries logged in its Carfax report, this 2015 Honda Fit hammered for $18,000 on Bring A Trailer. That’s only $1,180 down from the original sticker price, provided you aren’t factoring in inflation. That’s what, $107 in depreciation per year or so? Porsche 911, eat your heart out. That being said, pulling inflation into the mix gives this thing an MSRP of $26,320 in today’s money, so sticking $19,180 into the S&P 500 and taking taxis everywhere using earned interest would’ve been a better use of the original owner’s money. Then again, you can go out right now and buy a leftover brand-new 2025 Nissan Versa for around $21,000 with a warranty, so a roughly $3,000 delta between an 11-year-old Honda subcompact and its closest modern equivalent seems rather slim.
Strangely, even with some of the work that may be needed to get this Honda subcompact in tip-top shape, like tires that don’t date back to when “Uptown Funk” sat atop the Billboard Hot 100, $18,000 is actually about fair market value. One of the closest comparable examples in the regular used car classifieds is a grey 2015 Fit EX with 19,431 miles on the clock listed for $18,995. Want an actual color? This blue 2015 Fit EX with 57,019 miles is up for sale at Carvana for $16,990. In that context, a pretty-much showroom-fresh Fit for $18,000 plus buyer’s fees doesn’t seem completely outlandish.
Happily, it sounds like the new owner of this Fit won’t be keeping it in a hermetically-sealed chamber. As the winning bidder commented, “This will be my daughter’s first car and I just got the biggest hug ever! Worth every penny all around!!!” Now that’s one heck of a first car. Something that, provided it doesn’t get binned, could still be in faithful service a decade from now.
It’s wishful thinking, but maybe elevated values of late-model subcompact cars combined with the recent decimation of U.S. emissions teeth could result in some automakers giving subcompacts another try. Probably not, but there does seem to be a market for truly affordable new cars. Why else would people be willing to pay so much for decade-old entry-level Hondas?
Top graphic image: Bring A Trailer
I love the Fit (Jazz)
But it’s the first-generation one that I love the most.
This Fit is an outlier. It’s an insanely low-mile example of an enthusiast car that’s been discontinued. In yellow. Of *course* someone is asking a basically as-new price for it. (It doesn’t mean they’ll get it, either).
Also, the phenomenon of enthusiast cars depreciating slowly or very little is pretty common. The Golf SportWagen and Golf Alltrack go for silly money, often 2/3 of their as-new MSRP or more, and doubly so if they’re 6MT cars or in a fun color. But that doesn’t mean they would be successful if Volkswagen sold them new in 2026. Likewise, the Land Cruiser J200 (2008-2021) and even older J100 (1998-2006) have glacial depreciation…but Toyota obviously didn’t think it was worthwhile to keep selling the full-size Land Cruiser here anymore, or we’d still have it.
If anything, it’s a pretty common arc. Car that used to be available and that appealed to enthusiasts suddenly *isn’t*. Combine that with the fact that the car was rare *because* it wasn’t a good seller and the status of being a well-regarded enthusiast car—which often appeal to people who put pleasure before practicality and even common sense—and you have a scenario where someone is spending a startling percentage of the MSRP, if not more, for that car when it’s a decade old.
But, again, in order for this to happen, the car has to be pretty low-volume. Which is to say that people largely don’t and didn’t want it. It’s just that the small number of people who do…really really do. And it’s why it doesn’t work for all enthusiast cars.
damn i want one now
You mention push to start as one of the features. I’ve had several ’60s cars that were push to start. Parking at the top of a hill was such a great invention.
I’ve owned a few of these myself! I had an 80s Nissan with such low compression (but consistent across the engine) I could push start it out of my driveway by opening the door, leaning one leg out and just pushing it backward a couple of times.
oooooooooooooooooooooooo yellow 😀
I’m jealous of that yellow! When I spec’d mine on the Honda website it would only paint a manual LX silver or the darker gray, not even red or blue. I went with Settle-For Silver because I wanted the stick more than I wanted a real color, even though I wanted both.
If Americans DO want small cars, why did annual sales of the Fit decline to half their peak by the time this generation bowed out? Why did Versa sales do the same?
The Fit holds value on the used market because its dead and the small contingent of people who really want one of the small numbers available is really willing to pay for it. Doesn’t mean the new car market would support a new Fit.
“That’s only $1,180 down from the original sticker price, provided you aren’t factoring in inflation”
If you want your argument and article title to be taken seriously, you probably ought to factor that in. It’s $26,500 in today’s USD, which is the price of an LX HR-V, which is selling better than the Fit ever did, which doesn’t quite mesh with the article title.
Thanks for this take Phil, thats what I was thinking as well. Context is important, and the author left a lot out.
Because they stopped advertising it once the HR-V came out, having made the stupid mistake of giving the latter its’ own body stampings rather than pulling an Impreza/Crosstrek and just made the HR-V an additional trim level of the Fit that unlocked an AWD option.
Ford essentially tried that with the Fiesta/Ecosport. Didn’t work too well but maybe that’s because it was a Fiesta.
The Impreza is a bigger size class and translated better to a small crossover. The HR-V is also a larger vehicle overall than a Fit, including wheelbase, even though it’s on the same platform. Honda still makes the Fit IIRC, they just don’t sell it in the U.S.
The EcoSport was just a lousy offering, with dowdy styling. Compared to everything else in the segment, it was visually off-putting.
While I agree in many ways, there is a very interesting portion of the market around defined options. Do OEMs make what people want? Or do they DEFINE what people? Is it both? Then how much of each? The farther you push the slider to one side vs the other, the more the argument about fault for types of cars dying changes. And I do not understand where the power sits on that slider in reality.
There are so many smaller cars that older and disabled people find are easy to get in and out of and can fit what they need. The fit is more of a secret one I suppose after a decent deal on an element is hard to find fit was slightly easier. They almost go in waves. It was the element, xb, then cube, now fit. Each one was selling for almost MSRP a decade later even with repetitively normal miles. If the economy was better that fit would have done numbers maybe 1.5 MSRP. I don’t completely understand why but it’s not just people collecting strange things. There is a good chance person that bought the probably will use it just like someone would have a new fit. Almost sad in a way.
Americans do want small cars, just in the range of a few hundred thousand per year instead of millions per year, and at prices that allow for thinner profit margins, so the automakers all decided to stop bothering
Beautiful example of an excellent car.
But current pricing is likely a matter of supply and demand.
1) relatively few people bought these when new.
2) Honda pulled them from the US market.
3) those who did purchase one continue to cherish them.
4) folks who subsequently decided that a Fit would, er, fit their needs (whether to replace one they previously owned, or because they only discovered them after being discontinued), were forced to purchase resale
5) limited initial supply + customer demand + limited examples on the resale market = limited depreciation.
I’m still salty that we didn’t get the GR Yaris over here because we shat upon the regular Yaris, in the land of Bro Dozer trucks and SUVs.
My Corolla is definitely fun, but imagine an even smaller package with the same power train and less weight, fewer doors?
On paper my Fit is worth more than what I paid for it like6 years ago. I don’t know if its 6-speed manual helps or hurts its value, but I love it and am going to keep it as long as I’m able.
Fits were great cars no doubt! How much initial maintenance will this one need if it hasn’t been serviced any more than the CarFax says?
I miss my orange Gen II Fit, if the damn thing had a little more power, I’d never of gotten rid of it. My commute involves 80mph highways and it just couldn’t accelerate at those speeds without dropping gears, which got old quick.
I don’t know why Honda never put the L-series turbo in the Fit and called it an Si, they’d have sold a ton of them. Well, at least a couple hundred to us Autopian brown-manual-wagon types.
they had an Si in Japan IIRC
Love the Fit, but they were powered, geared, and insulated very much to be in-town cars.
I’ve driven mine across the country multiple times. It’s totally fine
The Fit is an old-school econo-car running close to 4k rpm at 80 mph, which is well into its powerband. That means if it does drop a gear at that speed it’s really screaming. Most newer cars will tend to drop gears at 80 mph for passing, but that’s going from just 2.5k rpms at 80 mph.
A small-displacement turbo like the one that went into the Civic would have been nice for that car. But it would have driven the price up (a la Mini).
My partner’s roommate had their Fit towed to impound, and somebody met them to buy it once they blew its bail. I didn’t want to ask how much they got for it, but said to them “You know everybody’s super horny for Fits, right? They are a hot ticket right now.”
Because only the Honda Fit has this strong of resale in the subcompact car market.
The Fit is the exception not the rule thanks to the cargo area trickery it can do with the rear Magic seat, and the reliability is solid.
The Fit was a great car, I’ve owned 3 of them.
But the sales numbers were never super strong, and for how cheap the car was.. it never had much margin for Honda so it’s logical they cut the product if they were the best car in the segment, and they could barely sell 40-50k units a year.
Why is my 6spd/RWD ’11 BMW wagon with 55K on it worth a huge percentage of it’s original cost 15 years on even though only ~500 of them were ever sold new? Because just because a car wasn’t a big seller new, doesn’t mean there isn’t demand for that small number of them used. But not enough for the automakers to keep building them, sadly. And there are always people willing to pay big money for near delivery miles museum quality examples of just about anything, in the case of this car. It only takes two people who really want it to drive an auction to stupid numbers.
The numbers don’t lie – there is minimal demand for tiny cars in the US, and the reality is that they simply aren’t profitable. As I have said on here many, many times, footprint-based CAFE standards were the kiss of death for cheap small cars, as they were no longer needed to offset sales of profitable less-efficient cars (or trucks, as the case may really be). Price small cars such that they actually make a profit and very few people buy them in a land where gasoline is cheaper than milk.
The Honda Fit is one of the greatest automobiles that was ever mass produced. Selling my second gen manual this summer might kill me. We’ve been together since 2008
Bravo…and I agree. I intend to keep my 2015 EX for as long as I can drive.
My mother has the sedan equivalent of this car, the Honda City in Mexico, same powertrain, interiors, but sedan instead of hatchback. The car value on the used market is almost the same as MSRP, the car is so reliable, just normal wear and tear based on the awful streets of Mexico. The City reminds me of the later 90s, early 00s Honda Civic reliability and how cheap is to take care of it.
She said thats the car she is taking to her grave. I tried to convince her to replace it with a BYD but she dont want a screen or fancy features.
Had to look these up as I’m only familiar with the first generation. 10/10, no notes, would drive.
This has more to do with this specific vehicle than American afflictions for subcompants.
These GK5 Fits are valuable because nothing made by Honda or any other brand has realistically replaced it. See Honda Element as an example of this.
-Love, an ex-GK5 Fit owner.
Love, a current owner.