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
While i REALLY liked driving the third gen ones, ive always wondered why in the hell they made the first gear so effing short.
Unless going up a decent hill, itl start off fine in second gear. So just leave the old 5sp from the gen 2 car.
Pity we never got a fit si here, slap the civic turbo l15 in it and watch it scooot.
The Fit depreciation curve is insane. I have a 2008 Fit Sport that I got almost 12 years ago. With almost 160k miles on the clock now, I could sell it for more today than I paid for it back then.
I bought my ’11 Fit Sport in Celestial Blue for $8500 in late 2018. Put 35k miles on it in the time I had it and two years ago it was absolutely BLASTED by half dollar size hail. I was driving into it on a 45mph road at the time and I’m surprised the windshield survived. Front, and driver’s side looked like someone attacked it with a hammer.
5 years and 35k miles later, insurance totaled it out at $8300, wild!
Kept it, two years and 2 more massive hail storms later and it’s so dimpled I bet I get better MPG from it. It’s the only car I’ve ever owned that seems to love being driven as hard as possible on the road/track/autocross and never has a problem.
Answer: Most Americans do not buy NEW cars. Boomers and wealthy people do. NORMAL working class people generally like small cars, but they are buying used cars to save money. Used Honda Civics/Fits hold their value real well if they don’t have 8 trillion miles and are well cared for, because lots of people like NICE small cars.
People want them, but not nearly enough and not as many as those who want larger cars, even just more profitable compacts (that are better value for the dollar 99/100 times), yet the low margins of sub compacts demand even greater sales volumes that there just isn’t enough demand to meet. This is also the very best of subcompacts in very rare condition and the people that want them really want them. While there were never enough of those to sustain production, it’s a larger demand then the few available on the used market, a market of uncertain availability, which contributes to the high values of what are essentially unicorn versions. You could almost make the same headline statement about Miatas and the GRZ or almost any car with a manual transmission and the reasons would be nearly the same, which is why those vehicles’ resale values are high even if their new sales numbers are not.
Yup. And most of the working class is buying used cars. New cars are for the boomers/wealthy and or financially irresponsible 😛
That last one is the sad and true answer: With a previous article here stating that Americans have 1.37trillion in car debt, it’s easy to see that the under 50 crowd I see driving around in new and shiny cars are all heavily into debt and likely have those terrible 84month loans. We have 6 vehicles in our driveway for 4 drivers in our household. Zero loans. All of them are used, were purchased used and will be sold or traded to buy other vehicles. It’s hard to do, but I actually traded 2 vehicles privately and it was fun. Traded a 1956 Lincoln for a 2002 Tacoma. Traded a 2017 Rav4 for a 2015 Silverado.
I partially blame the enthusiast mindset for that. Decades of articles telling people ‘don’t buy that cheap new Fit, buy a lightly depreciated used Civic instead!’ seem to have worked, and since no one was buying cheap Fits Honda decided to simply discontinue them.
When Ford and Toyota come up with a successful small truck or car, they price it off the market, then claim no one wants it.
What genius took the ranger off the market?
Someone bought that car and forgot about it with that mileage, lmfao! Whenever I see these peanut hatchbacks, I think of putting like 1000hp in older Forza games on a Chevy Sonic. I think people have done it in real life by now, but c’mon – ya can’t hate on a reliable little car this.