Honda Fit vs Ford Fiesta Part I

When I heard about the Ford Fiesta I was very excited. Ford slipped it into its line-up by moving the Focus up in price a bit from its initial offerings, but it makes sense they'd want to add a sub-compact to their range. It's true that most consumers are not looking for small cars and that it's hard to convince an American to want something of that size but I'll bet oil prices start going up as soon as the economy has recovered and then the Fiesta will be in a really good position. For now it's competing with all the other sub-compacts (Versa, Fit, Aveo, Rio). As someone who will be replacing their 65 mph oil leak, I mean my car, in a year or two I wanted to compare the Fit to the Fiesta.

At first glance they are very similar. Horsepower and size they are almost identical. And for me looking for a car, horsepower and mpg are probably my primary concerns.

	Fit	Fiesta
HP	117	120
Torque	106	112
Length	161.6	160.1
Width	66.7	66.8
MPG	27/33	29/38
Head room (front)	40.4	39.1
Leg room (front)	41.3	42.2
Shoulder room (front)	52.7	52.7
Hip room (front)	51.5	49

Despite similar interior room and exterior size the Fiesta comes out ahead on the mpg. This could be because it's a generation newer (2011 Fiesta vs 2010 Fit). It might be we'll see Honda try to play catch-up and improve their mileage in a year or two the same way the 2010 Camaro outdid the older Mustang on a few things. Now it looks like Ford is releasing their 2011 Mustang with these things running the other way; the Mustang sporting slightly better mpg. I'm sure in the next release of the Camaro, rumored to be 2012, we'll see Chevy trying to catch up again.

So this difference might be temporary until Honda makes much of the same design choices that are already in the Fiesta. But right now, on mpg, there's a clear winner. Tune in next time for comparing that all important car feature: its looks.