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WORD COUNT
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MAY 20, 2009
THE HONDA FIT TELLS US ABOUT AMERICA – by William A. Collins
Healthy
mileage?
Cargo
fine?
You can
look,
A long,
long time.
My ancient
Subaru wagon finally died last winter. Rats! What to do? It got great
mileage, carried lots of stuff, and had a 4-wheel drive button for the
deep snow. Naturally, they stopped producing it in 1994. Probably wasn’t
making enough money. Since then Subaru has gone exclusively to all-wheel
drive with its poorer gas efficiency.
Where to
turn? The same place everyone else turns, of course. Google. The
Environmental Protection Agency site it led me to quickly informed me
that pickings were slim. Last summer’s gas spike had jolted us drivers,
but not U.S. auto manufacturers. They developed new priorities (like
bailouts) of their own – not ours – as well as a great reluctance to
give up SUVs and minivans with their juicy profit margins. Leave those
small efficient cars to the foreigners.
Lord knows
that strategy had worked like a charm for decades. Tens of billions in
advertising and pseudo-research have convinced us that we need big cars
for convenience and for the protection of our beloved families. America
has bought that pitch hook, line, and sinker, much to the amazement of
other countries. A visit to Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa finds
predominantly small cars. Don’t those people care about convenience and
their precious relatives?!
Google
made plain that no American makers had anything small enough to satisfy
environmentalists, and among scarce competitive imports, the Honda Fit
was clearly the best…um…Fit. Pretty good cargo space and very good
mileage. Unfortunately, there’s a stupid lip inside the tailgate so you
can’t just slide heavy stuff out. Society retrogresses.
So I
bought one, waiting seven weeks for the boat to come in. Back in
January, people were still traumatized by the recent gas spike and were
gobbling up those little sippers. Now it’s different. Folks have
forgotten, and even little cars are piling up on the lot. Like gas
wasn’t going to zoom again in our lifetime.
And a note
here about Ford. For years, it earned plaudits by producing the Escort,
an efficient compact model with a wagon option. Then not so long ago it
retired the Escort, replacing it with the Focus, also rather well
regarded by Google, by owners, and by dealers. So naturally, a couple
years ago they discontinued the wagon option, much to buyers’ and
dealers’ dismay. If you want a Ford to carry cargo now, buy an Explorer!
Our
personal savior, the Fit, gets its great mileage (35 mpg - 40 mpg for
me) by using a tiny 1.5-liter engine and by being made of tissue paper.
Such low power is a problem for many Americans. We like to zip around
town, not normally a feature of a 1.5 motor. The solution? Gear it down
so you’re already in fifth gear before you reach the corner. This makes
it peppy at low speeds, but winds up that poor little engine on the
highway as though it were going airborne. Once the American market
becomes truly serious about conservation, Honda will hopefully add a
sixth gear, as some pricier makers already do.
The car
also has plenty of standard features that I don’t want. There’s the air
conditioning, power windows, tire pressure alert, oil age meter, fancy
keys, and enough stuff to fill a 325-page owners manual. All for only
$15,000!
You might
ask whether you should buy this baby in lieu of a hybrid. If it had that
sixth gear, definitely. As it is, the hybrid still gets better mileage,
is pricier, and requires a lot more of Mother Nature’s resources to
manufacture. However, it doesn’t yet come as a wagon. The best answer
probably is to hang in for a while if you can. New models are trickling
toward the dealerships even now. The Chinese are allegedly preparing a
low-gizmo number to undersell everything on the market today. That would
be fitting competition for Detroit, which seeks to cure its ills by
selling us behemoths and doodads. Let’s all head down to the dock and
wait impatiently.
--
Columnist
William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor
of Norwalk, Connecticut. A photo of Bill Collins is available
CLICK HERE
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