The Honda Fit, which is known outside North America as the Jazz, is a little car with a big job on its hands. As fuel prices remain low on that side of the Atlantic, small cars are struggling to find homes as buyers continue to take advantage and increasingly choose crossovers, trucks, SUVs and muscle cars. Honda isn't giving up on its smallest car though, and it's just released details of the refreshed 2018 Fit's updated styling, new Sport trim, and its enhanced safety features.
It's probably not too unfair to suggest Honda has been seen as a brand mostly for older buyers for some considerable time now, but the Japanese auto giant is definitely trying to change that view. And the 2018 Fit is right at the forefront of its mission to attract younger buyers to the brand.
The Fit gets substantially refreshed front and rear fascias for 2018, with the front offering a much sportier look thanks to a horizontally layered, two-piece chrome and piano black grille with a larger, more prominent "H" in the center. The headlights are now more integrated and sophisticated, and they blend nicely into the side edges of the upper fascia's wing to deliver a look that's now more unified, yet also more aggressive than it was before. The front bumper features chrome accents and a full-width splitter, as well as fog light pods that are now decidedly more angular.
The rear of the 2018 Fit also follows the sporty theme, and that philosophy even continues to a new Sport trim level that sits in the range between the LX and EX models. Although it really does push the boat out with sporty styling upgrades such as exclusive black finish 16-inch alloys and aero form features, there appears to be nothing extra in terms of performance upgrades so far.
One area that is upgraded for the new model year is safety, with the 2018 Fit now becoming available with the Honda Safety Suite of advanced safety and driver assistive technologies.
Jeff Conrad, the senior vice president of Honda's American Automobile Division says of the car, "With sporty new styling and additional feature content, the 2018 Honda Fit ups the ante with new styling and sophistication not typically found in the subcompact segment. Fit has always represented a great value for subcompact customers and the addition of available Honda Sensing® to its fun-to-drive performance and unmatched versatility will keep the Honda Fit as the industry's benchmark subcompact."
Although no official release date has been confirmed as yet, Honda has noted that it will launch next month.
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