Most significant changes: The Honda Sensing suite of safety and driver assistance tech no longer is offered for the LX and Sport; manual transmission for the EX is dropped
Price change: Up $125 for all trim levels except the LX, which is up $25
On sale: Now
Which should you buy, 2019 or 2020? 2019. The Fit is virtually unchanged, so go for a deal. If the lower price LX or Sport trim level is on your radar, you can be safer in a 2019 because the Honda Sensing safety suite option has been dropped for 2020. You can also get a 2019 EX with a manual shifter.
The 2020 Honda Fit subcompact hatch is on sale now, bringing with it with a $25 price bump for the base LX and a $125 increase for other trim levels. It also leaves behind the optional Honda Sensing suite of safety technology for lower trim levels and drops the six-speed manual transmission choice for the upper-level EX model.
Related: Next Honda Fit TBD for USA, But Here’s 4 Cool Things About It
You still can have a stick for 2020 in the base LX and Sport versions — most 2019 Fit EX buyers probably opted for the automatic anyway. And Honda Sensing had been available only on Fits with the continuously variable automatic.
More puzzling is dropping advanced safety tech as an option for the LX and Sport. It remains standard — as it was for 2019 — for the EX and EX-L trim levels and includes forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection as well as adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and lane keep assist. It was a $1,000 option for the cheaper trims, but maybe budget buyers balked. The move runs counter to the trend of making essential safety tech such as automatic emergency braking available, if not standard, on the way to meeting an industrywide promise to make it universally standard by 2022.
Otherwise, the 2020 carries on virtually the same as the updated Fit that rolled out for 2018 with freshened styling, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and Honda Sensing offered for all trim levels. And the 2020 for the U.S. is not the new-generation Fit subcompact hatch unveiled in Tokyo in October; that’s destined for global markets but not yet confirmed for the U.S. The Fit hatch has been overshadowed here by the HR-V subcompact SUV that shares its platform but gets a lot more love from U.S. buyers.
In pricing, the 2020 LX is up $25 from 2019 thanks to an increase in the destination fee to $955; it starts at $17,145 with the manual, while the CVT adds $800. The higher trim levels are each up $125 from 2019: The 2020 Sport starts at $18,555 with the manual and $19,355 with the CVT. The automatic-only EX starts at $20,015 and EX-L at $21,575.
All Fits continue to be powered by a 130-horsepower, 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine. EPA ratings for 2020 are the same as 2019 at 29/36/31 mpg city/highway/combined for the manual LX, 33/40/36 mpg for the LX with the CVT and 31/36/33 mpg for the Sport, EX and EX-L with the CVT.
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