Well were seriously considering the Honda Fit, Rated evry very highly and hondas historically last forever and holde reslae better than most others.. this is my wife's car not mine i have the areo-crx, it turns in 54mpg in the summer..
MY wife is replacing the minivan thats rusting on the unibody, sure we could go get a used car, however i want that $4500 of my tax dollars back if i can get it.
AS for the Hybrid, we could easly afford the payments on even a fully loaded prius, but we don't want to if it doesn't make sense.. Most average drivers are getting 40+ mpg with the base model fit with out trying , my wife can hyper-mile ut not like i can.. she was making my colorado truck get a respectable well above EPA 28mpg, with the scangauge, I could get a round trip of 34.5 mpg..
SO the van we have will need to be replaced.. and in the next year, we have the opportunity to drive a new fit of the lot for about 10k.. THe fits are really nice, very well appointed cars even in the base model trim. and they easily blow away the EPA estimates even in the hands of non hyper-milers.
I checked and Honda does the 8 year battery warrantee also, the added cost of the hybrid would be about $5500 The Insite would be what we would look at for a hybrid.. and we are going to look at them..
The $4500 cash for clunkers program has many rules to qualify, first the traded in vehicle has to be 18mpg or less epa average, has to be newer than 1984 model year.. we meet those qualifications, next the car needs to be registered and in your name for 1 year and insured for that year... my dad missed the qualifications by 2 months on his jeep.. he was going to get a new hybrid.. to get the full $4500 we need to get a car that has a epa average thats 10mpg more than the traded vehicle.. so that puts it at 28mpg for us.. most sub compacts easily qualify.
The one thing we really need in the new car is versitility of a mini van.. sure a sub compact wont do exactly that, but the fit seems to be pretty utilitarian. I can only hope the Insight shares those trates since its based ont he same platform.
Initially wer were thinking go for the lowest cost to use this program but now were thinking, go for the best investment we can get..
We have time to decide this as we wont do this till Aug 1st, but were getting our ducks in a row and nailing down exactly what we want now so we can pounce on it when the time comes.
Were going to look at the honda dealer this weekend and some others.. hopefully do some decent longer test drives.. Ill be sure to report back those findings.. wonder if they would mind jacking in the scan gauge for the test drive
