Along with a mild facelift across the board, the cute little Honda Fit is getting a new Sport trim for 2018. Don’t let the name fool you, though: the “sportiness” is strictly cosmetic.
The new Fit Sport will have new front and rear fascias along with an aero kit, a rear diffuser, a chrome exhaust tip, and black 16-inch rims. It looks pretty good, but it’s nothing spectacularly different than the non-sport trim. Hopefully, the difference is more dramatic in person than it is in the pictures.
Power comes from the same 130-horsepower naturally-aspirated 1.5-liter i-VTEC four-cylinder that’s under the hood of every other third-gen Honda Fit in North America. It’s a good little engine that, quite frankly, is perfect for the Fit—but it sure would be nice to see a boost in performance for the Sport model. The Fit Sport will be available with a six-speed manual transmission or a CVT.
We know Honda has a turbocharged 1.5 in their arsenal that’s available in the Civic and the CR-V, so why wouldn’t they drop it in a sporty Fit? A 1.5 turbo-four lashed to a famously fun Honda manual transmission in a subcompact could give the hot hatch darling Ford Fiesta ST a serious run for its money.
Other updates to the 2018 Fit include Honda Sensing availability on all trims. This includes adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assist, and a bunch of other safety tech. That’s right: we’re about to live in a world where you can get a base model Honda subcompact with adaptive cruise control. We’ll also get a new seven-inch infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Expect to see the refreshed 2018 Honda Fit in showrooms later this year.