Well, according to Temple Of VTEC, these are what the next Fit/Jazz looks like

And this one that I particularly like… VERY MUCH!

Well, these pictures are “supposed” to be taken straight from Honda’s very own brand new catalogue because the car will be unveiled sometimes next month… Or at the very least, early 4Q. There doesn’t seem any credibility, but who in this crazy world would somebody go out on a limb to create a fake physical catalogue and post it around the net? Well… In this day of age, everybody would.

But I believe that this is the new Fit, if I’m mistaken, what can you do anyway 🙂

Okay, let’s get dirty on this baby. First of all, there will be three classes, G, L and RS with differing trim levels especially for G and L, and a peppy engine for the RS. The G and L will be powered by an interesting 1.3L engine that produces 100ps, and I’ll divulge later on what makes it interesting. The RS will be Honda most powerfull city car with an astounding 120ps engine, the most powerful engine on its class available today in Japan. What makes the 1.3L engine interesting is that, from the torque graph, it is very apparent that this is in fact an i-DSI engine, the same engine that powers the last generation Fit. The i-DSI engine is quite unique because it uses two sparkplugs in one chamber, making the air fuel mixture inside the engine chamber exploded twice in short order. This have the effect of spontaneously ignites the mixture and any left over gasses into a complete burn, giving up almost complete combustion and thus, instant power. The result? Maximum torque achieved as early as 2800 RPM, very diesel like. However, like any early torque engines, usually peak power (torque x engine rotation) came up short… Well, just like diesel engines, therefore the old Fit/Jazz 1.3L engine only produces about 86-88ps of power. So how can the new engine which is based off the old engine gets an extra 12ps of boost? Simple, Honda pull out a VTEC. VTEC is the magic of automotive industry, Honda unveils it as one of automotive wonder in the world back in 1989 (Integra anybody?) as a way to introduce an engine that revs hard giving high power, but when driven at steady pace, it returns a low consumption of fuel… Err, I think you can find more about VTEC on the net, I’m not good at writing long and indepth technical stuff.

The new engine is endowed with VTEC head, so the dual spark produce high torque at low RPM, but when you hit the gas, the variable cam kicks into high gear and revs the engine more, producing more power that way. To tell you the truth, I think Honda is pulling our leg here… I mean, they are the variable cam master, they invented VTEC, why can’t Honda introduce this engine back on the last gen Fit? This is crazy I tell you, fuel consumption is unchanged from last generation but power gone up exponentially.

The 120ps engine is… Well, not surprised here. From the overlapping graph of the going engine, it seems that Honda re-chip the current generation 1.5L VTEC and put up an “i” acronym in front of the VTEC… LAME… I may be wrong though. People speculates that i-VTEC on the Fit RS is in fact a 1.5L version of the R-series engine that can be found on the Civic, Stream and CR-V. If that’s the case, Honda is very much sandbagging here, as one can roughly estimates a 1.5L version of the R-series could go 125ps easy, considering that 1.8L Civic produces 140ps.

Ow, almost forgot, the yellow Fit that I like, it has a skyroof option installed, just like Airwave or Civic Euro… Damn, if not for the tropical weather I have here in my country, that yellow Fit will be my dream car.

I may be wrong, I may be right, drop a line or two and I’ll update as necessary.