2008 Honda Fit problems
NHTSA has received 280 complaints about the 2008 Honda Fit, and 20% of them involve air bags. Next are body & structure (15%) and engine (10%).
At a glance
- Complaints
- 280 filed with NHTSA
- Most reported
- Air bags 20% of complaints
- Crashes and fires
- 43 and 2
- Injuries and deaths
- 42 and 0
- Typical mileage
- 76,000 miles 201 complaints with mileage
Source: NHTSA owner complaints
Where the complaints are
Share of this model year's complaints by the part of the car involved. One complaint can name more than one part, so the shares can add up to more than 100%.
When problems show up
View the numbers
| Mileage | Complaints |
|---|---|
| 0k to 20k miles | 28 |
| 20k to 40k miles | 33 |
| 40k to 60k miles | 20 |
| 60k to 80k miles | 26 |
| 80k to 100k miles | 28 |
| 100k to 120k miles | 35 |
| 120k to 140k miles | 10 |
| 140k to 160k miles | 14 |
| 160k to 180k miles | 4 |
| 180k to 200k miles | 1 |
| 200k+ miles | 2 |
What the data shows
Of the 201 complaints that include odometer readings, half describe a problem before roughly 76,000 miles. For air bags specifically, the median reported mileage is about 80,000 miles (21 complaints with mileage).
Safety-related details: 43 complaints mention a crash; 2 complaints mention a fire; 42 injuries reported. Its complaints are more severe on average than those of 82% of model years in our database.
Looking only at complaints filed within five years of the model year (so older and newer years are comparable), the 2008 ranks 5th most-complained-about out of 13 model years of the Honda Fit with enough data (121 complaints in that window). It is also covered by 8 safety recall campaigns.
What owners wrote
A few complaints as filed, shortened and with personal details removed. The first ones are among the most serious reports for this model year; the rest are typical.
Air bags did not deploy yet I smelled the smoke from them. Air bags should have deployed due to the damage caused to my vehicle. The vehicle is a total loss. This caused injuries to myself and others. Brakes also failed to properly function.
Tl* the contact owns a 2008 honda fit. The contact stated that during idle at a stop light he was rear ended by another vehicle driving 50 MPH; which caused him to rear end another vehicle. The vehicle sustained $9000.00 worth of damage and none of the air bags deployed. The vehicle has not been inspected to determine the cause of the failure. The current and failure mileages were 11400. Updated 10/06/09. Updated 10/06/09
Power steering suddenly turned off. Steering became extremely heavy. This has happened 3 times since initial incident and now twice in the past two days (2/9/2011 and 2/10/2011). All times it has happened driving around 30-40 MPH within the first 10 minutes of driving. Stopping, turning off and on the ignition has reset the power steering in all cases. Honda dealer service department was not able to find a solution and last two incidents happened since taking car to the shop.
At 5am while headed to work, I noticed the headlights were not on, despite the switch being in the on position. There was a recall previously for the exact same issue. It appears the fix was only temporary, as the exact same issue has popped up again. Low-beams do not work, but hi-beams and foglights work.