First Car: Corolla or Fit

Hi skating fans,

You guys are my internet family and I need some advice from adults. I am choosing between a 2014 Toyota Corolla or waiting for a 2015 Honda Fit. I grew up in southern California but am staying in upstate New York to finish graduate school.

Thank you,
icellist

New Corolla looks great. But Toyota has too many recalled lately due to safety issues.

I thought the Toyota recall was blown way out of proportion only because of its reliability reputation. Many other car brands have been recalled but never got that negative impact. I trust Toyota but this will be the new Honda in the family.

really? Honda Fit has been around in Asia for decade. I got the 2nd model in 2007. Love all the backseat folding. Got so much space.

I'd go Corolla. I think it'll handle upstate NY winters better than the Fit.

Of course, I've never driven a Fit and I haven't driven Corolla in a while, either. But I would definitely look at reviews on how they each handle in upstate winters.

Can't comment on the Fit, but I have a Corolla, and it's handled Canadian winters just fine. I agree that the recall was blown out of proportion. I never noticed anything, never had any issues.

I can't comment on the Fit, either, but I my Corolla (my 2nd one, we passed on the first Corolla to our niece, who had many good years with it too).

Corolla, my insurance agent said it's one of the cheapest cars to maintain. A family friend has 1 with 150k plus miles and it has had minimal issues with it. I have a 2010 & its awesome and I have had no problems. The only Honda my family has ever owned is a motorcycle so I can't speak to their vehicles reliability or maintenance.

While I don't know if this matters to you, the majority of corollas are made in Mississippi.

I've had both!! Corollas are great cars, great all-around, very dependable, good gas mileage. We got a 2009 Fit (because, as someone posted upthread, they didn't start making them in the US until 2007) and we love it, too. We got it rather than another Corolla (my 1991 Corolla finally died in 2008 after 17 awesome years [well, we decided the repairs weren't worth the money we'd spend]) because of the seat-folding/space. Fit has also been dependable. You can buy a Fit with a "traction control" feature; not sure what the Corolla has these days.

The only drawback of the Fit is it has (at least, it did as of 2009) a somewhat unusual tire size. I'm in rural Indiana, 45 minutes from a city, and when we've had tire problems (yay, I drove over a huge screw once) it's meant we had to wait for several days before the new tire arrived in our town (faster, obviously, if we went the 45 min up to the dealership, but we didn't want to do that on the spare tire). This is something you might check. (I remember my 91 Corolla had sort of an odd tire size, too, but given the ubiquity of Corollas these days I doubt that's still the case.)

I have had few problems with either car in snow (was in Chicagoland 1998-2005 and Indiana since then, so plenty of snow and ice to deal with) but my feeling about driving in snow/ice is that it has more to do with the driver than the car. I think your decision will have more to do with what you want in a car.