Thank you Brian, I appreciate the counter point. I do find that what I will and won't put up with in a car can be very different than from the next person, maybe I would drive it and like it. That would leave their low value as a mystery then, unless NA truly does hate subcompacts.
This still just idle talk, but do you do any mild work on it, like brakes or what not? How is it to work on?
In this day and age of low fuel prices, small cars are not popular. Ford is giving up on the Fiesta. smart gave up on gasoline powered models leaving only the electric-drive for the few remaining dealers to sell (in tiny numbers). Add that to FCA's reputation (whether they deserve it or not) and you end up with something that is in low demand.
There's a flipside to the low resale value that you can take advantage of: Buy a used one! I didn't, and bought new, for a number of reasons. (1) I get paid mileage, this car will earn its keep several times over. By the time I'm done with it, it will have 200,000+ km on it and will be worth within a rounding error of nothing. (2) Warranty. (3) I bought a new 2015 that had been sitting in the showroom for a year and a half for thousands off MSRP because apparently nobody except me wants a car loaded with every option but with a manual transmission. (4) At the time, they had a 0% financing deal, so even though I didn't need to finance it, a free loan is as good as thousands more off MSRP.
Mine is under warranty so oil changes have been dealer thus far. The only things I've done myself have been swapping between winter and summer wheels.
There are some quirks, there are some known faults. (There is no car out there which is free of any such thing.) From the internet forums: The LEDs that illuminate the license plate burn out frequently. Mine have been fine. This is a "who cares" fault that you fix when it's time to sell the car and it needs to be certified. On the older ones the LEDs were built into the tailgate handle. Apparently they are now separate parts but I haven't had this happen. The pin that the outside door handle pivots on corrodes then seizes and then the little bracket breaks. Solution: squirt that pin with Fluid Film every few months (you can see it and spray it with lubrication by holding the door handle open, it's at the front where the handle pivots).
The Honda Fit is certainly the more practical car, they are huge inside (better than the Fiesta - which also has a cramped back seat that won't fold flat). The quirk with those - with manual transmission - is the gearing. They are geared short. The 6-speed manual didn't fix this ... for some bizarre reason, they didn't make 6th a tall highway cruising gear ... same ratio as the old too-short 5th. 80 mph / 130 km/h is 4000 rpm on those. The engine is in your ear. The Fiat does 3000 rpm at 130 km/h and the Fit would be like me driving around in 4th on the highway. The Fit with automatic is not like this - they're geared tall ... but it's a soul-sucking CVT. No thanks.
I have a constraint in that van + clearance to back doors + car + room to open the hatch + some clearance for maneuvering has to be less than the length of the driveway. The Fit is too big! It's nearly two feet longer than the Fiat.
I considered the Mini, but Mini = BMW = break my wallet. BMW's direct-injection fuel pumps are failure-prone. And they're expensive. The cheapest possible Mini with the base 3 cylinder engine and no options was about the same as my loaded Fiat ...
