No one can deny the subcompact scene's popularity explosion as of late. The carmakers surely recognized this. Look at Nissan with its Versa, Toyota with the Yaris and its Scion brand and, at the forefront of the subcompact scene, the Honda Fit. Fits are popping up everywhere, many of which are being modified. Some go so far as to dub the Fit the next generation tuners' new Civic. Despite all of this, there are still those die-hard Honda heads who would doubt Honda's newest child's success, excluding it from their tuner fraternities. Such die-hards have deemed the Fit "girly cars," deriving clever acronyms conveying as much-"Female In Transit" comes to mind. The fact that its overseas counterpart is named the Jazz doesn't help much either. In the naysayers' eyes, the words Fit and Jazz just don't seem to represent that masculine persona. Perhaps it's ignorance but it should seem somewhat obvious that there's more to the Fit than simply a name. But alas, the small percentage of haters has not deterred major tuners such as J's Racing and HKS from extending their support unto the GD3 chassis. It has also not discouraged Marie Lowe and B.J. Jaraba from embarking on their very own project Fit.
The Fit was purchased as a daily for Marie since B.J. had his hands full finishing up his righthand drive BB4 Prelude. Like many new car owners, the first thing this couple did upon returning from the dealership was research parts availability in order to make their Fit their own. In today's day and age individuality is paramount, whether it's a race car buildup or just a simple sticker install. B.J., who was once an owner of an award winning 240SX show car, searched the web forums, saw what his peers were doing and realized just how much potential the GD3 chassis had. It certainly doesn't hurt to work at one of San Diego's biggest tuner shops either. "I've been over at Pann Auto for a couple years now," B.J. says, "so I had the inside track on getting exactly what we wanted for our Fit."
Before the car even had its Cali plates, the couple began work by installing a pair of gray Sparco Torino seats and 16x7 SSR competition wheels. The two knew how trifling it was to roll on stock suspension so B.J. made a call to Design Motorsports Engineering (DME) in nearby City of Industry and offered up the Fit for suspension prototyping duties. The meeting of minds resulted in DME's 24-way adjustable coilover suspension. Marie and B.J.'s Fit is currently the only one with this suspension and plans to release the coilovers are yet to be determined. Anyone from San Diego knows that the only way to roll down south is to roll slammed and that's exactly how this Fit sits. A DME front strut bar and Progress front antiroll bar help further the Fit's rigidity. The Fit's exterior was next on the list to receive attention.