I did no dissing! The Versa's interior room is only a little less than the Fit, though its backseat has a few inches more legroom; it weighs about 250lbs more (safety features, I 'spect), and its base model does come with more than the Fit's base model.
However, the facet of sitting in a high-chair to drive is a deal killer for me, even after I lowered the seat as much as I could. That's partly because I've spent so many years driving low-slung sportscars that I'm uncomfortable feeling so 'perched' while driving, but also because the posture is different. How to put this in pixels, with no picture? With my knee bent at nearly 90' angle, this puts my foot on the gas pedal at nearly vertical when I'm in-the-city and not lead-footing it. That means my ankle-bones are ultra-compressed, because of the angle of the foot to lower leg, and since I have next to no cartilage in pretty much all my joints, ultra-compression is actually a painful thing; holding my foot that way for too long will actually make my foot start to fall asleep, because the compression is preventing blood from circulating. Ergo, I've learned to avoid positions/situations where I've got to ultra-compress any part of me: squatting on my ankles, having my forearms pressed to upper arms, having my legs against my torso, or having my hands or feet at an angle that's not as close to normal/straight as usual. That's a lot of what makes a longer laying-down-sort-of posture in a car much more comfortable for me, too.
This isn't to say it's not also true of the Honda; it's just that the Honda's seat isn't quite so high, so it's not quite so exaggerated an issue, but it's still there. I came back from the highway-road test with the news that if we get the car, I will never give an unqualified 'yes' because (short of major internal modifications) it will never truly be comfortable to drive, not at any great distances. It will never be a road-trip car for me (except as passenger) because I just can't sit with my shin nearly perpendicular to the ground and the flat of my foot almost vertical as well for more than fifteen minutes at a time.
(I should note: the veedub's gas pedal can trigger this if I'm riding the pedal very softly, because that means having the foot raised over the pedal. Otherwise, the veedub has far more resistance on the pedal, and it's also a downward motion, not a forward motion. Just slightest difference in engineering, not to mention the fact that in the veedub you literally do have to have a leadfoot to get the same amount of oomph as you'd get from another car: the pedals are tighter, heavier, and require some serious stomping -- which means that on top of the leg position, my foot is also farther from vertical in the veedub just to achieve a base speed, while the Honda and Nissan don't require that stompage so my foot remains vertical for much longer.)
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Date: 30 Jul 2010 11:34 pm (UTC)However, the facet of sitting in a high-chair to drive is a deal killer for me, even after I lowered the seat as much as I could. That's partly because I've spent so many years driving low-slung sportscars that I'm uncomfortable feeling so 'perched' while driving, but also because the posture is different. How to put this in pixels, with no picture? With my knee bent at nearly 90' angle, this puts my foot on the gas pedal at nearly vertical when I'm in-the-city and not lead-footing it. That means my ankle-bones are ultra-compressed, because of the angle of the foot to lower leg, and since I have next to no cartilage in pretty much all my joints, ultra-compression is actually a painful thing; holding my foot that way for too long will actually make my foot start to fall asleep, because the compression is preventing blood from circulating. Ergo, I've learned to avoid positions/situations where I've got to ultra-compress any part of me: squatting on my ankles, having my forearms pressed to upper arms, having my legs against my torso, or having my hands or feet at an angle that's not as close to normal/straight as usual. That's a lot of what makes a longer laying-down-sort-of posture in a car much more comfortable for me, too.
This isn't to say it's not also true of the Honda; it's just that the Honda's seat isn't quite so high, so it's not quite so exaggerated an issue, but it's still there. I came back from the highway-road test with the news that if we get the car, I will never give an unqualified 'yes' because (short of major internal modifications) it will never truly be comfortable to drive, not at any great distances. It will never be a road-trip car for me (except as passenger) because I just can't sit with my shin nearly perpendicular to the ground and the flat of my foot almost vertical as well for more than fifteen minutes at a time.
(I should note: the veedub's gas pedal can trigger this if I'm riding the pedal very softly, because that means having the foot raised over the pedal. Otherwise, the veedub has far more resistance on the pedal, and it's also a downward motion, not a forward motion. Just slightest difference in engineering, not to mention the fact that in the veedub you literally do have to have a leadfoot to get the same amount of oomph as you'd get from another car: the pedals are tighter, heavier, and require some serious stomping -- which means that on top of the leg position, my foot is also farther from vertical in the veedub just to achieve a base speed, while the Honda and Nissan don't require that stompage so my foot remains vertical for much longer.)