What is the skinny on the Honduh Insight

[Joe Bob]

Looking for a commuter car for one of my daughters. 2006, 101K Gas hybrid. Seems really clean. Asking 6500 but he may be negotiable.

[HardDrive]

What is that doing for you that a used Civic/Corolla/Taurus can't do?

[porsche4life]

Yup... Civic or Corolla will be a better bet. Less crap to break.

[Joe Bob]

For me....nada. The kid wants to be green....so "hybrid".....the fact that 40mpg can be obtained with 100% gas isn't something that she can assimilate.....

To me, idiot proof, price and maintenance are the issues.

[HardDrive]

Let her be green on someone elses dime.

BTW, you can tell her that my sister and her husband both drove Priuses for years in LA. Then one day, they decided to keep track and find out what sort of real world mileage they were getting. They were sorely disappointed. My brother has moved on to a Subaru. Sister will follow suit when her lease is up.

[HardDrive]

Also, ask her what's going to happen to that giant lead/acid battery when it finally goes out and needs to be replaced?

[pksystems]

Buy a sticker that says HYBRID and put it on whatever you want?

Hell... they paint HYBRID in giant letters on the sides of some SUV's that I know get worse mileage then my DD.

[Bill Douglas]

Ugly as sin.





Corolla






.

[VincentVega]

I looked into one a while ago. Batteries are getting old so factor that in. There are some DIY options to replace but nothing to take lightly as it's a significant amount of juice.

As mentioned above, I worked the #'s and unless you drive the thing non stop a civic makes more $$ sense.

[gtc]

My mom has an '01 (?) Insight. It's actually been a great car. Not sure how many miles on it now, but it has to be close to 150k. They expected the batteries to go out a while ago, but they are still ok. Not quite as good as new, but good nonetheless. I think a charge controller was replaced under warranty or recall a while back.
They are all aluminum and were made in the same factory as the NSX was... pretty cool cars, all things considered. At ~1850lbs they are very light and zippy. This may sound silly, but they kinda feel like a 914... you can feel that the center of gravity is super low.
Someone put a Prelude motor in one a while back, it was crazy fast and still got 45+ mpg.

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

Looking for a commuter car for one of my daughters. 2006, 101K Gas hybrid. Seems really clean. Asking 6500 but he may be negotiable.

[fastfredracing]

It would not have been that ugly of a car if they would not have done that awful rear wheel opening treatment. I know what they were trying to accomplish, but sheesh.....
A lifetime honda dealer mechanic that I used to work with has one. He says he really likes it. Has a bunch of miles on it now, and has had very few problems so far .

[porsche930dude]

my freinds 89 honda accord gets 45mpg with a carburator

[tevake]

The looks have grown on me thru the years.
Not the form I'd expect to just seat two. Is that the batts. Behind the seats?

[JavaBrewer]

IMO the skinny is that it's an ugly POS. There I said it.

[IROC]

My son has one. Not my cup of tea, but it seems to be a perfectly reasonable car. He routinely gets over 70 mpg on the interstate. He hasn't had any issues with the batteries.

One of the quirky issues with it is tire availability. They use an uncommon size of low rolling resistance tire. I'm sure there are other tires out that will fit it, but getting the ones that Honda recommends is sometimes difficult. When I was at the Honda museum in Japan earlier this year, I snapped this pic:

[creaturecat]

Every once-in-a-while, I see David Suzuki, still driving around Vancouver, in one of those things.