Should I buy it? Year 2,000, 233K, $4500.

luxy · 11-14-2011, 01:00 PM

My husband and I need to buy a car and are looking for one with good gas mileage - we are just learning about the Insight first gen, sounds like an amazing car but we don't know much about them.

Available in Chicago is the following:

"2000 Honda Insight, 233k, $4500, but still works, including the A/C and heat. Comes with 2 sets of tires, with a set of snow tires on it right now, and a decent set of summer tires. I will not talk price until you have seen the car. Thanks."

Details: The car's original owner is from Atlanta, mileage is mainly from a few cross-country trips. Trans and battery has been replaced.

Is this a good deal? Blue book list is $4,060 for the best condition. What kind of potential repair issues are we looking at?

Thanks for your responses.

Eli · 11-14-2011, 01:10 PM

Hmm.

I say it's a fair deal. Mileage may be slightly high, but I wouldn't worry about that too much as long as it's been decently taken care of. Insight #2 has almost 450,000 miles on it and still runs great.

The battery and transmission being replaced are HUGE plusses, see if you can find more information about those aspects. If the battery is less than 3 years old and the transmission work has been done in the last 50,000 miles, I would buy it without much hesitation.

The transmission is the one achilles heel of the Insight. Don't let that scare you though - even if you factor in a transmission replacement, the Insight is still cheaper to operate than any other car, especially if you drive a lot. It sounds like you wouldn't have to worry about that with this specimen, though.

The battery and transmission are the two most expensive failure points. Most other things are cheap and/or non-issues.

Balboa · 11-14-2011, 04:52 PM

You won't know what you'll spend on a car until you start driving it regularly.

The one thing that will be more expensive than a transmission replacement is an IMA replacement which would run $1300 - $2000 or $3000-4000 for a new one at a dealer.

As long as the IMA battery has been replaced in the last 50,000 miles I'm sure it will be ok for a very long time.

Leeper · 11-14-2011, 05:40 PM

Chicago = salted roads so keep that in mind. Any car from a salted region has less resales than those that don't for obvious reasons. The Insight is aluminum body but that doesn't pertain to the nuts, bolts, electrical connections, etc that are greatly effected by corrosion.

Disregard what Balboa stated about the batteries - even a newer battery only a couple months old can be damaged by non-usage then driving it afterwards. the newer the better but that is not a fair measure of the condition.

"Should you buy it"? - you should buy whatever you want. It is YOUR decision not anyone else... make up your own mind based on your criteria

randerson0248 · 11-14-2011, 05:47 PM

The battery was most likely replaced before 150,000 miles under warranty. So,
it is now 80,000+ miles later. So, the replacement battery is not that much of a plus, IMO. Unless you have specific info on when the battery was replaced.

Eli · 11-14-2011, 05:59 PM

Yep.. need more details to know whether it's a truly good buy. Another important question to ask is how much the car has been driven recently.

Find out when the battery and transmission was replaced and we'll know more. Just based on those two facts though, it's likely a better buy than a specimen where those two things are question marks.

luxy · 11-14-2011, 06:08 PM

We decided to pass, although we are now IN LOVE with the Insight. We’ve bought two cars with high mileage and both died after a year or two (a Subaru and a Sprinter that wasn’t cheap to begin with). Even though this might be the one car that won’t do that to us, we just can’t take the risk financially or psychologically. So it’s up for grabs:

2000 Honda Insight Hybrid

The current owner has only had the car for a year and it was in Atlanta previously. For the past year, it's only been driven short distances. I don't know when the trans and battery were replaced.

Eli · 11-14-2011, 06:14 PM

Used cars are such a funny thing.. There is always what I call "Used Car Gamble".

It's entirely possible that you find a 100k mile Insight that needs a lot of work.

These are very robust automobiles overall, and they tend to be driven by people who have long distance commutes, which is the reason for so many high miles specimens.

Really, don't be afraid of the high miles. What matters in the case of the Insight is how old the battery is, and how much the car has been driven. Distance doesn't matter so much as long as it was driven every day. The transmission being replaced is a huge, huge plus in my book.

Without any knowledge of this, the transmission is a crapshot; but the odds are definitely in your favor if it has ever been replaced in a car's life.

The engine is bulletproof. Very, very few engine failures or problems. About the only thing that goes wrong with the engine are O2 sensors and EGR valves.

How much are you looking to spend? They're difficult, though not impossible to find in the 5k range with low miles.

luxy · 11-14-2011, 06:21 PM

I know - it's such a gamble! 450,000 miles on your Insight is amazing. We've just had bad luck in the past and we're still shell-shocked from our Sprinter dying.

5K is our budget. We'll keep looking.

Would like to know if anyone here does buy the car how it turns out.

Eli · 11-14-2011, 06:29 PM

I actually stopped driving Insight #1, the 160k mile car in favor of Insight #3 which has 227,000 miles now - it's in better overall condition.

The 450k mile car is my fiancee's daily driver. When we bought it with 440,000 miles on the clock, we didn't hesitate to drive it 800 miles home. It continues to impress me. We managed 92.4MPG over a 400 mile road trip a few months back.

What are you expecting out of the Insight?