A Passion for the Insight

[Eithieus]

I think the first gen Insights are the most awesome cars. I respect them and they take care of me. I have a few silver models, but I REALLY wanted a citrus Insight. Just because. Because I think they are such a remarkable car. Perhaps you can say I collect them. I've kept my eye out for a citrus that was in good shape and I hoped for lower miles. I was also trying to find this for a good price. The other week I found one that I thought was a possibility in California for $6000. However, after I called and talked with the owner, it just didn't seem like the right one and it was really over what I wanted to spend.

It was only about two or three days after that when I was clicking around and checking out the Internet, when I came across a posting in Vancouver, BC for a 2000 Insight for 3000. Interested, I checked out the ad and was pleased to find a CITRUS in good shape and 89000 miles! My jaw dropped. It had been just listed a few hours before that evening. There was no number with the listing, so I shot off an email inquiring and begging for the Insight. When I didn't hear anything from the seller in a few hours, I sent a second email explaining a little more of how desperate I was. The following morning I received an email from the seller explaining that she had lots of inquiries and had already scheduled an appointment for later that day for someone to come and look at it there at their business. My heart sank! That's my car! She still listed her name and number, so I gave her a call and did some serious negotiating begging. I even offered to pay $300 more if she would hold the car for me and explained how much it would mean to me. Tried to play some heart strings! She said the car was a company car and was stored in a basement garage. It just had a new battery in 2010 and a new clutch this month. They were the original owners. It sounded perfect! She finally said that her boss would allow bids to take place. The interested buyer would be allowed to make an offer and then she would give us a call back. We assumed we would be bidding with the other buyer.

Then came the decision of how much we would pay. We spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon trying to decide. We waffled from 6500 to 5500 as our top bid. When the seller called back around 1:30 she said that her boss was accepting a sealed bid. The high bidder gets the car. There was pain in my chest upon hearing this! Thankfully it was limited to just us and the other interested party. It looks like this car was going to give me a fight and wont be so easy after all. We were told to call back before 3 with our bid.

What stress! What if I bid 6500 and the other guy's bid was 4k? I could spend way to much, or just not enough if I try to save some money. This was worse than trying to figure out our top high bid! We were torn between wanting the car so badly and trying to stay with what we wanted to pay. Finally, I just called again and tried to work some more heart strings! I mean, negotiating. I told her that I had four little kids and a wife that wanted to keep the car in budget. I explained some of the history of my love relationship with the car. I wanted to bid to the moon! Her description of the car made me want to salivate! The emptiness of desperation and fear of losing the hunt for the citrus welled up in me. "Can you be easy on the pocket? Help a man out?". I started to offer my high bid which was way higher than I wanted to pay...way higher...did I say way higher? Well, I stumbled and I asked if I could just bid $700 over the other offer. Whatever it was. She laughed at my desperation and understood just how badly I wanted the car. She assured me that she would talk to her boss and see what she could do for us. This was even more stressful! I couldn't do anything but pace and sweat. Thankfully the wait was 15 minutes or so when she called back. She said "Congratulations, you have the high bid. The car is yours." There was much hooting and hollering, thanking the Lord, and my wife making signs to ask how much money did we just agree to pay! What if the guy wanted it more and bid something obscene? The seller continues on to say that she hoped I would be really happy about this and that the price was good for us. She states that $700 over would make our bid $3200 and the other interested man had pointed out a couple small parking lot marks so she would take off $200 and sell it to us for $3000! I was so shocked and my wife was so floored and overjoyed that she was on the floor. I couldn't believe it! The other interested buyer had actually under bid the seller for a bid of $2500!! I was in a mild state of shock! No kidding! It was like I was in a dream! And I stayed like that for at least 20 minutes after talking to her. I kept walking around saying that "I couldn't believe it!"

So began the calls to the border and customs to find the required paperwork and what not. The car needed to pass an emissions test to get across the border. That's no trouble with the car being a hybrid so I wasn't worried about that. Off to get our birth certificates since we have no passports. Thankfully we had all the kids' because we were all taking a road trip! Packed up overnight, we headed for the border early the next morning.
We arrived in Vancouver the next afternoon and we were shocked yet again at just how the Insight looked. It wasn't show room condition, but heck it was right up there.

Off we went for Canadian paper work for a trip permit and insurance. Once that was all done, we headed off to the border. I was a bit stunned when I was turned away at the border after doing a car inspection. The car had no paper work or sticker showing it complied with federal vehicle motor safety standards. It had a Canadian sticker, but nothing for DOT in USA. It does have the EPA sticker. So back to Canada we go with some papers that the border officers gave me with numbers to call the manufacturer to get the information needed. All the numbers were BOGUS. Disconnected. NIIICE. By the time we got the right numbers, they were all closed for the weekend. We decided to stay in a hotel for the weekend and make a mini vacation out of it. Come Monday morning, we called the numbers and talked with Honda of Canada. They said the letter of conformity the border control needed usually takes weeks to write up and process before mailing out. He said he could push it through and fax it, but he was unsure if a fax would work and recommended original. We wanted to try, but Honda told us it would take 48 hours to FAX it!! The delay was disappointing, but not defeating. We had a place to store the Insight until we got the paper work in the mail, so we headed back home to wait. Here we are now, waiting for the paper work with our beautiful citrus in Canada.
By the way, for people who are wanting to import a car into the US from Canada, you need to have documentation from the manufacturer showing the car passes EPA and FVMSS requirements. You use the VIN to do this. And you wont be forced to take a vacation in Canada!! However, I would do it again in a second.

Part II will continue upon arriving home with our newest family member parked here. Hope you enjoyed the slightly lengthy, but great story.
Mike and Sarah

[Eli]

Wow! That's amazing! Congratulations!

I can only hope something like that happens when we find our Citrus.

Can't wait to see her when I get home. Amazing deal! Super jealous.

Edit: Hope you don't mind, but I edited the formatting of your post a bit so the wall of text didn't discourage people from reading such a great story.

[Eithieus]

Sorry it was so long, but I really wanted to share it. It was an amazing price especially in seeking the citrus and an awesome experience. I'm sorry about the formating and I don't mind at all that you helped me out with the post. I'm still a bit shocked.
You need to move out this way in Columbia county and we can have a gathering every weekend.
Mike

[dls1981dustin]

Wow, that is a great story and a great price to boot! You will have to post some pics of it. What you you Insight owners do with multiple Insights to keep the batterys up to "snuff" with out degrading? Grid chargers?? I would imagine it would take a pretty consious effort to drive 3-5 Insight enough to keep the batterys in good shape?

[timny1984]

WOW!


that's pretty much all I can say. Wow... Great story. Well if you two owners meet up for a gathering, you'll have over half the amount of cars between the two of you that were at the last meeting you went to Eli. That's pretty crazy.

Congrats on one of the best deals I've heard of.


Tim

ps Wow... haha

[UK_MJN]

Wow!

Just looked at the Photo Gallery and that's a very good looking example - well done.

Shame you guys [in the US/CA] didn't get the green seats though!

[gilbertguy]

That business obviously had no idea what they really had! You basically stole that car from them, congrats!

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Originally Posted by UK_MJN

Wow!

Just looked at the Photo Gallery and that's a very good looking example - well done.

Shame you guys didn't get the green seats though!

The only pair of green seats in North America were in my old Green Machine and they were imported from the UK. All US and CA cars have black seats.

[bamamarc-77]

congrats, that's a great story......when one of my kids gets my insight I'm gonna search for a citrus one as well.

[jimrm]

Congratulations Mike!! Anything goes when making a deal for an Insight. Any other car and it wouldn't be worth that much effort. How did you manage to cross the border without a passport, passcard or enhance drivers license? From what I have been reading, you can cross into Canada with a birth certificate and driver's license, but cannot return. Curious because we are planning a trip to Alaska by Insight next summer.