I drove the first gen insight!!!!!

[Cobb]

JimE let me take his car for a spin today. Its a fairly new one, 5 speed, 80 or so thousand miles with the MD2K grid charger/balancer.

Overall I was rather impressed. The engine has a lot of low end torque right off idle, the shifter was short, tight and compact with short throws. All the petals were easy to push and the gas petal felt like it had 2 feet of travel.

The brakes were sharp and you could not feel it when the engine started or was running. You only noticed when it cut off in auto stop.

I didnt try to get supreme fuel economy, just see what lean burn felt like and how the car drove.

It was really nice and I can see people driving 75+mph. I wished the crz felt like this.

Lean burn was a neat experience. For one, you didnt have to be in top gear to enter this. It also doesnt show 100+ mpg on the mpg read out either, like when I was in 4th gear doing 50mph.

You had to wait at least a second with light pressure for it to pop into this mode. It was similar to entering ev mode on the i2, however at least according to his C&C display when you are in this mode, it doesnt mean your mpg show register 100+mpg. .

After this experience, I got some more driving in my car to do and in sport mode with the manual gear selector. I think the reason cvt owners of the first gen cant get lean burn is because the cvt lugs the engine down too much.





Sent from my Autoguide iPod touch app

[cheesie]

i didnt know the first insight came with manual tranny
when i bought my I2 the seller said there was no manual tranny hybrids

was it faster than the I2?

[samwichse]

I1, HCH1, and CRZ all have a manual.

Also, the CVT simply doesn't have the lean burn facility.

[Willie Williford]

Cheesie;
Cobb was test driving a G1 Insight not a G2.

Willie