Pros:

• Mileage (of course)

Cons:

• Handling on rutted roads,
• dasboard display brightness (See editor's note, below)

Yes, I love my Insight. And my husband is jealous that since I have the longer commute, I get to drive it most of the time. That said, I think the Insight handles just fine during my 45 mile (one way) 65-75 mph drive to work with one exception - rutted roads. There's a couple miles of I-25 with some good sized ruts in the asphalt. I didn't notice them much in our '98 Civic, but the Insight gets tossed from side to side. I suspect that it's because with the rear wheels slightly closer together than the front, you're always driving half in and half out of the ruts. Obviously, the solution is to stay out of the ruts all together, if possible. On good roads, the ride's pretty smooth.

My only other complaint so far is the brightness (or lack thereof) of the dash displays. The LCD for the dash has five levels of brightness with the headlights off, and five different levels if the headlights are on. The maximum brightness with the headlights on is dimmer than the maximum brightness with the headlights off. This makes sense if you assume the headlights are on only when it's dark outside, but sometimes I need to have the headlights on when it's light out, and then the dash is a little dim, even when set at its maximum. The worst scenario was when I was driving out of a thunderstorm and into bright daylight. With my back to the storm, I wanted the headlights on so oncoming drivers could see me better, but because I was going West into the late afternoon sun, I needed my sunglasses on so I could see the road. The combination of sunglasses and headlights meant the dim "nighttime" dash looked completely black.

[Editor's note: Elizabeth didn't realize this at the time of writing this, but you can get full display brightness with the headlights on by pressing and holding the (+) button for a couple seconds.]

Elizabeth Knight
Lafayette, Colorado USA