I'm REALLY enjoying [the Insight].

Back in March, I decided to treat myself to a new car for my birthday. It was a Friday, and was raining, so I was just in 'looking mode'. We went from dealer to dealer, just checking out the styles, and prices. We ended up at the Honda Dealership where we were looking at the top of the line Accord. I always liked Honda's, and knew of their reliability, but they didn't really have anything on the lot I liked color/optional equipment-wise. My ex-wife however (who went along for the ride) fell in love with the dark green one, but wanted to look at the color book to see if she liked any of the other colors better. While looking through the big book, I noticed the Insight, and having never heard of it, I asked the salesman what it was. After the words 'Electric Hybrid', I didn't really hear what else he said. I asked if he had one on the lot, he said they had one left, and we went out to see it. Once I saw the digital dash, and the size of the car, I fell in love. (I'm not a big-car fan). I took it out, and on the way back told the salesman to write it up. While we were waiting for them to start the paperwork, and check my credit, my ex-wife was still thinking about coming back to buy the Accord. I said awww, what the hell, and we bought that one too.

The next day, I took it to the local beer hall where I hang out, and the entire place emptied out to see it. One of the bartenders called it the 'Sleeper Car' (after a car in the Woody Allen movie of the same name). At first the guys kinda snickered at the car calling it ugly and dopey looking, until 2 things happened.

1: I told them the gas mileage,
2: every woman in the place wanted to go for a ride.

To this day, I get a kick out of the way heads turn when I drive by. I don't actually drive that much, and I have a lead foot so my general mileage is around 40 mpg. My all-time best is 55 mpg on a 200 mile (each way) trip to Anaheim (traffic is brutal in So Cal).

One interesting thing I've noticed. They don't list it in Kelly's BlueBook, so just for snicks, I checked out all the auto-auctions on the web to see what a used one was going for. To my surprise, the range is from $18,000 to $25,000. I never thought of the car as an investment, but how often does a car INCREASE in value over its first year? :)

The ONLY problem I've ever had with it, is for a while there during the summer, I would go out to start the car and the battery would be totally dead. I took it back to the dealership, and they had it for a week trying to find out what the problem was. They couldn't find it and flew in an engineer from Japan who was also stumped. I went over the conditions when it seemed to happen with them, and we brainstormed that it was something to do with heat as it never seemed to happen on the rare overcast day. They had been keeping it in the shop all this time, so they charged it up to full, and left it out in the sun for a day. Sure enough the battery was dead again. It turned out to be a door switch that apparently shorted when heated up. They replaced the switch, and all was right with the world.

I've had it for 8 months, there's only around 2000 miles on it, and I've been to the gas station maybe 4 times since I bought it.

George W