Joined
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9 Posts
Hi everyone,
I just discovered the Insight this morning (via your phenomenal site) and thanks to IC.net have been utterly unproductive at work all day! I am bewitched and have spent most of the day trolling your forums answering almost all of my (very many) questions.
The only remaining nagger that I haven't seemed to have found addressed anywhere (and I think like I have performed a pretty comprehensive search+scan...) is about a batteryless Insight.
I'm a 25-year-old IT professional so I'm not exactly rolling in it yet. The Insight appeals to every instinct I have; it's simple and purposeful, minimalist, and most importantly it's high-tech edge on the world.
That said, an Insight living in a dealership does very little good to me. They're 30K with tax in Canada, which coincidentally is roughly my net annual salary. (The only thing worse than our 14% sales tax is our up to 49% income tax... but that's another story...)
Anyway until now I've looked at SMART cars (available here in Canada but too minimalist to be an only car,) Echo Hatchbacks (not "techy" enough for me, plus being in IT encourages celibacy enough as it is,) and TDI VW's (apparently the door handles fall off if you look at them sideways, then the VeeDub warranty department calls it wear-and-tear and you pay $1500...)
The Insight, on the other hand, fits the bill almost perfectly. And while all of it's amazing attributes that are so well documented here, there are two exceptions to its' amazingness that I can see: price and "true" Honda-style longevity.
To get around price I can buy used; great. But replacing the battery for a couple of grand every 80-120k miles leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I take ritual care of machines, I drive very slowly in anything with 4 wheels, and enduring the initial price of a Honda will only make sense to me if I get 300 000+ mostly worry-free miles out of it. Having to think about wearing out a battery every time I touch the gas or regen would drive the obsessive-compulsive in me bonkers.
Plus I live in a climate and topography that will wreak havoc on a battery -- I've had to thaw out radiators filled with -40 antifreeze more than once. I also spend my fun time in the mountains, which means climbing from sea-level to 4000 feet in 2 hours, then going from pass-to-valley-to-pass until any battery that's trying to push actually returns to the individual elemental states from whence its' ancestors were wrought.
So the perfect car for me is an Insight, minus IMA. Gutless suits me fine, 50MPG suits me fine, and knowing I won't have to think about it for a decade would be the only incentive that would ever push me into parting with up to 20 large.
Can it be done? I think that the first model-year Insights must be toasting their packs and either pissing off their owners or getting traded in for peanuts right about now. Can I pick up a used, higher-mileage Insight where the pack is on the fritz, strip all the weighty IMA detritus, and have a 1600lb, never-quit, 1L motor, aluminum, set-it-and-forget-it Honda?
Or are all the Insightisti tracing my IP to my house and gathering up the pitchforks?
Thanks for any advice or direction to previous posts.
Brian[/i]
I just discovered the Insight this morning (via your phenomenal site) and thanks to IC.net have been utterly unproductive at work all day! I am bewitched and have spent most of the day trolling your forums answering almost all of my (very many) questions.
The only remaining nagger that I haven't seemed to have found addressed anywhere (and I think like I have performed a pretty comprehensive search+scan...) is about a batteryless Insight.
I'm a 25-year-old IT professional so I'm not exactly rolling in it yet. The Insight appeals to every instinct I have; it's simple and purposeful, minimalist, and most importantly it's high-tech edge on the world.
That said, an Insight living in a dealership does very little good to me. They're 30K with tax in Canada, which coincidentally is roughly my net annual salary. (The only thing worse than our 14% sales tax is our up to 49% income tax... but that's another story...)
Anyway until now I've looked at SMART cars (available here in Canada but too minimalist to be an only car,) Echo Hatchbacks (not "techy" enough for me, plus being in IT encourages celibacy enough as it is,) and TDI VW's (apparently the door handles fall off if you look at them sideways, then the VeeDub warranty department calls it wear-and-tear and you pay $1500...)
The Insight, on the other hand, fits the bill almost perfectly. And while all of it's amazing attributes that are so well documented here, there are two exceptions to its' amazingness that I can see: price and "true" Honda-style longevity.
To get around price I can buy used; great. But replacing the battery for a couple of grand every 80-120k miles leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I take ritual care of machines, I drive very slowly in anything with 4 wheels, and enduring the initial price of a Honda will only make sense to me if I get 300 000+ mostly worry-free miles out of it. Having to think about wearing out a battery every time I touch the gas or regen would drive the obsessive-compulsive in me bonkers.
Plus I live in a climate and topography that will wreak havoc on a battery -- I've had to thaw out radiators filled with -40 antifreeze more than once. I also spend my fun time in the mountains, which means climbing from sea-level to 4000 feet in 2 hours, then going from pass-to-valley-to-pass until any battery that's trying to push actually returns to the individual elemental states from whence its' ancestors were wrought.
So the perfect car for me is an Insight, minus IMA. Gutless suits me fine, 50MPG suits me fine, and knowing I won't have to think about it for a decade would be the only incentive that would ever push me into parting with up to 20 large.
Can it be done? I think that the first model-year Insights must be toasting their packs and either pissing off their owners or getting traded in for peanuts right about now. Can I pick up a used, higher-mileage Insight where the pack is on the fritz, strip all the weighty IMA detritus, and have a 1600lb, never-quit, 1L motor, aluminum, set-it-and-forget-it Honda?
Or are all the Insightisti tracing my IP to my house and gathering up the pitchforks?
Thanks for any advice or direction to previous posts.
Brian[/i]