Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.
So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).
It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.
And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.
So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.
Because the Honda has two motors, one that runs on petrol and one that runs on batteries, it is more expensive to make than a car that has one. But since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota’s Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief.
There’s more. Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons. This one, however, feels as if it’s been made from steel so thin, you could read through it. And the seats, finished in pleblon, are designed specifically, it seems, to ruin your skeleton. This is hairy-shirted eco-ism at its very worst.
Please click to read the rest of the article at the Times Online
Don’t get me wrong, I like new technology, and improved fuel economy too, but I just had to show this auto review excerpt from the Sunday Times because, well, it’s just so darn funny.
In the US market, only three 4-seat cars — all of them hybrids — get 35 mpg or better:
Toyota Prius starts at $21,000
Honda Insight starts at $19,800
Ford Fusion hybrid starts at $27,995
Somewhere, Honda and Toyota lobbyists are smiling.
In case you had any glimmer of doubt, you can now be certain that Ford, GM and Chrysler will not exist as independent companies in 2016.
Wow!
That was a biblical slap down!
The Boy of John
Car and driver reaches a different conclusion.
Among other things:
WOW!, I’m going to have to test drive one. Can it really be this bad?
A CVT type of transmission is very hard to get used to, but really this is the type of car that will be sold with the new mileage standards.
Get used to it? Never!
FYI Link to Times Online doesn’t seem to work.
Very funny Mr. Clarkson. Probably not far from the truth, either. I was (am) amazed at just how SMALL the Insight is. The Fit looks bigger!
It’s really a shame for the internal combustion engine to be associated with such a Biblically terrible car.
REPLY: link fixed, thanks- A
Looks like Honda made a Pinto.
When comparing prices, I think that Toyota and Honda are subsidizing prices to sell the dang things. Ford is probably closer to what theirs is worth, not that it matters.
Jeremy Clarkson is always a good read and always funny.
Why we can’t get the 55 mpg diesel BMW in the US is beyond me. Fragile eco-weenie crapbox or Beemer? No contest.
I have been driving a Toyota 2008 Prius for a work car for 1.5 years, 18000 miles, In mostly city driving in Phoenix, AZ, I get 48-50 miles per gallon. It seats 4 people comfortably, has room behind the rear seat for 4 sets of golf clubs, and stays comfortably cool in out 110 degree temperatures. I have no problems with this car. It is really a great auto for city driving as well as 2 hour drives to Tucson on occasion, and gets over 50 miles per gallon at 75 miles per hour to Tucson and back.
My wife and I own an older Honda Insight – the lightweight all aluminum 2 seater. It gets fantastic mileage (around 90 mpg (canadian gallons)). The last time we put gas in the thing was sometime in March, and it’s down to half a tank now. Maybe not the peppiest car on the block, but in city driving it’s great, and runs for pennies a mile. The new Insight is loads heavier and basically seems like a re-fitted civic in hybrid trappings. The hybrid system is not as clever as the older Insight’s was either, and from the sound of Clarkson’s review, not all that smooth. That’s a shame.
You have to take Clarkson with a grain of salt. I’ve been driving a car with a CVT for some time now (a Saturn ION Quad Coupe) and it’s very nimble, responsive, and gets excellent highway mileage (in the 40 mpg range). Clarkson is used to driving fast cars with manual transmissions (he even hates flap-paddle shifting) so any kind of automatic transmission is going to feel slushy and distant to him.
Don’t get me wrong – I love watching Mr. Clarkson, but he is prone to exaggeration for the sake of comic effect. 🙂
I’ve not driven the new Insight — we looked at one but decided to pass on it for one simple reason — there are no options for a sunroof or leather seats. Also, the mileage isn’t that great – my non-hybrid Saturn is within talking distance of it’s fuel economy and I’m a heavy-footed driver, so there didn’t seem to be any urgent need to switch cars at this point in time. There was no essential “selling feature”.
We’ll give the new Prius a look when it comes out – it has better mileage, and is available with leather and sunroof. A sunroof can save you from running the air conditioning on all but the hottest days, saving even more money.
Clarkson knows his cars. He isnt very good at predicting how well cars will sell the states though. I wouldnt be suprised if this pile of rubbish sells great in the US.
I can state one example, all the men of top gear loved the Monaro, named it the best muscle car money can buy. GM brought it to the US as the rebadged Pontiac GTO. The car only lasted 3 years here in the states and had misrable sales.
They are great as used cars though, im aiming one myself….who knows this could be the last generation of V8 cars if the green hysteria continues. They wont rest till we are all driving eco-boxes that get double the MPG of the average car, yet make about 1/4th the HP.
That’s the funniest car review I’ve ever read! Classic…
I actually drive Honda’s first iteration of the Insight (the two-seater) and love it. It’s a manual transmission, however, and I suspect that a lot of the problems they have with the newer version relates to the CVT. In my opinion, most if not all of the fuel economy gains that politicians and environmentalists want Detroit to acheive could be made if consumers would just be willing to learn to drive a stick shift and drive up the demand for manual transmissions. When I first bought my car, Honda offered a choice between an automatic or manual transmission, and even the CVT which is noticably more efficient than a standard automatic couldn’t match the fuel economy of the manual transmission. Even after driving the car about 100,000 miles I can still get about 75-80 mpg on a level freeway on a warm, dry day. (Cold and rainy weather drop it down to about 65 and a stiff headwind reallly can cut into the mpg.)
23 MPH!? You can go even faster on a bicycle.
Actually I would think a bicycle with a small quick-charging capacitor that runs a motor assist that runs on electricity from the capacitor that gets it from pedeling would be a better idea, everyone would have strong legs too. Let’s also add a CO2 pumper so we pump plant food into the atmosphere.
Mr Clarkson has long been able to turn a fine phrase, but I don’t know where he got “ham slicer” from, the things are always called “bacon slicers”.
When I was growing up the little shop in the next village had a bacon slicer, a fine thing finished in red enamel with a handle the operator had to wind furiously. It was used for four different products: raw smoked bacon, raw unsmoked bacon (always known as “green” bacon in those days), cooked luncheon meat (a high-fat cooked sausage-type product made predominantly from pig skin from the snout, ear and scrotal region) and corned beef. No one gave a moment’s thought to any risk from slicing raw bacon and then cooked meat on the same slicer and no one ever became ill as a result. Oh how times have changed.
Pretty color.
It should be written that every member of Congress, every member of their staff, every member of the office of the Presidency, and the entire federal government must never ride or drive any car that does not get the CAFE standard.
Just think if Obama used armored clown cars, they could pack a dozen into one transporter, using egg crate packaging.
I just read a report, the hybrids get nowhere near the advertised MPG in real world use.
And while we are at it, make sure no member of government has any house of over oh say 800 square feet. And yes, they get only one.
Try and repeal f=ma and see where you get.
Toyota’s making money on the Prius, though I’m not sure how long it will take them to pay off the research investment.
The switch to low-sulfate diesel in the US is going to help diesel makers meet US emissions standards.
Remember though that in terms of CO2 output burning a gallon of diesel emits about 20% more than burning a gallon of gasoline, due to the higher density of hydrocarbons in diesel.
Might depend on your budget …
The Times is on the buy American train, even if the “American” is actually built in Mexico or Canada.
That read like one of Yatzee’s game reviews.
It has an indicator that shows leaves growing as you ease off the gas? Isn’t that backwards? Leaves *eat* CO2, so they should grow when you put your foot through the floor, shouldn’t they?
Last Saturday I solved the problem of what car to buy, I bought a 2000 Astro Van. Seats plenty, loads of room and I have recycled on a major scale. My guess is that I will not ever buy a new car again. Certainly at $5 per gallon it would take me forever to recover the cost of a $20,000 micro car. Maybe if $10 is achieved by our government I will rebuild my 1971 Alfa Romeo GTV.
Hmm, my 2005 Toyota Matrix gets about 35 highway. It’s a manual.
Classic Clarkson reviewing a car he does like and every car person on this blog would love to drive once (or more!) around the track, no matter how poor the gas mileage:
http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Ford-GT-Top-Gear-Road-and_174274.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2484644722318196723
Enjoy
Absolutely hilarious review! Gotta test drive one just to see how close the analogies come to reality.