Road Tests: Long-Term Test

Video highlights of this vehicle

Somehow, Senior Editor Christian "SB" Wardlaw missed a month-long turn at bat in our long-term Honda Insight thus far; and with just half a year left in the test, he signed up for a stint behind the wheel of the snazzy gas-electric hybrid.

"I don't know why staffers, myself included, have shunned the Insight," Wardlaw wrote in the logbook. "This car is genuinely fun to drive, thanks to responsive steering, strong brakes and its feather-light curb weight. Even the skinny little tires are OK, when they aren't hunting grooves in the pavement like a hound on the trail of a felon."

Wardlaw has driven the Insight in the past, but for a shorter duration. During that trial, he tried to maximize fuel economy to see just how high the numbers would rise. This go-around, he says, he drove the hell out of the car to see how the battery pack would hold up and to get a sense for what the worst fuel economy someone might reasonably expect would be.

He reported that he never completely drained the battery and that his worst fuel economy number of 47.4 miles per gallon is still superior to what anyone could expect from any other vehicle on the market driven under the same conditions. Additionally, Wardlaw was surprised by how speedy the Insight was when wound out.

"Thanks to the tall gearing and prodigious torque off the line, you can get launched quickly and really wind this puppy up," he said. More than once, he was able to surprise fellow motorists with the Insight's acceptable limits of performance, and the car traversed the two mountain ranges between his home and Edmunds.com's world headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif., without losing ground, maintaining a high cruising speed.

As far as design goes, Wardlaw commented, "The Insight is a rare example of function over form. The car's design is dictated by necessity, not style." As a result, a family friend remarked one day, "What are you driving now, a space pod?" No, the Insight is not conventionally beautiful. Teenage boys aren't hanging posters of them in their bedrooms or drawing them in their notebooks during Algebra class, dreaming of the day they can afford one. Yet, it is a thing of beauty, an engineering tour de force.

"Talk about sweating the details," wrote Wardlaw. "The Insight is designed for maximum efficiency. There's no gingerbread; no extraneous, unnecessary detailing. Inside and out, the car exudes simplicity — ironic, given the groundbreaking and rather complicated gas-electric drivetrain and aluminum construction."

Wardlaw found the surprisingly wide two-seater cabin to be comfortable and user-friendly. The seats, which initially felt like they were going to support a body as impressively as the bleachers at the local high school track, turned out to be quite comfortable during long commutes. Instrumentation and controls are easy to find and understand, with the exception of the power window switches, which are mounted on the dashboard to the left of the steering column. Wardlaw wished for a driver seat-height adjuster. "I feel like I'm sitting on the floor of this car, peering up over the dash and door panels to see out." Another gripe centered on the operation of the windshield washer system, which doesn't activate the wipers when the washer is squirted. The wipers must be turned on separately.

Notably, he didn't complain about the view rearward through the steeply raked, split-glass tailgate. Possibly, this was because he had the cargo hatch crammed with stuff while driving. "The hatch swallowed my golf clubs without problem, and I used it to carry two large suitcases, a backpack, a carry-on and two laptops. Impressive."

Still, with gas prices settled [and, if reports are true, equivalent to what folks (albeit wealthy folks) paid in 1922 after inflation is taken into consideration], Wardlaw doesn't think he'd pop $20,000 for a Honda Insight. "I wouldn't buy this car. Americans continue to pay a pittance for gas, no matter that they believe otherwise. And at just 1,700 pounds, it wouldn't take much to crush the Insight in a crash. If fuel economy were my priority in a practical commuter, I'd take the Volkswagen Golf TDI, even though it doesn't burn as cleanly. It has a seat-height adjuster, Germanic handling characteristics, seating for four real people and superior hatchback utility, for a lower price. Kudos to Honda for exploring the gas-electric hybrid technology and aluminum construction, though."

Indeed.

Current Odometer: 24,243
Best Fuel Economy: 61.1 mpg
Worst Fuel Economy: 47.4 mpg
Average Fuel Economy (over the life of the vehicle): 51.4 mpg
Body Repair Costs: None
Maintenance Costs: None
Problems: None