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Old 04-25-2018, 07:10 AM   #9 (permalink)
Ecky
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I would pass on the Civic hybrids. The HCH1 is a good car and only has marginally higher battery failure rates than the G1 Insight, but did not have the Insight's 10 year battery warranty. As such, most G1 Insights got new batteries between 2008 and 2016, whereas most Civic hybrids are still using their original batteries - or in junkyards due to failed ones. If you buy one, expect in the near future to need a new $1500-2500 battery. The CVT in these can realistically be expected to fail between 150k and 225k miles, so it sounds like that one is also in the last quartile of its transmission's life.

Early model year Insights may be getting close to end of life on their second batteries though (depending on the climate they've been driven in), so that's a consideration as well. Mine is still quite healthy and if taken car of, I might get 5+ more years out of it, but batteries in warmer climates age far more quickly. There is a project over on IC right now where several members are working on a drop-in lithium solution, but I would not buy the car on the expectation they'll ever get it working. Another member is using Prius cells, but this is a DIY solution and not remotely drop-in. That said, the car will run reliably on gasoline alone. Acceleration is poor unless you wring the engine out (which it will happily do for half a million miles), but you'll still get better fuel economy than any other car on the road. A bigger issue is that when the battery gets weak, you get a CEL which is an automatic fail on inspection in most states.

As far as reliability goes, the manual transmissions reliably develop a downshift grind into 2nd gear, but otherwise you can expect hundreds of thousands of trouble-free miles from the drivetrain. The engines run practically forever. The automatics typically fail between 150k and 225k, much like on the HCH - avoid Honda CVTs unless you don't mind replacing it as your first real wear item to fail. One annoying bit is that some car parts are simply not available anymore, even through Honda, and others are available only through Honda. Need engine mounts? Expect to pay $100+ for each of them.

I'm not intimately familiar with Priuses. I know both generations commonly burn a lot of oil as the miles add up, but this wouldn't bother me too much. I believe Honda builds more reliable and more efficient engines, but considering engines almost always outlast the rest of the car anymore, it's a bit of a moot point. I can say for certain that the Prius orbital gearbox is vastly more reliable than any CVT made by anyone. An orbital gearbox like those in the Volt and Prius are probably the only automatics I'd remotely consider after 200k miles, whereas there are a handful of examples of running G1 Insight manuals on the factory engine and transmission with 5-700,000 miles.

Speaking of the Volt, I would definitely add the it to your list.
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