What is the Future of the Honda Insight 1?

[RobertSmalls]

I just bought a 1g Insight, and I'm impressed with parts availability. Honda had an oil pan in their warehouse, with next-day availabilty. Salvage parts are hard to come by, but they're out there.

Many parts are interchangable with the Civic or S2000. Other parts are easy enough to repair (like the battery pack). 1-800-Radiator happens to be located in my hometown, and they have an Insight radiator in their catalog. I presume it's made-to-order.

As far as technicians to work on the Insight, I don't see that as being a problem. The hybrid components need to be serviced by someone who fully understands hybrids, but everything else on the car should already be familiar to the average greasemonkey or gearhead.

[Chuck.]

If I can get ahead on saving money, it would not be beyond me to seek out a body shop that would make a customized "bajoosed" front and rear bumpers. Already, with MIMA I can generally get 100mpg hypermiling at 45-50mph on the freeway at temperatures of 80F or higher. Concerning MIMA, I rarely use the manual Assist, although that's why everybody buys it. The FAS switch is what I use constantly on MIMA - allowing me to shut the engine off and coast with the engine off as safely as a Prius. With the aeromods I suggested, I'd hope to change the Cd from .25 to .18-.20 and get 100mpg in near-freezing temperatures - 100mpg above 60mph - and push the upper limit of lean burn from 65mph to 70 or 75.

The only thing in the near future I can see outdoing a 5-speed Insight on long highway cruises is the Aptera or a Craig Vetter motorcycle with aeromods - not bad company.

[discovery]

I think those cars will live forever. Just look on the road, there is no day without seeing accord from the '80. What does that tell you, people love them, reliable fun to drive. Even used Honda N360, N600 from the '70 are still bought for over $2K/$3K on ebay.com. Just wait till the oil price goes up and the market for 1 gen will go back to 15K easy.

[Old Mechanic]

My 02 Insight has 52k miles. The battery warranty is good until August 2013 (10 years from the in service date). A replacement battery is $1900 from the dealer. Mine is a CVT. Just got a new cat under the 8-80 warranty, which is good until August 2011.

My 94 Civic VX has 48k original miles. I bought it wrecked with 27,492 miles in March 2008. It sat in an air conditioned building for 13 years, used by the Insurance company to train adjusters. Drove it on the original tires until it had 42 k miles. The tires were 15 years old when I replaced them.

I like the VX for the highway, and the Insight for local driving, but either can do both jobs just fine.

There are some trim parts on the VX that are no longer available from the dealer, but I would think that will not happen with the Insight for quite some time, since they made them until 2006 model year.

The battery on mine is getting weak at 8.5 years age. I doubt it will make it for almost 4 more.

I just have a backup car, in case something like the windshield gets broken. I understand they are a bear to replace.

regards
Mech