Early Hybrid: Insight vs. Prius vs. Civic
 

I just got some terrible news from my insurance agent: The extra cost of insuring my 1991 Metro ( $250 a month for liability only) is more than I am saving on gas so I have decided to get rid of it. The truck is more practical if I am going to be paying the same money every month. (Plus, I have another Metro to play with for a while if gas prices do go up and the economic dynamic suddenly changes.)

I have not given up on owning a fuel-efficient pizza delivery car though. My latest thought is to get an early model hybrid car to deliver in instead. Now, I do prefer a manual transmission to an automatic or a CVT simply because I find a manual transmission car easier to drive. However, I don't want to buy something that is known to be an utter and complete piece of crap either. The car will see 95% city driving so it has to take more abuse than a highway commuter. I also figure that a manual transmission would be cheaper to rebuild than a CVT should the need arise. I admit I may be wrong though and am more than willing to listen to opinions from others who have lived with these cars. Please tell me about the good, the bad and the ugly of owning one of these cars. I'm all ears!

$250/mo OMG :eek:

I pay half of that per SIX MONTHS.

Perhaps it's time for you to shop for a new insurance company...

Have you looked at the cost of buying a 1st gen Insight? I have and they are $4k+

honestabe -

Yeah, $4K+ sounds about right. I did some searching. I went to autotrader.com and did this :

- zip code = New Port Richey
- within = 200 miles
- Honda Insight
- Honda Civic
- from 1981 to 2007
- Engine = Hybrid
- Transmission = manual

I found 3 results, all 200+ miles away. Here is a Civic for $5K :

Cars for Sale: 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid in Miami, FL 33166: Sedan Details - 290923165 - AutoTrader.com

Jim-Bob -

Assuming this is in your price range, I would run the car past your insurer to see if it suffers similar cost-of-insurance pitfalls.

CarloSW2

Frank -

Maybe 20 years ago I paid $2500 per year, but that was at least full coverage.

CarloSW2

honestabe -

I went and looked at Jim-Bob's background. He's got skillzz, so I suspect he would rebuild a (much cheaper) hybrid that has been totalled.

CarloSW2

Trust me, I tried that. I went to my agent as soon as I found the bill in the mail today but to no avail. I could write a book about it but basically I need a special kind of insurance to deliver pizza with. For my 1998 Frontier the cost is right around $1,000 a year. For the Metro it is $2500 a year. The only company that will insure me is Progressive and that is despite being 37, a homeowner with decent credit and having no tickets or claims for the last 6 years. Did I mention that I do not have comp or collision either? Florida is a terrible place to buy insurance of any kind because of the hurricane threat. Sadly, they spread the cost around even to their clients which have policies that are not exposed to weather-related claims.

Whoa. I have Progressive too. What a difference. Ya know, I delivered back in my college days... never told the ins. co. anything about delivering...

Believe me, I will be running all my choices past my agent before I start shopping in earnest. Right now I need to sell off some of my other cars before I buy anything else. I am just starting the research phase right now and feel that the best way to do so with an older car is to ask people who own them and live with them every day. I don't mind a car if it tends to have problems with trim parts or a poor quality stereo. I can easily fix that. I am more worried about a tendency for issues with major components that are outside my ability to service them. I may have a welder, an air compressor and a shop press but my ability to service a CVT or electric assist motor are quite limited.

I also have a few non-hybrids in mind to consider like the B14 Sentra/200sx 1.6/5 speed and the 1995+ Metro if the insurance question pans out. The issue with the 1989-94 Metro is that it did extremely poorly in IIHS crash tests and is subject to high personal injury claims because of it. In a state like Florida which has very high insurance costs already this is exacerbated to ridiculous levels as I unfortunately found out. The hybrid cars I am thinking of tend to have lower insurance costs than my truck due to typically being owned by more careful drivers and their superior occupant protection.

I just don't want to get involved in a technically complex vehicle with expensive sub-systems that are not easily sourced from the U Pull It yards if these systems do not have a stellar reputation. That could easily turn a $2000 beater Insight into a $6,000 nightmare when I would have been better off just buying a better car to begin with. The nice thing about the Metro is just how simple all of the sub-assemblies are to source and rebuild. A transmission would run $175 to rebuild. An engine runs less than $1k, MUCH less. I can't necessarily rebuild a hybrid battery pack in my front yard and would be a little scared to attempt it due to the high voltages and amperage involved. That would mean needing to find a local mentor who would take me under their wing and teach me how to service these systems. Sadly I know of no one in my rather limited circle that messes with these cars. I tend to be the one others turn to with their issues and the others I know do not own hybrids. I can service a vintage Fiat if needed but a vintage Prius would be a whole new challenge to tackle.

Put a box on a scooter...

http://www.dsquared.org/scooters/mac...scooter02a.JPG

You are just lucky you never got caught. I have done it for 15 years and had a few accidents on the clock. One resulted in my franchisee getting slapped with a lawsuit. I was quite happy that I had the right insurance at that point. Also, NOT telling them can be construed as insurance fraud and result in any claim-on or off the clock- being denied by the insurer. Remember that any false data given to the insurance company is grounds for denial of claims and immediate cancellation.

I don't think you are going to save money with an early hybrid Jim. The B13 Sentra (91-94) is an exceptional car, if you can find one that is in good shape. Of course the insurance cost is s huge factor.

That's more for insurance than my car and my home property taxes, Jeez.

regards
Mech

For liability?

I'm confused.

MetroMPG, you are correct. The $2500 a year for insuring the Geo Metro and $1000 a year for insuring the Frontier is for liablity only.

Insurance in Florida is completely out of control. Most homeowner's insurance is sold through Citizen's-which is run by the state- because major insurance companies will not touch it. Properly insured for wind storm, flood and fire/theft my house would run me $3-5k a year ( my home is not properly insured. The insurance only covers the mortgage). This is a house that has 1,000 square feet and a value of maybe $75-80k on a good day and $55k on a bad one. It's part of the reason I want out of this state. The taxes are low but the insurance is outrageous.

How can your Frontier cost WAY less than your Metro?

It's $1500 a year cheaper. Why? Well, for the answer to that you have to see the crash tests. The Frontier with ABS and dual air bags is far less likely to cause injury to it's occupants than a car that the government considered a safety concern in the days before the offset frontal crash test. I knew it would be more expensive, just not THAT MUCH more expensive. The odd thing is that for non-business insurance the difference in cost is only about 20%. Why it is 150% more for business insurance is beyond me. All I know is that in the future I will be consulting my insurance agent long before I shop for a car.

At any rate, does anyone have an answer to the original question posed? The insurance thing is not going to be solved as I have already exhausted my options there.

If you're doing mostly city driving I'd go with a Prius. HSD is quite a bit superior to IMA in the city. You can find the first gens for a few thousand dollars around here. An Insight can probably keep up with the Prius MPG wise, but it'll be more work.

Doesn't the Prius allow for partial electric-only drive? If so it makes sense then. That would also allow me to do a plug in conversion for a little more electric-only range and maybe even add some solar cells to the roof for charging during the day.

I always found the Insight I to be sort of cool for being a no-compromise solution to fuel efficiency. If the Prius I makes more sense though I will start shopping for one of those instead.

Jim-Bob -

The Prius in Europe had a button you could push to put the car in electric-mode only :

Toyota's Prius in Europe gets a button we don't — Autoblog - June 2006
Prius EV Mode Button - EAA-PHEV
CarloSW2

You are in FLORIDA delivering PIZZAS. Didn't see my pizza delivery scooter post?

I've delivered pizzas on a moped in Florida.http://franchisemedia.ign.com/wiki/g...VCPizzaboy.jpg

So if insurance makes it prohibitively expensive to have two cars on the road, ditch the truck and hitch a trailer to a Prius.

To be honest I would check that if I were him. Knowing the government that would be $5k a year instead. :(

If he has no real worldly possessions worth a whole lot it pays to be completely uninsured. More and more I find this to be totally true for most americans who own nothing including their house. If your paying a morgage you likely don't really own the house.

If you get in a bind and owe $10 mill what are they going to do? Take your $250 car? Take your house you owe more on than its worth?

Just remember at the hospital don't sign in as that verbage includes signing the ability for the hospital to collect any possessions you have to pay and to be able to harass you after filing bankrupcy.

In summer, we get thunderstorms every single day during the height of delivery time. Plus, scooters in Florida require a motorcycle training course and license (true mopeds incapable of more than 30 mph do not). That and I couldn't carry 10-15 pizzas on the back of a scooter for commercial orders. Also, my company does not allow the use of scooters and mopeds for delivery due to their insurance ( I checked years ago). Hell, they won't even let me build a wood gas powered pickup truck or even give me the excess fryer grease from the wing fryer for delivery work. If they would then I would be driving petroleum free!

Oh I see. My deliveries were always onesie-twosies.

Still, I don't see how you can come out better with a truck. Local yocals deliver pizzas with full-size 4x4s :rolleyes: Ha Ha, figure 10 or less mpg then figure the other costs/mile in, then figure their pathetic wage in my two-bit town, and I have to conclude that they are only doing it for the fun of it.

Well, my truck is a compact, not a full size! It's a 362,000 mile 1998 Nissan Frontier king cab 4x2 with a 2.4 liter DOHC KA24DE under the hood, a 5 speed manual trans and 3.54 gears. It used to get 24 mpg delivering until they started with this whole RFG and E10 nonsense.... Now it sees 21-22 mpg delivering. The cost offset with the Metro in regards to fuel would be around $150 a month but that is exactly what the extra charge is for the Metro's insurance. Therefore, both items negate each other and there is no economic advantage to the Metro. I am still going to try and find a way to save on gas in the near future, but losing the truck's utility for no financial benefit makes no sense. Right now I can use the truck to do light hauling for extra cash as well as use it to do mechanical work out of.

The truck will probably get it's own build thread soon. Once I am rid of the Metro I will be modding the Frontier for improved MPG. I just found a nice stash of old coroplast signs at work that are mine for the taking and will become a grille block. I also plan to lower the truck about 4 inches with lowering blocks and an adjustment to the torsion bars. A garden edging air dam and possibly side skirts may also be used if I think they will work. I also just found a bed topper at the junkyard but am debating the benefits versus the fuel needed to accelerate the extra mass. Likewise, that Frontier also had factory cruise control that will find it's way to mine if it is still there the next time I go. If all goes well I hope to push it to 25 mpg city and just shy of 30 highway.

http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...9c10f0fe3e.jpg
(Pic is from 2 years ago when the truck just turned 300,000 miles. It's a one owner vehicle too.)

And my Cutlass after I finished the body and paint. A few trim details remain...
http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...3f43c20e1e.jpg
This car had a 360hp Chevy 350 and only gets 15 mpg city/21 mpg highway. (My target was 17/25) It was my first delivery car from the days of $1 a gallon gas and still sees occasional delivery work when no other car is available.

It may pay financially but to risk causing property damage and/or injury with no way or intention to pay for it is irresponsible.

Exactly. Plus, I am a Christian and doing things like that ruins my peace of mind. God will not let me rest if I do such things until I set it right. Having gone through that before over this very issue I don't wish to do it again. The life of faith is not always the easiest one but I have found it to be by far the most rewarding. Faith, after all, is not just lived out by believing in the power of the Cross for salvation but by choosing to follow what you know is right and believing that God will work it out to his good and yours if you trust him and do that which is honorable.

If you are breaking even financially (gas vs insurance), I think its more than worth it to keep the Metro due to other benefits. First of all, you aren't further wearing out a vehicle with over 360k miles on it. This prolongs its life and prevents you from needing to buy a newer vehicle sooner, and is thus actually large financial benefit. Second, there are environmental benefits which IMO should be weighed especially since you are a Christian (protecting God's creation).

Perhaps I'm missing something, but are there any downsides?

Also, if you put the Metro on the business insurance, I'm guessing you can remove the Frontier from the business insurance and thus get a price cut?


Sorry for going on about keeping the Metro. I don't mean to be a pest, but I think there are some things left to consider.

Jim-Bob, you might try contacting this company. I have my insurance with them. Frontline Homeowners Insurance - Home, Condo, and Mobile Home Property Insurance

I can't afford to insure more than one vehicle at a time. The down side is that the insurance is a constant cost while fuel costs are variable. If business goes down then so do my fuel costs ( there can be 1,000 miles difference between months). ( I also just got a $250 a month pay cut in my base pay and I am trying to figure out how to compensate for it. Truth is though that I can't.) I currently own 5 vehicles and need to get rid of several of them due to finances and space ( 1979 AMC Spirit with 360 V8, 1985 Cutlass with 355 V8, 1992 Metro (under construction), 1991 Metro, 1998 Frontier). This is one of those "It's complicated" situations as explaining the whole game plan would require me to essentially write a book. My end game is basically to reduce both recurring bills and operating costs for my life in the short term for survival. Within 6-8 months I am selling off 4 or all 5 of my vehicles and my house to move back home so I can go to school full time. I am just trying to buy enough breathing room so that I can fix my house up so that it will sell at a good price. When I move back home I may quit delivering and drive the other Metro as my daily driver ( non-delivery insurance isn't bad) or I may buy another car entirely. I may even buy an older hybrid after selling the 1991 Metro and one of my other vehicles when my tax return comes in. Like I said, it's complicated and I don't really want to go into all of it here. I was just trying to get a feel for one of my options so far as vehicles go moving forward.

I'm also NOT an environmentalist. I am responsible in what I do but do not consider the Earth to be the most important consideration in every decision I make. I do things from a practical standpoint and thus properly dispose of chemicals and look at energy costs as one of the dynamics I can control to spend my money wisely. Honestly, when the developing world is allowed to pollute where the developed world is not the little changes in my life would not make a difference even if I cared. If you want to change the world, change the way things are done in Guangzhou or Shenzhen and stop dumping the E-Waste of the developed world on the developing one where processing it is poisoning local populations. Picking nits with the way those of us in the developed world live does nothing for the health of the planet when all we are doing is transferring dirty industries to poor countries who will allow the pollution and have low wages.