Honda Insight 3.0: Will we be subject to more foolery?

Honda Insight 3.0

I remember the first Honda Insight, 15 years ago. I did, for about a year and a half, some of the automotive test drives, and writing, for the automotive section in my group of suburban Dallas newspapers.

I test drove both the original Insight, and the original Prius, the one that looked kind of like a Yaris, not like THE PRIUS of today.

That first-gen Prius had little acceleration, of course. But it did hit its EPA mileage estimates.

The Insight, first-gen, was a two-seater hatchback with the batteriers under the flat base inside the rear hatch. It had a 3-cylinder gas engine and a stick transmission. (I can't remember if the original Prius, US version, had a geared automatic or a CVT.)

Anyway, Honda had an EPA estimate of 70/61.

Not even close in reality. And, I had a stick for my own car, so I knew how to do pretty butter-smooth shifting. I couldn't even hit 60 in city traffic, let alone 70. I didn't drive it on freeways outside the Metromess; I'm sure that, if I had gotten over 55 for any period of time, the highway mileage would have been 41, not 61. Wikipedia lists 40 under new EPA testing, so I was right!

It was cars like this that led the EPA to get mileage testing out of wind tunnels and into real-world situations.

Honda then pulled the Insight, even as Toyota prepared the new Prius, and it to be a separate nameplate.

Seeing its success, Honda decided to fire back.

The Insight 2.0 was, essentially, a Prius knockoff chassis put on a dumbed-down version of a Civic hybrid drivetrain. By dumbed-down, I mean, Honda stuck a three-valve per cylinder gas engine under the hood. It also had cheap fit and fixtures inside.

Honda, I presume, had been looking at this at about 2008, not only seeing the success of the Prius but seeing oil prices go over $100 a barrel.

And, the company brought out Insight 2.0 in —

2010, just in time for the Great Recession to crush gas prices.

It limped along for two years, then more and more people began realizing Honda was ripping them off again with a poor-acceleration car, even for a hybrid, and one that had no better gas mileage, even with the aerodynamics, than a Civic insight.

So, Honda let the car run a usual four-year development cycle, with no investment after year two, then pulled the plug a second time.

And now, per the new Consumer Reports? Insight 3.0 is out, I've read. And that magazine doesn't like it a lot more than version 2.

Edmonds says the same main thing as Consumer Reports: The gas engine is very noisy under any serious acceleration. (It has a 1.5 liter gas engine vs. 1.8 on the Prius.) Otherwise, weirdly, it rates the Insight higher than the Prius.

The best current version is 55/49 on MPG, says Wikipedia. Cars.com has the best version of the Prius at 58/53, even with the bigger engine.

It looks better than the newest iterations of the Prius, which have been dipped in Toyota's recent bad styling for car front ends. But, that's about it. Interesting, both Edmonds and Cars.com like its interior, especially its screen display, more than Consumer Reports.

Given Toyata's edge in performance, plus Honda's track record from the past, and issues with the current version (a tiny electric motor and batteries seem to be part of the problem), and it being the same price, roughly, forget it. I'd buy one of Hyundai's Ioniq's before it, too. They, too, perform better, but they have a Toyota-ugly front end.