Honda Insight - 1.3 IMA ES Quick Stats :
	0-60mph Maximum Speed CO2 Emissions Personal Leasing	12.5 seconds 113mph 105 from £279 inc pm

They say that opposites attract! Well if that’s the case then I should love this New Honda because everything about this car stands against everything that I do! I like cars that do 3 mpg and have a 0-62 time of 3 seconds and that gets you the sort of attention that Elton John would get if he was caught having an affair with Liza Minnelli, whereas the Insight is the complete opposite of this. But as always I try and keep an open mind to be able to give a well rounded review………..but…alas…… I HATED IT!!

I hated it from the moment I saw it! I didn’t even have go outside to know that I was going to hate it, because I saw it roll up outside from our office window to see that it had pictures of flowers or leafs or deformed people down each side of it! Why oh why do manufactures do this??? Don’t get me wrong, if it had been a Lamborghini with I LOVE MAN LOVE written down the sides then I might not have cared as I would be going fast enough that people wouldn’t see it but in this thing I knew that wouldn’t be the case and I was going to be laughed at, A LOT!!

But that’s enough bitching about the Insight; let’s talk about its best points like the CVT gearbox which is AWFUL at best! The last time I drove a car with this gearbox was in a Nissan Murano and it made what was a perfectly acceptable car a noisy, pain in the arse to drive. To get anywhere in this car you have to floor and keep it floored since it takes the Insight about 3 million years just to think about getting going and then another 3 million to actually get to 60mph.  But it’s the noise that gets to you the most as it is about as quiet as Janet Street Porter with a megaphone!! I’m not talking road noise as I couldn’t hear any road noise over the engine having its nuts revved off by this stupid gearbox.

Then it gets worse.

The interior is like a cross between a 1980’s Civic and Knight Rider’s dash (without all the cool bits!) The Speedo changes colour depending on how you drive the car or what time of the month it is…….either way it’s annoying! Then there is the claimed mpg. I think that Honda were either drunk or are have been paid off by the government to get us to drive sooooo slowly to get the best mpg out of it. Seriously, I drove this thing like a saint on the way home from Nottingham to the other side of Derby one day to the point where my Girlfriend questioned why I was driving so slowly (she normally screams at me for driving to fast so I can’t win!!). The best I could manage was 42.3mpg which I could manage driving a Golf diesel but at a speed that would keep an insomniac awake. Then as if that’s not enough they then decided that the exterior design team should consist of what I can only assume was a bunch of blind people since it is so ugly that only the blind would say it looks like it should be built!

All in all this is a god awful car and until they stop messing around with awful styling, cheap interiors and stupid gearboxes hybrid cars will not take off but most of all they need to make it so that you can achieve these high mpg figures whilst also being able to drive in a normal way.

Thanks for reading

Stuart McKay