Honda is known for making reliable, affordable, and good looking cars. But over the years, they’ve also produced some brow-raisers. These cars, whether or not you liked them, deserve recognition. That’s what this blog series is going to be about: shining a spotlight on Hondas that were brushed under the rug.
We’re going to start off this series with a car I’ve always wondered about as a kid:
The First Generation Insight
The Insight, introduced in 1999, was a 3-door, 2-seater hybrid electric hatchback. It only produced 67hp, but its EPA numbers were breaching 60mpg, which made it one of the most fuel-efficient cars in the U.S. at the time of its production. It was available with a manual transmission, and no air conditioning.
Its looks were very quirky; the arch cover over the rear wheels turned some heads and turned some people off. Its 67hp came from a 1.0 three-cylinder engine, as well as the first iteration of Honda’s Intelligent Motor Assist (IMA), an electric motor that attributes to regenerative braking.
Mix that all together and you get a seemingly average hybrid car, right? Most of the time, you’d be correct; but with the Insight’s manual transmission option, you actually get a pretty decent race car, as it turns out. I’m not kidding. In 2006, an Insight won the Formula 1000 Rally Class A Championship in the U.K and in 2011 was asked to step down because it dominated the first three rallies of the Formula 1000.
Top-mark fuel efficiency, decent looks, and a manual transmission should usually make for a good-selling car, but unfortunately, Honda ended production of the quirky little Insight in 2006, only to be revamped in 2008 as just another Prius look-alike. Maybe the 2019 Insight will be just as interesting as the first.
By Christian Olsson, Honda Genius
The post Honda’s Automotive Misfits : Introduction appeared first on Honda World Blog.
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