Cosmic Blue Touring

The first car I've owned was 2001 Prius when hardly anyone knew about hybrid cars. Since then, I've only owned Toyota. The hybrid cars I've owned are 2010 Prius, 2012 Prius v, and 2017 RAV4 Hybrid. Technically, I've owned them, but my wife drove them. I drive her car a few times a week. For me, I always liked raw cars. Unrefined, rough and noisy ride, with manual transmission. I could not imagine myself driving a car without manual transmission.

So, my previous car was 2013 Scion FR-S. I had it since when it launched in June 2012. Since Honda Civic Type R was getting such a good reviews, I started to be interested in it. I was visiting a Honda dealer to another looking for a fair deal. Then I saw a car with a perfect design. I walked up to the car and found out it was Insight. I could not believe it. A hybrid car that looks this nice...

Since then, I watched all YouTube reviews about this car. And read all the reviews I could find online. I got really interested when I found out that this car has no transmission. I "hate" automatic transmission because it changes the gears when I don't want it to. I get so much stress from it. CVT is better, but I can't stand it when it takes 2-3 seconds to start going when I step on the gas. Even worse, the recent CVTs try to mimic conventional automatic transmission. Since Insight has no transmission, I thought maybe I don't mind driving a car without manual transmission.

I test drove the Insight. I was so impressed, I thought "This is it!" That instant power when I step on the gas. No delay at all. And no gear shifting. It gives me no stress driving this car. But I usually wait for a month before I buy a car for myself because I don't want to regret. At this point, it was only 1/2 month, so I was not intending to buy it. So, I gave the dealer a ridiculous deal so that I can go home. Then they unexpectedly gave me an amazing deal, so I took that deal.

Now, it's been 2 weeks with this car. It's been about a month since I first saw the Insight. I have no regret about buying this car and I'm so glad I did. The acceleration off the line is so good. FR-S was decently fast only above 5000 RPM. The car was pretty slow unless I drop the clutch at 4000 RPM or higher. Starting at 2000 RPM, it felt slow. Insight's almost 200 lbs/ft of torque instantly just feels so good. The handling can't be compared to FR-S, but Insight's handling is good enough that doesn't bother me at all.

The insurance is so cheap. It's only 63% of RAV4 Hybrid. The average MPG over my first 700 miles is 51 MPG. Pretty nice considering it's almost always in Sport mode and I enjoy accelerating fast off the line. The only thing I don't like about this car is the automatic windshield wiper. Sometimes it doesn't wipe until I can't see and sometimes it's full on wiping when it's hardly wet. I did a quick research online and it seems to be how it is on other Honda cars. Also, recently, the sensor box at the top of the windshield started to make rattling noise on rough roads. Other than these small things, the car is truly perfect so far.