OCTANE CARS
Fond farewell to Mark Dixon’s Honda Insight
MORE THAN 230,000 miles at an average of 70.2mpg. And a whole lot of fun. That was the score when I said goodbye to my 2001 Insight this month, which has been sold to Octane reader (and Porsche 928 owner) Peter Hallinan.
Fact is, since I inherited my late father’s Volvo XC70 estate – the Peter Horbury-designed second-gen version – I’ve hardly used the Insight. Nevertheless, every time I drove it after a period of neglect, I always fell in love with it all over again; and with free road tax and minimal servicing costs, it’s such a cheap car to run that it seemed worth hanging onto for emergencies. Peter was so keen to buy it, however, that in the end I found it impossible to say no.
Sod’s law, of course, dictated that when I went to take the car in for a pre-sale MoT, the 12-volt battery that powers the ignition system was so flat that it wouldn’t start; the first time that’s happened in my seven years of ownership. It seemed that the bonnet wasn’t latching properly and was keeping the ECU awake, which was flattening the battery.
The technician at the local Honda dealership reckoned that it wasn’t latching because the hasp on the bonnet was worn – and it’s a non-replaceable item. It’s actually built into the bonnet such that you’d have to separate inner and outer skins to remove it. However, after charging the battery he did manage to get the bonnet shut.
Reasoning that two heads are better than one, I drove the Insight over to engineer and good friend Derek Magrath’s workshop near Malvern. Derek has worked on several of my cars, from Ford Model A to Lamborghini Espada, and his lateral thinking skills were just what I needed. He suggested that the worn bonnet hasp wasn’t the problem; it just wasn’t pushing the latching mechanism far enough down.
We took the latch itself off and elongated its fixing holes to move it upwards. Still no joy. Then, as we pondered the problem over cups of tea, I had a brainwave. Removing a couple of rubber bumpstops on the slam panel might allow the bonnet to be pushed down further. Result! The bonnet now latched first time, every time, and road-testing it revealed no detectable flutter from the panel. With another 1000 miles
added to the clock – averaging 70.0mpg this time – I felt confident handing the car over to Peter, who is looking forward to ‘carbon offsetting’ his 928.
I’ll miss the Insight. It was the car that proved hybrids could be fun to drive, it attracted curiosity and approval wherever I parked it and – right up to my last month of ownership – it was unfailingly reliable. Drawbacks? Thin seats, a fairly hard ride due to the high tyre pressures needed for good fuel economy, and a lot of road noise from the tyres themselves – although the latter is really down to the kind of tarmac used in the UK.
So is the Insight a future classic? No. It categorically, incontrovertibly, already is one.