Wheel Love: a 2000 Honda Insight

“I’ve been around cars for most of my working life, so the Insight was a model I was aware of. It’s an unusual car. When I saw this one for sale on Trademe about three years ago I had to have it.

What really appealed to me was that the car is a fascinating piece of engineering. It was Honda’s attempt to create the most fuel-efficient car in the world at the time, and was the first hybrid vehicle you could buy outside of Japan. 

It was really designed as form following function. Honda wanted to see how fuel efficient they could make it. Even today it is still is very fuel efficient – it just sips at petrol. I’m getting 20.7km per litre.

The Insight is also made entirely of aluminium and other lightweight composites, so it only weighs 850kg. If it gets windy you can certainly feel it! And you sit really low, so it’s quite sporty.

Mine is missing a few things – it’s supposed to have a big sheet of aluminium underneath which is not there; you have to take that off to change the oil and obviously a previous owner got sick of it.

Honda made the Insight for seven years, but they only ever produced 17,000 of them. 

I think a lot of people would consider it to be a bit of a failure, but I think it was Honda’s way of proving a concept. They went on to release the second generation Insight, which was boring and looks more like a Prius, so they obviously learnt their lesson.

The split window harks back to the Honda CRX, so it’s a bit of Honda signature. The Insight could be seen as a spiritual successor, just maybe not as sporty.

I’d say that the one car that it most resembles is the Citroën SM from the very early 70s, which is also narrower at the back than the front. It has quite a few similar design cues. It’s hard to know whether Honda were paying homage to the Citroën, or if Citroën were going for the same sort of slippery design.

People do stop and photograph it and look at the registration sticker to see what it is, because I guess you don’t see these cars every day. And often people are surprised by how old it is – it’s older than it looks. 

There is a little cubby hole at the rear, but there’s not much room for luggage because the back has the big hybrid battery system in it, which weighs 35kg on its own.

They will also do massive mileage – mine has done just under 170,000 kilometres – but there are plenty that have done over 500,000. They’re quite durable.

I do use the car a lot, but it’s not ideal if you need to transport anything, so I also have another car which has four doors and proper seating. If you don’t have to carry much then it’s really good.

It’s interesting and it’s cheap to run, but it’s not practical.”

This story is from the Winter 2025 issue of AA Directions magazine.