We've now got a full month of 2010 Prius sales in the US so we can do comparisons.

http://sev.prnewswire.com/auto/20090...1072009-1.html
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/t...rst-95132.aspx

Honda sold 2,079 Insights in the US in June 09. Toyota sold 12,998 Priuses (unclear of the mix of 09 vs. 2010) in the same period.

It doesn't look like Honda will hit the goal mentioned at http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06...s-for-insight/ this rate. I'd be curious to know if there Insight were supply constraints or if there was plenty to go around in June.

 

Insights have been setting around here since there launch. They are not selling worth a darn. Even our dealer who prices them at $388 above invoice isn't moving them.

When we purchased our HCHII the end of April we could have got a Insight at $388 above invoice. Truth be known we could have got into hold back as a repeat cust. But with the deals on HCHII's at the time, WHY!

What is hurting Insight is the name for one. It's not a Insight anything. It's a Fit. Thus the pricing is way way to high on them even at invoice or under. IMA is already a under preforming hybrid system at best. Lets face it. It's on the weak side. So what does Honda do? Make it weaker. This a classic example of shooting one's horse when aiming for something else at a full gallop.

 

"What is hurting Insight is the name for one. It's not a Insight anything. It's a Fit."

It looks like a fresh design to me, at least as far as body style. I agree, calling it Insight is confusing, considering it has little or nothing in common with the original car of that name. I think it should have had a fresh name.

Our local Jazz Festival has quite a few booths displaying Insights, Honda's one of the sponsors. At the the two locations we've gone so far there's been two Insights per. There's never much of a crowd around them, just modest amount of interest.

 

It's implausible that anyone would avoid buying an Insight simply due to its name. And, it's not a Fit.

 

Sorry to disagree. Among the broad target markets for the new Insight, few people have much awareness of the original limited-production model. Honda did next-to-nothing to ever sell the vehicle, and mostly used its existence to garner brand publicity for high fuel economy. The new Insight is what it is, and there may be room for like or dislike, but not confusion.

 

Yes my good man it is a FIT with a butchered IMA and a better than $3k price increase over FIT. Every trim level of Insight want to be should be no more than $1750 per above FIT. And then thats a stretch. It's not even cool and camp like the adverts wish to push. It has the Clarity type front end. Looks like a bull dog front end Ford pick up of days gone by.

It is a marketing and engineering failure. IMA is on it's last rope.

I just spoke with a good insider concerning Honda hybrids. The only thing over all that will save IMA is to clutch it. Honda has tested it and will not build it. It's like Honda Motors LTD is going backwards. Honda can't make there diesel make EPA in a wuzzy might sell AT car for lazy Americans. So none for us. But the UK gets to get great cars. A UK spec. oiler is a far better car than a HCHII. I've driven one. More room, a dash that does not look like a cheap but fashionable arcade game. It's like driving a big butt American Accord.

Insight is a failure. From name sake to marketing to engineering. It is a FIT and way over priced! It's Hondas take on,,,, look!!!! GM has nothing on us.

The Real Insight was a ground breaking car,,, period! It was about as close as one could get to a mass market car that was **** near hand built. A 100 mpg was only a few tricks away in driving style. And EPA was a shoe in unless you drove it like a Si 100% of the time. The only thing Insight has going for it is less mpg than Civic, handles worse than FIT because only Honda knows. And it's no where near as functional as a base PII. It is a CVT striped IMA over priced abortion FIT. Now let your mind wonder. What will the FIT hybrid be? They can't strip IMA anymore with out it becoming a utter joke like GM's BAS.

Why would anybody buy a Insight want to be if they knew they could get a killer deal on a HCHII. And after I put 100 miles today on a 09 TDI base Jetta with a 6MT and Navi. I wont even look to hybrids again the way there engineering efforts are going. I got 50 mpg out of the TDI with the A/C on,,, and I was not kind to the car AT ALL! I could get that car today for $20k no Navi and no god awful CVT and 300+ in TQ.

The current want to be Insight is a corprate joke on the world at large. And folks thought Wall Street was uncaring. LMFAO

 

The TDI I drove today meets the specs in all 50 states. 10k miles on the car and the inside of the exhaust finshers still shines. Is the Jetta as clean burning as our HCHII???? No it's not. But it is as clean as my 07 Mazda3. And is a hoot to drive.

Our HCHII is the most boring car I have ever owned. It's clean and can get stellar mpg. But it has no soul. It's akin to driving a toaster, washing machine or a computer. It's boring lifeless and slower than honey on a winters morn.

Edit: My computers are more interesting.

 

Maybe so, but it's nowhere NEAR as clean in terms of pollutants as the 2009 Mazda 3.

See http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Det...hicle_ID=27035 and http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Det...hicle_ID=26949 for example.

The the VW Jetta TDIs get a pretty dirty 6/10 on the EPA air pollution score (has no relation to greenhouse gas emissions). Go to http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/I and lookup up the greenest vehicles on the right (check both checkboxes) for California, sort by air pollution score and see how vehicles do better than 6. It's virtually all of them.

 

And only one or two are fun to drive and don't have a Novocain factor.

 

The VW diesels still suffer from low city mileage. While I sometimes appreciate a manual trans, it practical Chicago driving you can't beat an automatic trans.

The other negatives on VW: it's a VW, they often overengineer things to the point of ridiculousness. My wife has an 08 passat: the navigation is extremely difficult to use, the iPod interface does not have a usable menu.

I was in BMW, Audi and VW sales for many years. It was not unusual to see a new car owner in the service department with a problem.

I'm sure that many people will purchase the Jetta diesel and be satisfied. I bought an Insight EX/Nav and I am very happy with it.