It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
I highly recommend reading the article just for all the new and interesting ways Clarkson expresses his dislike for the vehicle. Part of me, though, is bothered not by the review, but by the really terrible car Honda seems to have produced. I've owned Acuras for the last twelve years and I rather like Honda's vehicles (and Clarkson does indicate that Honda doesn't usually produce cars this bad), so it's kind of sad to hear about the company slipping this badly.
With all the fun stuff out of the way, though, I think there's a more important message on the second and third pages of the review. What I get out of this and something I've felt since the introduction of hybrid vehicles, is that hybrid really isn't the way to go. We need to abandon the internal combustion engine and move on to something that just makes sense, and whatever that is, it must be better than what we have now with our gasoline powered engines.
I've never really been interested in hybrid vehicles. It seems so half-assed, like, "yeah, we recognize there's a problem, but we really don't want to solve it. So, for those of you who feel guilty, we'll sell you this over-priced, environmentally negative car so you can at least feel better about yourself... even if that feeling is entirely unjustified."
I may not be part of the solution, but I am perfectly fine with waiting for the next revolution in engineering to switch away from the internal combustion engine. I also feel the only reasonable path that we can see from where we're standing now are hydrogen powered vehicles. The biggest trick to hydrogen is making it in some way that doesn't cost us more energy to generate than we get from it, and distribution. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but these seem like solvable problems to me...
Also, the Insight really looks way too much like a Prius... Seriously, can we get some innovation here? kthx
