I bought a Honda Insight way back in 2000 for a few reasons…
1) Looks – It looks like a car from the future when the future used to have interesting cars.
2) Solo commute at hours that were awful, so ride-sharing and such things were DOA.
3) Looking at the gas savings per month and saw that it perfectly off-set my insurance increases, so the car was not paying itself off but paying for being there at no extra monthly cost.
4) Motorcycles are not safe in SE DC. With that brick of batteries behind me, nothing was going to easily pull that car aside, plus low to the road it was hard to get an aim at the driver. If you know that area of DC, you know those to be definitive pluses.
5) Comfortable for someone of my height, like most Hondas and unlike most other cars, including those in the US.
6) Offset in taxes was nice, but not a factor. And the only thing that turns tighter is a motorcycle, and even then I don’t think one has the mass to do those donuts at 40mph.
It is the only car that sold itself to me on looks…. and even then it had to offset my monthly costs to get there.
Then gas prices went up… and I got original cost offers for the car even after it had been on the road for a few years. Now that I am unlikely to drive in my lifetime, I remain passenger and the car, itself, I can get a decent deal on when I move.
