Hi John,
I really appreciate your site but the one which really helped my make a buying decision was
http://www.openfrontier.com/insight.
The dealer lead me to believe that I was one of the first in the west to buy (12/27/99,
vin 060). I would have settled for one of the metallic grey models but I was fortunate to get "space alien green." It stands out even in the foggy
conditions often found on the Oregon Coast and has caused countless sore necks. The best compliment came in a nearby, paper-mill town of Toledo
Oregon where big muddy trucks are the norm. A fellow stuck his head out of his truck ~100 feet ahead of me in opposing
traffic and yelled, "what in the hell kind of car is that?" If images of Steve Martin in an old Saturday Night Live Skit come to mind, you are dead
on! I almost laughed myself into a ditch.
After my purchase, I didn't quite yet know how to reset the mpg displays but on the trip home, observed the ~50 mpg from test drives in town slowly top 60 mpg. That is where my lifetime average has stuck ever since. Experiments at ~63 mph have yielded 20 mile and 40 mile stretches of 73 mpg. So shoot me, I live 50 miles from the nearest freeway! 85 - 90 mpg segments have been observed at ~35 mph on some reasonable backroads after the breakin period.
I'm fairly pleased!
Dr. Milton Freewater
xflies @excite.com
[note: remove anti-spam space before @ to use this address]
[Dr. Freewater, I had heard that Honda had sold a few Insights on the west coast last year, but over a hundred calls to Honda dealers in December proved fruitless. I'll admit I didn't call any dealers in Oregon, however. I wonder how Honda decided which dealers got the dozen or so that were delivered in 1999. It's great that you found Insight Central, the original website dedicated to this breakthrough automobile--in fact, it was the inspiration for this website--InsightMan.]