My First Honda
Discussion
Spoiler below contains essay-length reasoning on why we bought it. Suffice to say, we're very pleased.
As we had 3 cars, both commute by bicycle and have a baby on the way, we decided to have a serious look at what would work for us with the type of driving we do. Over all 3 cars, we average around 6,000 miles a year, mostly just around the city (Southampton) or going short distances to the beach, the New Forest or friends near Fareham. Once every 3-4 months we'll drive up to Suffolk to see my parents, and once a year we'll do the full trip back to Scotland to see all the rellies there.
We had:
1988 Peugeot 205 1.9 GTI
1999 Lotus Elise S1
2007 Vauxhall Corsa 1.4
Sadly, the baby seat did not fit in the Corsa in any way. We did find a buggy that fit in the boot, but leaving no room for anything else. As I've never really taken to the Elise, we decided to sell these two, and look for a more modern family car. I wanted a small estate so I could take bikes around in it (I do a lot of mountain biking, and am getting more into road riding too) as well fit all the baby stuff, but as our main mileage was around town (and would likely remain so) we didn't want a diesel due to DPF and general "not warming up enough" issues. You try and find a small (I was thinking E91 BMW) estate with a decent petrol engine these days. EVERYTHING is diesel. It's mental.
So...leftfield choice. We're looking for a Prius. It seems to have a decent sized boot. Try one out. Damn, doesn't fit the baby seat either. What's this in the corner of the car supermarket though? Wife has spotted the "Hybrid" badge, and is asking me what this is. I had no idea one was in our budget, let alone two grand below. It fits the baby seat perfectly. The boot is huge, bigger than the Prius, easily big enough for bikes without even putting the seats down. Wife loves it as it's an auto, I like the gadgety-ness of it, and it's got a really good equipment spec.
It's a late 2010 ES spec Insight. Got a very good deal on it - knocked £700 off the sticker price, and gave us £600 more than we asked for on our p/ex. I think it was one of those "sitting in the back of the lot, don't know if we'll ever sell it" sort of things (they had to jump start it for a test drive!) and we craftily were car shopping on the afternoon of the last of the month
I do have a couple of questions for the Honda beards though, as I am new to this area.
1. Will it having to be jump started affect anything with the hybrid system? It seemed to drive ok on the test drive, but should I worry about anything other than if it was just a "normal" car?
2. I've read in a lot of reviews about software updates. Is this something I should definitely have done? If so, how much am I looking at for it? I presume main dealer only? As it was a fleet car, all the services were done by the fleet garage, not Honda, so I'm assuming it's not ever been done. Can you check, somehow?
3. The gearbox. The sales invoice and all the reviews I've read said that it has CVT. I was under the impression that this meant it was essentially a single gear that was continuously variable, giving it the optimum gear for any condition? However it has flappy paddles, and when you press them it definitely changes up or down a gear, and a number on the dashboard comes up to tell you which gear it's in (it goes up to 7). That sounds suspiciously like a selectable standard auto to me?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Look forward to picking it up next week once the money's cleared.
As we had 3 cars, both commute by bicycle and have a baby on the way, we decided to have a serious look at what would work for us with the type of driving we do. Over all 3 cars, we average around 6,000 miles a year, mostly just around the city (Southampton) or going short distances to the beach, the New Forest or friends near Fareham. Once every 3-4 months we'll drive up to Suffolk to see my parents, and once a year we'll do the full trip back to Scotland to see all the rellies there.
We had:
1988 Peugeot 205 1.9 GTI
1999 Lotus Elise S1
2007 Vauxhall Corsa 1.4
Sadly, the baby seat did not fit in the Corsa in any way. We did find a buggy that fit in the boot, but leaving no room for anything else. As I've never really taken to the Elise, we decided to sell these two, and look for a more modern family car. I wanted a small estate so I could take bikes around in it (I do a lot of mountain biking, and am getting more into road riding too) as well fit all the baby stuff, but as our main mileage was around town (and would likely remain so) we didn't want a diesel due to DPF and general "not warming up enough" issues. You try and find a small (I was thinking E91 BMW) estate with a decent petrol engine these days. EVERYTHING is diesel. It's mental.
So...leftfield choice. We're looking for a Prius. It seems to have a decent sized boot. Try one out. Damn, doesn't fit the baby seat either. What's this in the corner of the car supermarket though? Wife has spotted the "Hybrid" badge, and is asking me what this is. I had no idea one was in our budget, let alone two grand below. It fits the baby seat perfectly. The boot is huge, bigger than the Prius, easily big enough for bikes without even putting the seats down. Wife loves it as it's an auto, I like the gadgety-ness of it, and it's got a really good equipment spec.
It's a late 2010 ES spec Insight. Got a very good deal on it - knocked £700 off the sticker price, and gave us £600 more than we asked for on our p/ex. I think it was one of those "sitting in the back of the lot, don't know if we'll ever sell it" sort of things (they had to jump start it for a test drive!) and we craftily were car shopping on the afternoon of the last of the month
I do have a couple of questions for the Honda beards though, as I am new to this area.
1. Will it having to be jump started affect anything with the hybrid system? It seemed to drive ok on the test drive, but should I worry about anything other than if it was just a "normal" car?
2. I've read in a lot of reviews about software updates. Is this something I should definitely have done? If so, how much am I looking at for it? I presume main dealer only? As it was a fleet car, all the services were done by the fleet garage, not Honda, so I'm assuming it's not ever been done. Can you check, somehow?
3. The gearbox. The sales invoice and all the reviews I've read said that it has CVT. I was under the impression that this meant it was essentially a single gear that was continuously variable, giving it the optimum gear for any condition? However it has flappy paddles, and when you press them it definitely changes up or down a gear, and a number on the dashboard comes up to tell you which gear it's in (it goes up to 7). That sounds suspiciously like a selectable standard auto to me?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Look forward to picking it up next week once the money's cleared.
Sounds like a bargain, well done!
1. No it should be fine. If no error codes were thrown then no problem
2. From the gen 1 insight I think it was actually recommended NOT to update for fuel economy reasons or something? Either way you can check via Honda, or possibly an OBDII reader.
3. I believe the flappy paddles define the ratio of the CVT box but it is still a CVT. My friend has a Jazz with it and was trying to explain it to me but I lost interest...sorry!
1. No it should be fine. If no error codes were thrown then no problem
2. From the gen 1 insight I think it was actually recommended NOT to update for fuel economy reasons or something? Either way you can check via Honda, or possibly an OBDII reader.
3. I believe the flappy paddles define the ratio of the CVT box but it is still a CVT. My friend has a Jazz with it and was trying to explain it to me but I lost interest...sorry!
Cheers chaps, had the car a couple of days now and all seems fine. 7 flappy paddle ratios on the CVT are really good, you can even use them in normal "D" mode for up and downshifts, so you can roll up to a junction slowly as if changing down the gears on a manual. Brilliant stuff. Then in Sport mode it's actually pretty fun to drive - I actually overtook someone the other day, so it's not entirely ponderous!
I'll ask the Honda dealer about the software update, imagine I'll be charged for it?
I'll ask the Honda dealer about the software update, imagine I'll be charged for it?
CVT boxes with sport mode / flappy paddles usually mean it imitates a normal car instead of doing the CVT. So it kind of chooses 7 reasonably spaced apart ratios and jumps between those and lets the car rev, rather than continuously varying between low and high and keeping the rpm stable.
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