Honda Insight - Another Beutfully Designed Hybrid
Why can’t car manufacturers produce nice looking hybrid car models? The Toyota Prius is the second worst looking car on the road, behind the Pontiac Aztek. The Honda Insight is almost as poorly designed, as it looks almost identical to the Toyota Prius.
If hybrid cars looked better, I might consider buying one. Maybe they are designed to appear economical. Maybe the buyers of these cars are not concerned with styling, so no effort is put into it and cost is then reduced. Maybe manufacturers saw how successful Toyota was with the Prius so they decide dumpy looking cares are the way to go. Who knows. The point is, they are ugly and we would love to know the reason why.
The Insight will start being sold in the US this coming April, 2009. The biggest perk about the Insight will be its price. The Insight will start at $18,500 which will make it the least expensive hybrid available. Honda is able to sell at this price point because of cost reductions from the use of their “Motor Assist” hybrid technology, and also because they spent a total of 3 man hours on its styling.
Style, economy, and performance can come together - enter the Lightning GT. Hopefully hybrid car makers can take a turn towards more attractive looking cars sometime in the near future.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
kev g
Oh, come on — the Prius and Aztek are worse than the Scion xb? Those seem to be getting worse from generation to generation…
It’s interesting to me how hybrids also have a decidedly different look from regular cars, too — a worse one, but also a very different one. Maybe most of this is just other car companies trying to capitalize on the success of the Prius, as you note above. But you have to wonder who exactly is being marketed. I can’t believe it’s just an attempt to make the cars look “economical”.
Actually, MINI put together a site — http://www.carfunfootprint.com — that ranks cars based on both their environmental factor and how “fun” they are (ranking “fun” has always seemed to me a little dubious, but these are I believe stats from drivers who were asked to rate their experiences). Anyway, not surprisingly, hybrids are very “green” but not much “fun”. I echo your question — why? With the cost of manufacturing cars in general does it really pay to settle for designs like these? There are better looking non-hybrids that are practically as fuel efficient.
Sep 5th, 2008
Sam
Kev,
Yeah - the Scion xb is pretty horrible. But at least it appears like they succeeded in trying to build a moving box, instead of putting together a bunch of strange shapes and plopping them down on a frame (Aztek).
That MINI site is pretty cool. We’ll check that out. Do you have a site of your own?
Sep 5th, 2008
AndrewBoldman
Original post by mattusximus
Jun 4th, 2009
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