Pistonheads piece from one of the fold

[NZNick]

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1593415

[marknsx]

A guilty secret of mine too! I won't buy one but have always loved the ugliness.

[goldnsx]

Nice to see a true enthusiast of these intelligent cars in the UK who knows about the car in detail. I've mine since more than six years and love to drive it even more than the NSX I've to admit. I actually have two of them. I'll keep them for a very long time...

[nobby]

fascinating insight into a rare car!

[goldnsx]

The colors 'citrus-green' are sold at a premium. The even rarer 'aquamarine blue' ones (pictured) even higher as these are even more rare.

[NZNick]

I'd love this one (http://kuruma-ex.jp/usedcar/detail/ccCU4199962068) for my commute - all 7 minutes of it! - but can't quite justify it as my daily driver is still going strong after 11 years. Should really have bought one 11 years ago!

[goldnsx]

It was a courageous decision for me getting one of these and an even more one to sell my 2.5 years old DD to try it with the Insight as a DD. It worked pretty well for me. The trunk is bigger than you'd expect and for those one or two times of the year I need to transport bigger things even my sold DD would not have been big enough. But obviously as a two-seater it's no family car.

But my biggest fear was powerwise. Can it keep up with traffic? The first impression was that it will be a running obstacle. But as the car teached me how it likes to be driven (conserve momentum) it's a pretty fast rocket. In town it's faster than most other average cars due to its low weight and its instant 'electro-turbo'. 0-60 in around 11 seconds doesn't seem very fast but that's half the values of it's competitors of that time (Audi, VW 3L). A new HR-V or Jazz has similar values. 0-30 is were it really shines, plenty of instant electric torque. Overtaking requires high revs as all Honda gasengines but it works pretty well. We have steep mountains here, no problem for the car either.

It's a future classic I guess, very unique, bulletproofed technology and very cheap to run.

[Nick Graves]

Brilliant little things.

Unfortunately the Gen 2 and CR-Z completely missed the point and were retrograde.

[marknsx]

Well having said that I won't buy one Im considering a 2000 model. Any advice from anyone?