Visibility out the rear window is restricted. It's similar to the one in the Insight hybrid, and most people we've talked to think it's goofy, even though these days nearly all carmakers use similar interfaces for their hybrid and electric models. There's a small glovebox, and door pockets in the driver's door, but a grab handle gets in their way and chops them up. The cup holders are hard to reach, tucked ahead of the shift lever and squeezed under the dash so a 16-ounce cup is hard to fit. It offers good fuel economy, a modicum of performance and the entertainment factor that comes from its 6-speed manual.
Sheetmetal over the rear wheel rises to the near-horizontal hatchback that ends in a high chopped tail. Inside, the instrument panel is busy, with a dominant light-ring changing colors from green to blue to red, depending on how hard you're driving. A small sharkfin antenna perches dead center on the roof. The 6-speed manual gearbox is tight, although one could argue that it doesn't belong in a hybrid. Furthermore, looking over your shoulder to pull onto a highway, it can be scary blind, because of the roofline. Hill Start Control is nice with a manual transmission. Red shows off the styling well.
Honda has managed to take the hybrid feel out of the pedal, while still regenerating energy. The car scored well in the gearbox, steering, handling and styling categories, but these strengths—however impressive—added together were still not enough to push the driving excitement of the car higher, posting just a middle-of-the-road rating. The range with its 10. This was despite the recent high prices for fuel. There's a 2+2 model in Japan, but not in the U.
If style and performance are your main concerns, there are the Fiat Abarth, Hyundai Veloster or Mini Cooper, which all offer distinct designs and good gas mileage. Don't get that color, if you want to see the futuristic, aggressively aerodynamic lines of your car. The dashboard is sculpted to be futuristic, but we wish more design time had been spent on being practical rather than cool. Behind the seats, two benches with flip-down backs look like seats without padding. Manual-transmission models have arrows that suggest shift points for higher-mileage driving; we've never been fans of shift lights, but some drivers welcome them. Mesh fabric sport seats silver on most models have a lot of work and thought put into them.
One gauge shows battery charge, and another displays the electric motor's power flow: It shows power flowing in from regenerative braking, or outward to help the engine. Prius and other hybrids have the same problem, because its aerodynamic slope makes the glass nearly horizontal. But in actuality, it was not very sporty, not very practical, nor very fun to drive. The tachometer has blue lines at every 100 rpm, amounting to blue-line overkill. The bolstering is designed to fit all sizes.
It follows the rises and dips in the road tightly, which is fine as long as the road is smooth. The rear fenders bulge as if bigger tires were under there, fattening the fleet stance somewhat, but it's still cool. It's a six-layer composite tank, reducing evaporative emissions. Deep lines sweep back and up from the front wheels, creating a sculpted wedge on the side of the car. That's why we needed only one routine service at 10,500 miles to take care of an oil change, tire rotation and routine inspection. Headlamps cleanly sweep back, like the wings of a soaring hawk with crystal wings.
They slide forward and back easily, and ratchet up and down two inches. The brakes feel good: ventilated disc in front, solid in rear. If it's not, well, at the end of our 280-mile freeway run, we were over it. Non-hybrid hatches like Honda Fit and Mazda3 are also worth considering. But it's the profile that carries the car. So viewed as a practical commuter appliance to use from point A to point B, it still did not offer the levels of comfort and roominess that we look for in this category of car.
In Normal mode, the engine keeps running when the manual-shift car is at idle, even with all power accessories shut off. There's no center console, or armrest, as the parking brake lever hogs all the space between the seats. There's good legroom for the driver, including a dead pedal. And nothing about the car, mechanically or cosmetically, needed to be repaired. Sure, it has limited utility because of its two seats, but to me, it's the perfect car for a single person right out of school, or as an extra car in the family fleet suited to commuter or airport duty.
Underneath, a new lithium-ion battery pack and more powerful electric motor helped to bump up horsepower and torque for 2013. A big-mouthed mesh black grille swoops low and round along the bottom, with a straight horizontal edge along the top, as if flashing a big empty-toothed grin. It's surrounded by an illumination ring that changes color with your foot: light foot green, heavier foot blue, leadfoot in Sport mode red. When you get up to speed, the engine is smooth and quiet. As is, the seat-like benches are good for storage, especially for laptops, which can be hidden when the non-seatbacks fold down. .
That's one of the main reasons we asked for the car to join our long-term test fleet. You can also get additional electric-motor assist on cars with the manual transmission. With some imagination, it mimics the profile of a big-winged 1970 Plymouth Superbird. This allows the use of a smaller, more-efficient engine. When starting out on a hill, it gives you about three seconds to disengage the clutch, before the car starts to drift backward. Zippy might describe the handling, too.