I must have missed this story...
After driving Honda CRXs for many years, Honda switched to the Del Sol, which I didn't want. Then in 1999, the Honda VV hybrid prototype emerged as Honda's answer to the Toyota Prius (which wasn't for sale in the US yet).
I loved the idea; it was all-aluminum (under 1,900 lbs) and the first high-tech hybrid car to come to the US. I saw the VV prototype in January 1999 at Detroit's North American International Auto Show and fell in love.
After visiting the show a second time to see the VV again, I was on my way back to Ann Arbor in my CRX. I wondered if I could learn to alter my driving style to maximize gas mileage instead of minimizing time. I tucked myself behind the first semi truck I could find and drove home in the slow lane. It was very difficult--it's an entirely different world over there--but I convinced myself that taking advantage of newfangled hybrid technology to push gas mileage to new heights could be something I could get into.
The next day I went to my local Honda dealer and placed a $500 deposit for the first one of these hybrids they could get. Then I started waiting. I discovered, to my surprise, that the headlong passage of time actually slowed for me during the 13 months I waited for my Honda hybrid. During the year, Honda unveiled the name for this car would be the "Honda Insight."
Honda released very little information about the Insight, so I decided to collect what I could find and put it on the web. My dedicated, very amateur website (all hand-coded HTML), insightman.com, has been long neglected, but it's still online. I learned that many dealers referred customers who were interested in the Insight to my website.
During that wait, I flew to Miami, where my parents lived. Miami had a small auto show and Honda had brought the first production version of the Honda Insight to that show. I was very excited to see the car, one of which I would soon be driving.
During my long wait, I persistently asked my dealer to check with Honda on the progress of my order. I was diappointed that the first Insights were sold in 1999, in California. However, it was not surprising, because Honda's US headquarters are near LA in Torrance.
Then it happened. Honda loaded one Insight into a small, enclosed truck that had room for just one car and brought my Insight from Torrance to Ann Arbor. To my dealer's surprise I said I would delay taking delivery so my silver Insight could take center stage in their showroom. I made a deal that I'd get to drive it home directly from the showroom floor.
However, after the dealer prep, they let me and my wife take the Insight for a short drive. To my consternation, I thought I'd stalled it at the first stoplight I encountered. Then, embarassed to the max, I remembered that the Insight was designed to shut off its engine when the car was stopped. It was an incredible day, driving that high-tech piece of aluminum and hybrid technology built in the same production line as the NSX, but which was going to cost me only $21,000.
After driving that Insight for 7 years, Honda said 2006 was going to be the car's last model year. As late as possible, I ordered a red 2006 Insight and put it in my garage. In 2007 I sold my Insight with serial number ...221 and took my 2006 Insight out of the garage. I drove that Insight for a dozen years, selling it only when news of the all-electric MINI Cooper SE became public.
For 20 years I was driving slow (I boasted nobody was slower than me), and never activating the air-conditioner except on one day every year in late July when I took my wife out for our anniversary dinner. I could achieve 100 miles per gallon for short stints; my highest number for an entire tankful of gas was 85 mpg.
Then, after another time-slowing year-long wait, when my MINI arrived, slow driving was a thing of the past. My foot is often hard on the right pedal--but I'm not using a drop or petroleum.
One unintended consequence of switching from a 5-speed manual transmission Insight to a single-gear "automatic" MINI: now my clutch-averse wife can drive the fun car in the family and I often find myself sitting in the passenger seat.
