Good morning! Today on Shitbox Showdown, we’re taking a look at a couple of fuel-saving economy cars, and you’ll be relieved to hear they both run and drive. We’ll get to them in a minute, but first let’s answer yesterday’s MG authenticity question:
And it’s the rough but restorable MGA coupe by a landslide. The old-timers in my MG club will be so pleased to hear it. Gotta keep the faith, and no jumped-up German economy car in a fiberglass suit is gonna do that.
Now then: Gas is expensive. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. Some of us feel the pain worse than others; I have two vehicles that I use regularly, and one of them averages about 15 miles per gallon, and the other gets about 21. It doesn’t matter because I love them both, for reasons more important than economy, and I’m not giving up either one of them just because they’re a little thirsty. But I can respect the desire for a lower fuel bill. And the less fuel you burn, the less exhuast you put out, and that’s good too. In that spirit, I’ve found a pair of two-seater fuel-sippers for us to look at; let’s see which one you’d rather have.
2009 Smart Fortwo Passion – $3,400
Engine/drivetrain: 1.0 liter dual overhead cam inline 3, five-speed automated manual, RWD
Location: Alameda, CA
Odometer reading: 137,000 miles
Runs/drives? Yep!
One thing I didn’t count on when I started this gig was how much research I end up having to do. It’s bad enough when I get a detail wrong about a car and a reader calls me out on it, requiring a mea culpa, but there’s extra pressure to get things exactly right when the car in question is the apple of another Autopian writer’s eye. If I get a VW Beetle detail wrong, Torch is on me like cheese on macaroni. Mix up a Jeep transmission, and I never hear the end of it from David. (And you don’t even want to know how Gossin reacts to a Chrysler Sebring flub.) Now, finally, it’s Mercedes’s turn to get all pedantic at me, because a Smart has finally found its way to a Shitbox Showdown.
The Smart is one of those cars that, to me, always seemed better in theory than in execution. It’s cute as a bug, and the engineering and packaging are genius, but the fact that they were only able to eke out 40 mpg or so from it is kind of disappointing. Equally disappointing is the lack of a clutch pedal (in this generation, anyway) in a rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive car. Now, I confess that I’ve never driven one, so it may be more fun than I imagine, but it always seemed like it should either be more fun, or more efficient.
It does look awfully nice inside, at least. This is the upscale “Passion” model, with some extra goodies over the basic car, including a pair of inviting-looking leather seats. Outisde, it looks to be in quite good shape, but it also has had some repairs done from a minor altercation. One headlight and one front body panel have been replaced. In a couple of the photos, one headlight looks a little less cloudy than the other, so I guess that’s the new one.
The Mitsubishi-sourced 1.0 liter three-cylinder engine is said to run just fine, and the car has newer tires. There’s a lot of brake dust on the front wheels, so you might want to check the pads, but otherwise it looks pretty good. I’d have to check with our resident Smart expert, but if you want one, this seems like a good choice, and a fair price.
2000 Honda Insight – $2,400
Engine/drivetrain: 1.0 liter overhead cam inline 3, electric motor assist, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Antioch, CA
Odometer reading: 190,000 miles
Runs/drives? Sure does!
Honda, of course, is no stranger to small fuel-efficient cars. The company made its name with the super-efficient and clean-running (for its time) Civic CVCC engine, culminating in the CRX HF, which managed to be not only efficient but sporty and fun to drive. In the late 1990s, Honda managed to one-up its own creation with this car, the Insight, rated at an astonishing 61 miles per gallon on the highway. To achieve this, Honda threw every trick in the book at the Insight: light weight, aerodynamics, a tiny engine, and a newly-developed hybrid drive system.
The Insight is what’s commonly known as a “mild hybrid” – it has both a gasoline engine and an electric motor, but it isn’t capable of driving on electric power alone. The motor is in between the engine and the five-speed manual transmission; it adds thirteen horsepower on acceleration and acts as a generator to charge the nickel-metal hydride battery pack in the trunk when you let off the gas. The engine also shuts off at stoplights to conserve even more fuel.
This first-year Insight has seen some things. It has 190,000 miles on the clock, and it’s pretty beat-up and faded. It’s missing its rear wheel skirts, which probably adds a tiny bit of aerodynamic drag, but not around town at least. It runs and drives well, and just passed a smog test.
The question here is the same question that is starting to enter the conversation in all electric and hybrid vehicles: the condition of the battery pack. The advantage of the Insight is that if the battery pack is toast, it will still run and drive just fine, only with less power. There’s a lot of information online about replacing or rebuilding the battery pack if it needs it. And at only $2,400, you’ve got some wiggle room in the budget.
It’s almost never worth buying a different car to save on gas. But if you’re looking for a cheap car anyway, and you want to use less fuel, something like one of these might make some sense. Which one looks more appealing to you?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
It’s a Honda in California with a manual transmission and a lower price. The obvious choice.
Mercedes can have the Smart
and it passed smog, that means the IMA battery may be working good or it has the hack to bypass it and still pass smog testing
I wouldn’t even take the Smart! It’s like twice as expensive as it should be. Yeah yeah, the used market sucks, but three years ago I paid $1,400 for more or less this exact car with fewer miles.
So if Mercedes wont take it who are the 242 bus pass owning voters who are voting smartfor none?
Definitely the Smart for me. That poor Insight looks like it needs the Old Yeller treatment.
Insight for sure.
As an EV conversion, it would only need about 150-180 Wh/mile with an AC drive system. You could go far on not a very big or expensive battery pack. If the battery and/or engine in the car failed, this would be a way to give this car a second life that is probably longer than its first.
You could also K-swap it and make a lovely little hoonabout that still gets 40+ mpg, but will perform faster than most performance cars under $100,000.
Some folks down below mentioned the possibility of ‘busa swapping the smart car. I’d love to see a road race between a HayabuSmart and an insighKt.
K-sight would blow it’s doors off. Go on youtube.
Smart, please.
It would be a fantastic car for a family member to drive around the retirement community, get groceries, etc. There is very little chance of attempted hoonage and it would be easy to park.
If the Insight were in as good condition as the Smart, it would win – but it isn’t. It has had a rough life with a lot more miles. The Smart apparently was bumped at some point but the owner repaired it; the Insight looks unloved.
The Smart Fortwo Passion would have sold more units if it were called the Smart Passion Fortwo, and had a roomier back seat.
I would rather have the Honda, but a nicer one than this one. It appears to have been abused by a teen or a meth addict. The Smart car looks too much like a bowling ball.
Nah i would go all out and spring for a changli. You must hate your elders?
Neither. I’m not voting. Yuck.
Thanks for taking the time to tell us that.
Insight. Insight all day, every day. There is so much misinformation out there about the IMA/Hybrid batteries on the Honda, I hope to clear that up in this post. But first, metrics:
Speed: Insight
MPG: Insight
Handling: Insight
Reliability: Insight
I cannot fathom any reason to buy a smart car, and I don’t even understand why they exist. They aren’t even efficient.
I picked up a 2000 Insight back in 2013 for $3000 with a “non working” IMA system. I bought a grid charger, and brought it back to life. In the past 10 years, I have put over 100k miles on it, and all I’ve needed to do was replace 2 front control arms, a temp sender in the head, clean the EGR plate and replace a coil. That’s it. Everything works. Still gets 52mpg with SNOW tires, and 60+ with my HX wheels and skinny summers.
Oh, and just to spread the word about batteries, you do NOT need to rebuild them; Honda hybrids of this era used NiCad battery chemistry, you need to do a deep discharge like once a year. I did this video a few years ago showing how to do it with an extension cord, a piece of scrap wood, a $3 light fixture, and a light bulb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9dUnq8NxUs
It makes a MASSIVE difference in the usability of the pack, and after installing my grid charger, I’m convinced my pack is original to the car, 23 years old, and 300k miles on it. The sheer # of packs that have been pulled and scrapped/recycled/replaced because they got out of ‘balance’ is pretty sad.
At this point, the Insight has been by far the most reliable car I’ve ever owned, and paid for itself so many times over it’s silly. Would I want one as my ONLY car? No. But as a 2nd or 3rd car, man, they are fantastic cars.
A Smart car is about as efficient as a Corolla, but you get a lot less car in every measure.
Oh man I forgot the primary reason I bought the insight in the first place: The entire chassis is aluminum (same factory as NSX!), and will never rust out. After going through multiple 80s/90s hondas that died mainly due to salt/corrosion, the Insight is a game changer. 23 winters later and still looks perfect.
Honda lost money on every insight sold, that’s the reason they never did this again.
Bingo. Love my 2000MT
“I cannot fathom any reason to buy a smart car, and I don’t even understand why they exist.”
They are easy to park. They are presumably nice vehicles if you live in a dense city and can parallel park in small spaces that normal cars can’t fit in.
I am not a fan of the Fortwo, but for a small subset of drivers they probably make sense.
An insight is pretty easy to park too tho.
The Insight is 155 inches long vs 98 inches for the Fortwo. The Smart is the size of a wide motorcycle. You can’t beat the Smart for ease of parking.
I agree the Insight is the more desirable vehicle for people living outside of Manhattan or San Francisco, though.
So if I am reading your comment correctly, the reason to buy the Smart over The Insight is so you can easily park the Smart instead of being seen driving it? I agree with your facts but not your premise.
It’s not Smart car easy to park, though. The Smart’s small enough that it’ll fit into spots that nobody else will take because there’s a pole in the way, or the cars on either side are over the line. In any given large packed parking lot, there’s going to be a crappy spot the Smart will fit into that most cars (even the Insight) won’t.
I’d say that reliability is realistically a toss-up. I’ve spent maybe $500 keeping my 2012 Smart alive over 160,000 miles and the other four Smarts have maybe $1,000 in repairs between them.
Much like you’re here to clear up misinformation about the Insight, I will clear up misinformation about Smarts. The gassers were never meant to be economy cars. These cars were designed to make city driving and parking easier for Europeans with some Swatch watch-inspired flair. They make sense in places like Chicago or San Francisco where your whole neighborhood has to street park. I’ve gotten mine in places no Insight will ever fit.
Now, the ones that were meant to be efficient were the diesels. Those beat the Insight on fuel economy (70 mpg), but galaxy brain Smart USA thought that people in the U.S. wouldn’t want them.
Okay not meant to be efficient but with a car so small, and minimal cargo space they couldnt put a decent efficient motor a hybrid, or something to make it better? I mean really it is a golf cart 20 more mpg would be a snap. Figure the insight that Honda lost money on that means it was worth more. Sure this one is beat up but make a buggy out of it. Get it to 80mpg.
You’re in the midwest. I sense smart car vs Insight showdown. Bring it!
I’ll take the Smart with a Hayabusa swap. There’s actually a company that manufactures rear subframes for the Smart that bolt in a motorcycle engine.
Voted Honda even though the IMA system was garbage and the battery is all but guaranteed dead unless it was recently replaced, but I see that as a positive: rip out that crap and swap in almost any other contemporary Honda engine for pretty cheap. New skirts or fab some panels to hide the exposed clip areas, tires that aren’t eco tires, headlights, and maybe a cheap paint job and it should be a fun, economical runner.
Not true. Probably just out of balance. Grid charger + deep discharge and it will likely come back to life.
My BiL had a POS early Civic hybrid that ate 2 batteries in under 150k miles. Honda ate the first one, which and they junked it for the second. It was dog slow even with the battery, got only slightly better mileage than my mother’s regular Civic, had a smaller trunk, and was rusted like it was built 10 years earlier. Someone who has the time and wants to honk on old junk tech for a subpar result can deal with balancing or whatever other BS.
And he didn’t have a grid charger, did he? That dealership junked a perfectly good battery that was just out of balance.
Not gonna lie, I’m not particularly enthused about either of these particular examples. I suppose if you put a gun to my head, I’d take the Insight. Cosmetically it’s much rougher (which is usually a no go for me) and it has more miles. However, I have more faith in the longetivity/reliability of the Honda over the Smart.
I also agree with you that the Smart just makes too many compromises to make it worth it. It gets marginally better gas mileage than my Chevy Cruze, but it only seats two people, requires premium gas and is incredibly slow. At least with the insight you’re able to seat five and get truly phenomenal rather than just “okay” gas mileage, plus you get a far superior transmission.
Both of these cars are dogs, but doing some cursory research it seems that the Smart is way slower than the Insight. I never personally really cared for the looks of the Smart either but that’s just a personal preference. Always thought these little Hondas looked cool in a quirky, charming kind of way.
First gen Insight is a two-seater, but still great!
Thanks for the correction! One less pro, but I’d still choose the insight haha.
I want an insight to keep my crx hf from getting lonely
Honda for me. I may be a touch biased as I bought an insight during the pandemic as gambler 500 car and ended up liking it enough to not gamble it and just daily it. My interior was worse than the one in the ad. Pro tip, the seat covers come off pretty easy and you can put them in your washing machine, mine cleaned up so nice after a cycle.
Some observations from ownership, the 61mpg highway is easy to hit, I went from SE Michigan to Chicago and back on a single tank last fall with the AC on and cruising at 75ish mph, no need to hypermile and be a rolling roadblock. Also I cannot confirm or deny that the car is pretty stable at 106mph.
Fun fact, the hatch floor, middle battery firewall behind the seats, and passenger dash connect in a straight line. You can fit 8ft lumber in with three points of contact and all doors and windows closed. Great home depot run car.
In 2014 or so, I drove from Madison WI to Denver, CO, went skiing for 3 days, and drove it back. For under $100 in gas. Thing is nuts.
There’s really nothing smart about a Smart. You nailed it with “it should either be more fun, or more efficient”. Or it should be bigger with more interior space or more efficient. Or it should be cheaper or more efficient. Easy vote for the Honda for me.
In bygone days I drove both: the Smart was an OG version — pre-Mitsubishi and Penske — and was a hoot to scoot around in. I wanted one, even if they were legally Unobtainium. The “importer,” who was trying to sell them, couldn’t convince me he had the Feds’ approval….
And I also have not-so-fond memories of getting bogged down on a steepish uphill stretch of Interstate 15 in a shiny new Insight. It was relying solely on its gasoline mouse motor, sans battery assistance, so was barely making 45 mph. 18-wheelers were threatening to flatten me. Nice idea, pitiful execution. Pretty sure my Honda 600 would have outrun it.
So I’d take the Smart. Not perfect, but dandy in the village where I currently live. And perky.
Downshift, man. Little 1 liter Vtec only puts out that 60hp at higher RPM.
I DID downshift! Hell, I was ready to grab third, or simply pull over and walk home.
NGL I did have that experience once in my insight, going to Winter Park on Berthoud pass. After turning off I70 and heading north on I40, I was in 2nd gear, foot to the floor, barely getting passed by Semis. But like… that was at … like… 11k above sea level. At that elevation the car only had 40hp or so. It DID make it up tho! 😀
The Honda is the winner by default. Honda makes awesome cars 🙂
It’s rough outside and a little grungy on the inside, but the Honda wins here. Also, I assumed Mercy was on her way to California to buy the Smart, so figured it didn’t need the votes.
Voting Smart in honor of Mercedes!
I sat in a Smart at NAIAS a few years ago and what I was most surprised by was how roomy it was. That tiny car is like a TARDIS. Smart for me. Less miles, not sun cooked. And lets be honest neither car is “choice” (Sorry Mercedes!) so Smart it is!
I drove a Smart a few years ago and had a completely different view of interior room. It had plenty of legroom and headroom for me (I’m 6’1″), but lateral room was limited. My right arm and shoulder were over the passenger seat. It was comfortable enough with only me in the car, but adding a passenger of any size would have been a problem. It seems like so many reviews focus on headroom and legroom of cars (and airplane seats, for that matter), but ignore lateral/shoulder room.
I voted for the Smart, but only because the Honda isn’t any bigger and this particular Insight is terrible.
I’m 6′ and not a small guy either and I didn’t notice the lateral issues. I’m broad shouldered and my Cruze (at the time) felt smaller. Now I drive an SUV (hateful but useful for sure) and none of those issue exist anymore. lol
It is interesting the Cruze felt smaller. I owned a Civic at the time I drove the Smart and recalled thinking the Civic seemed more spacious. I had headroom issues in the Civic, but I could have a larger person in the passenger seat without much difficulty.
I may be remembering things incorrectly since my one and only drive in a Fortwo was around 2010. I also drive the Civic for around 130,000 miles, so I had plenty of time to get used to that car.
You hit the nail on the head with your comments on the Smart. I couldn’t believe they weren’t able to get better than 40 mpg out of that rolling compromise. I hate the looks of it, but always thought the structure was a neat bit of engineering. I really like the Honda, though. That little tadpole has really grown on me over the years, and love that it has a manual. The plant manager at my first company had one, and put a TON of miles on it with zero issues. He was even able to get Honda to pitch in for a new battery when the time came. I don’t care that it is a bit rough. I’ll take the Honda, today.
I went with the Smart. I was going to go for the Insight because Honda but I can’t get over how rough it looks. I get that in this price range that I shouldn’t expect much but damn if that Smart doesn’t look like a cleaner around town car.
These are both little engineering experiments by their respective manufacturers with small but rabidly loyal fan-bases.
So… a Benz with a notoriously derided transmission or a beat up Honda with a 5spd and the best ever drag coefficient in a production car?
Maybe it’s not Smart but I would go with Insight.
I’ve only ridden and driven a Smart once, a Brabus no less. It was certainly entertaining as long as you were going at speed. Getting there though highlighted it’s biggest flaw, the transmission. The shifts on that thing felt like they took a solid 2 Mississippis every time. It was infuriating.
For that reason I’m out. Honda floats to the top on this one.
I selected the Smart as a run around town/short commute car .It is actually complete compared to the Honda.
I like little cars, and both of these are up my alley. All things being equal, I’d take an insight, but in this case, all things don’t look very equal. The Smart is in better condition and looks less rough. The price difference sort of reflects that, but not quite enough to change my mind. Smart it is.
I voted for the Honda before Ms Streeter can get in here and start twisting arms to get votes for the Smart. I’m too quick for ya, Mercedes!!!
I’d take the Smart but I don’t know if I’d fit in it as a full size American.
I’m 5′ 10″ and when I last drove a Smart back in 2019 or so I was probably pushing 400 lbs and I was able to fit no problem along with my normal-sized wife. I strongly considered getting a nice used one back in 2020 simply because they are SO EASY TO PARK (here in NYC that’s worth a lot). However, the concept of taking one on a road trip of any length made me sad. If I could be fairly assured of reliability (a big if) I would strongly consider getting one as a runabout and just renting when I need to take a trip. Probably would have been a better financial decision than buying a new car…