Autocar has a pic of the '09 Honda Insight. Five doors, Ã la Prius, this time.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/Honda-Concepts/234832/
Man, I can just see the marketing brief on that one. So, take a Prius, put some bigger wheels on it, oh and a Honda like grill… the roofline looks like it was cut an paste. Perhaps aerodynamics and packaging forced it that way?
It is an improvement. So why can’t hybrid specific car that is mass produced just look cool? or Lux? Why do they feel the need to be nerd mobiles? Maybe it is the target audience, judging by the folks I see rolling on 13’s in their Priusi, it’s working!
Maybe this thing looks rad in person. gulp…
The high trunk is certainly resulting from aerodynamics. The rest is from a boring marketing brief, I think.
This is another reason I am liking GM more and more. The Volt seems like it will be a breath of fresh air into the hybrid market.
I’m not sold on the teaser shots of the production volt… it looks like it may have gotten a bit nerd centric and not in a geek chic way. We’ll see. I’m pulling for it to be awesome. The concept car was pretty darn cool.
Wow, I was just skimming through this and it took me all the way through this thread, the jump to the article and finally the blown up pictures before it dawned on my this wasn’t a new prius. I was like wow toyota is totally picking up on the euro LED headlight eyebrow thing. It really looks like the next logical step for a prius.
I’m not impressed by the styling. Very derivative of the Prius.
On the other hand, Toyota has shown a new exterior design for the '09 Prius. It has the same roofline and proportions, but somehow they made it look pretty sporty (sorry I can’t retrieve a pic due to the firewall at work).
Honestly I’m feeling let down by Honda’s styling lately. I was very impressed with the latest Civic, but all of the other refreshed models are looking clunky to me.