24 cars blue sky: Junkyard Find: 2001 Honda Insight

09 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin Since we started out this week with a relatively late-model Junkyard Find, I'm going to jump into the 21st century and share the first Honda Insight I've ever found in a high-inventory-turnover, self-service wrecking yard. I've seen a few thoroughly stripped early Priuses and didn't think they were worth photographing, but the tiny two-seater first-gen Insight made the Prius look like a fuel-swilling pig and that makes it a much more interesting car to me. 61 highway miles per gallon, all sorts of advanced aluminum components, and a coefficient of drag of just 0.25… and yet this one couldn't stay clear of The Crusher.

The Insight has started to catch on with the top-speed guys at Speed Week at Bonneville, but the fastest one of all wrecked in spectacular fashion at El Mirage last November (the driver survived, thanks to a serious roll cage). We'll be sure to see more such LSR Insights in the future, which might push up the value of the handful of Insights that get scrapped.
03 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin

03 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin

This one has been picked over pretty well. The battery packs in these cars have become old enough to need replacing in many cases, and that's not a cheap repair.
01 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin

01 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin

This Denver yard gets a lot of its merchandise from local police auctions, and it's possible that this car was a DUI or unpaid-parking-tickets impound.
05 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin

05 - 2001 Honda Insight Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin

You can pick up a running first-gen Insight in decent condition for $4000-$7000 these days, and we can expect that price to drop as fewer Americans become willing to drive a cramped, goofy-looking two-seater in the name of extreme fuel economy.

Here's a JDM promotional film for the '99 Insight.

Teach those polluting hippies with their ill-adjusted valves and 25-mpg VW Transporters a thing or two about saving the planet! Walk the walk, longhair!