Auto News 5

It's January and that means that its time for the annual three day extravaganza of world premieres that is the Detroit Auto Show.

So, I'm afraid I'm one of those people to whom our design editor, Robert Cumberford, refers in his column this month (page 16). You see, since I drove the new Insight in Arizona in early December, I've been telling my colleagues that Honda "copied the Prius" for the design of its new, second-generation Insight. Although I certainly defer to Cumberford's erudition (the man is a walking, talking encyclopedia of automotive history, especially as it pertains to car styling) and his assertion that designs for both the Prius and the Insight are in fact informed by research conducted in Germany some seven decades ago, I will still state this obvious fact: since its debut five years ago, the second-generation Prius has become the definitive shape for a hybrid car in America. It's little surprise, then, that Honda chose to ape the Prius's basic exterior design and packaging philosophy. After all, the first-generation Insight, which debuted in 1999, was an oddity: a tiny, side-skirted, skinny-tired two-seater that even fervent Honda fans could not wrap their heads around. Lesson learned, Honda wanted its new, second-generation Insight to be friendly rather than freaky, useful rather than nearly useless, and, most important, a sales winner. So, like both the existing Prius and the all-new, 2010 model seen in the following pages, the Insight is an aerodynamically optimized, four-door, five-passenger hatchback sedan.