In fact, driving the Insight is not much different from driving any other compact. If you drive it normally it is a relatively spirited small two-seater coupe. It is not a sports car, but it is perfectly capable of keeping up with and passing traffic. (We found it could cruise comfortably at 80 mph, where it feels quite stable.) The big difference is that you end up getting between 50 and 60 miles per gallon without trying to drive in an economical fashion.

On the other hand, if you start to learn new habits and follow the small arrow on the dash that tells you when to upshift or downshift you'll end up getting 70 or more miles per gallon. At first, driving the car in the most economical mode is disconcerting. The engine stops running when ever you come to a stop, as long as you put the gearshift into neutral and don't leave it in gear with the clutch in. As soon as you select a gear the engine restarts instantly, and moves off again in the normal manner as you engage the clutch.

On the highway one has to get used to the perception that the engine is lugging. It seems as if it needs to be downshifted into a lower gear most of the time. In fact it can be left in the higher gear as suggested by the upshift light as the electric motor adds torque as needed.

Insight handles quite nicely with a good ride for a small car. It has really skinny low-rolling resistance tires that make it look under-tired. Narrow tires don't offer the grip of wider tires, but a car as light as Insight doesn't need a lot of grip, and we had no complaints about how it cornered. You do feel and hear all the bumps on rough roads. The steering feels solid with some road feel and is not over assisted. The manual gearshift is smooth.

The optional continuously variable transmission drives like a conventional automatic, while providing a theoretically infinite number of "gear" ratios to optimize engine performance and efficiency. It retains the stop-idle feature of the manual-transmission model. EPA-estimated fuel economy suffers a little, dropping from the manual Insight's 60/66 city/highway rating to 57/56. In this way the automatic Insight is more comparable to the automatic-only Toyota Prius, at 60/51 city/highway mpg.