Honda Goes After Toyota Prius With Insight Lease Deal
By Michelle Krebs February 11, 2010Honda, unlike General Motors, Ford and Hyundai, has steered clear of incentives aimed at 
specifically and blatantly at luring would-be Toyota buyers to their folds as Toyota struggles with quality and image problems.
Honda is, however, offering an attractive sub $200-a-month lease deal on the Honda Insight, obviously to go up against the Toyota Prius, which has been recalled for brake problems. The deal is so good Edmunds.com has named the promotion its lease deal of the week.
Through March 1, Honda is advertising a lease payment of under $200 a month that combines a 12,000 mile/36-month limit with a residual of 63 percent and a lease rate of .00141. A $750 dealer cash rebate can also be combined with the special lease rate.
The downside to leasing a hybrid, Edmunds.com notes, is that it usually disqualifies the lesee from taking advantage of any federal or state tax credits. However, leasing is the least expensive way to get into a hybrid (from a monthly payment standpoint).
Honda reintroduced the Insight nameplate for the 2010 model year, in response to the success of the Toyota Prius. Despite a price advantage of several thousand dollars compared with the Prius, the Insight has struggled to make a dent in Prius sales. In January, Toyota Prius outsold the Insight by 8,484 to 1,307. That was before Toyota recalled the Prius, which happened just this week.
Edmunds.com's evaluation blames the Insight's losing battle to the Prius on its skimpy rear-seat room and its combined fuel economy of 41 mpg vs. the Prius' 50 mpg.
Honda may be betting its good lease deal versus Toyota's recall of the Prius may even the playing field a bit. -- Michelle Krebs, Senior Analyst and Editor at Large
Photo by Edmunds.com
Honda Insight, left, faces off against the Toyota Prius with a sub-$200-a-month lease deal.
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Michelle - you and Edmunds have made it sound like Honda is being nice and moral by "not taking advantage of Toyots recent quality issues". This is nonsense, The reason Honda did not join in was they knew they were going to announce 1 week later a massive recallf or their own fatal airbag issue.
It doesn`t take a genius to realise that "taking advantage of Toyota" one week and then following in their quality issue footsteps the week later would have made for even more bad press for Honda.
Please do not saintify Honda.
Also could it be that the Insight is not selling because of its poor design (interior, exterior) a well as interior plastic quality and lack of specification?
You say at the top of the article that Honda are not taking advanatge and then you go onto say that this is a great incentive meant to take on Toyota. So they are taking advantage. Please stop saying how wonderful, moral, upright Honda is for "not taking advantage".
guy,
The words you have in quotes don't appear in the article I read. Was it edited after you left your comments?
I think the exterior of the Insight is a major turnoff. As for the Prius the 2004-2009 looked good on the outside for what it was(after all the Prius is not supposed to be styled like a Mustang.) The interior in the 2010 Prius is pretty nice though. The front heard room looks generous from what I have seen of it.
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