Who's the daddy in the war of the hybrids? Get a diesel, says Clarkson
Honda's new 'Insight' , the undisputed heavyweight champion of hybrid cars, but safe to say that neither model has found a fan in arch car critic Jeremy Clarkson.
Hybrids - cars that have both a petrol and an electric motor and switch between the two for maximum efficiency - are already big business. Sales of the Prius exceed one-and-a-quarter million globally, and Toyota has just launched the third generation of the model to much fanfare and bragging about record advance sales.
'We are resting the future of cars in this model,' says Toyota's president Akio Toyoda. Honda have taken the bait and launched the less expensive Insight - about £3,000 less expensive - in a bid to seize a chunk of the market.
Clarkson, however, has coloured himself unimpressed. He describes the Insight as '.'
Among the many defects to offend his eye (and ear) is the engine noise: 'It's worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you'd have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.' (Please don't try this at home.)
Not that the Prius fared any better when Clarkson gave it the Top Gear (correction: not Top Gear, but a Clarkson DVD) treatment. 'Godawful ... this is one of my least favourite cars in the world because as far as I can see it appeals on no levels at all,' he said, before driving it into the desert and having a redneck called Billy Bob destroy it with a .
He then pours scorn on the Prius's claims to efficiency and suggests that buying a diesel VW Golf will give you better overall fuel economy.
But that's not to say that everyone on Top Gear is implacably opposed to a greener form of motoring. We've already blogged on James May's infatuation with the hydrogen powered Honda FCX Clarity, so maybe they are really resting their vision of the 'future of motoring' somewhere else entirely.
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