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My 05 HCH experience

Created January 29, 2005, at 10:23 am by Anonymous

I bought my new HCH about six weeks ago. My previous car was an Accord.

Why HCH? Since I drive nearly 3k miles per month, I wanted an efficient car. I also wanted something environmentally-friendly, reasonably comfortable, and not more expensive to own than my Accord. The promise of great fuel economy, low emissions, and a nice price (17,987, incl. destination fee), convinced me to give the HCH a try. I chose the manual transmission, since I do a lot of highway driving and felt that the manual HCH would have the advantage there.

How has the HCH been so far?

Overall, the car is surprisingly comfortable for a small car, more so than the conventional Civic or Corolla. I'm about six feet tall, with long legs, but room is not a problem. There is less power overall, but that only means more downshifting when climbing hills or passing - not a major issue for me. The automatic climate control is a nice surprise. The trunk is smaller than my old Accord, and the back seat area has less room, but I live alone, so that is not an issue. I don't feel that I had to give up very much in order to save fuel and lower emissions!

I've gotten to like the instant mpg readout in the dash, and I know that I have adjusted my driving a bit because of it. Just as a point of reference, I was getting 34-37 mpg with my Accord (28-34 in winter). My mpg so far with the HCH has ranged from 42 to 51 mpg, with 45-46 being most typical. I live in a small Maine town, it's been cold this month, and my mpg has always been lower (by 10-25%) in winter, so I find this encouraging. I'll see how I do once spring gets here!

I do have one complaint about the HCH. My OEM tires (Bridgestone B381) have poor traction in snow. Yes, they're all-seasons and not snow tires, but the Michelins on my Accord were better than this. I wanted to get Nokian WR's, but I couldn't get them in the HCH size, so I got Nokian NRW's (WR is a newer version of NRW), which can be used throughout the year but are excellent in snow. I think there's been a slight decrease in mpg (maybe 1-2), but I'm a lot safer!

Overall, I would heartily recommend the HCH, with the advice that anyone driving in snow consider getting other tires.

Downeaster16 (living on the eastern edge of the USA!)