(24 Sep 04)

Earlier in the year, Honda UK set out to find the owner of whichever of its petrol/electric hybrids which had covered the greatest mileage since new. Matt Partridge - appropriately enough a development director in the wind farm industry - knew his Insight coupé had done 103,000 miles (on the original battery), contacted the company, and has now been acknowledged as the competition winner.

Competition, because the original idea was that the owner of the highest-mileage car would have it swapped for a new Civic IMA, with the latest petrol/electric Integrated Motor Assist hybrid powertrain. However, Matt turned the offer down - at least, he said he'd rather have a new Insight instead, and that's what he got.

In the last four years, Honda has sold 75,000 hybrid cars world-wide, most of them Civics, with the UK one of the most important markets. It sells more Civic IMAs here than at home in Japan, and is the UK leader in that rarefied market segment.

There's absolutely no detailed information available about this - design, price, launch date or anything else - but Honda says that "at some point in the future" we'll see a new IMA model specifically styled for Europe.

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