Honda dealer in California told me that lease returned Insights are being taken by Honda itself.
I am interested in buying one of those and could you advise me as to where I should find one (lease returns)?
I may not be eager to buy at places like Hertz.
Have you tried another dealer?
Whatever Honda’s policy is, all its franchisees will all be bound by it. However it is possible that the guy you spoke with was under a misunderstanding. Unlikely, but possible.
I suppose that someone who purchased a Honda Insight outright may trade it in for a larger car and not necessarily at a Honda dealer or may try to sell it without going through a dealer.
I didn’t know that rental agencies like Hertz had Insights in their fleets. However, sometimes cars from rental fleets can be good purchases. I would doubt that a person renting a Honda Insight from Hertz (if Hertz rents such vehicles) would go drag racing.
Possibly Honda or their finance arm is taking the cars to dealer auction? You might check with a few more dealers in the area just to be sure
Honda seems to have a patter with energy efficient cars - lease only - fuel cell car.
So when I was told that the leased Insights are being taken over by Honda, I assumed that was true. Let me call few more dealers.
They might be taken back by Honda, and probably in fact always remained owned by Honda during the lease, but the still have to do something with them. They may want to re-distribute them to certain dealers for some reason such as rewards for making sales goals or in places where they will move faster, or in places where they want to compete more with other brands. Surely though one way or another they will be ending up on some dealer lots.
The Fit EV is a lease only vehicle just like the fuel cell car, The insight is part of the regular honda line and can be purchased outright just like the Accord and Civic hybrids. The dealer probably either didn’t want to pay what Honda wanted to get for the cars or just preferred to not have too many used Insights on the lot. Lease returns are usually desired by dealers (one owner, low miles) but not all models are equally desired by dealers.