2011 Honda CR-Z consumer reviews

I love my new Honda CRZ or Zed as Our local dealership calls them. ( when they said that all I could think of was Bruce Willis's quote from Pulp Fiction Zed's Dead ) Well after driving it Zed is most definitely NOT Dead! I drive it back and forth to work every day and I have to force myself to slow down on the interstate lest I get a ticket. I try to stay under 75 but this sweet little ride just wants to go 85 or more without even trying. My Crz hums along , smooth and quiet. Though I must admit to cranking the tunes on my iPhone , the factory system with the sub rocks awesomely enough for me. I stay in normal mode most of the time . averaging between 33 - 38 mpg . I travel round trip about 25- 30 miles a day. I could probably increase my mpg by switching to Eco mode while in town. My only complaint is the noted blind spot but if you adjust your mirrors properly and double check before switching lanes you should be fine. This is my second Honda , I had an Element before and traded it in on a Chevy Cobalt Sport but now I'm back to a Honda for the dependability and mpg as well as the sporty look and feel of my CRZ .

I bought the 6 speed EX-w/ navi. Fun to drive. Gets great comments and loads of looks. I already know if the newer version is a non-Hybrid my wife will be driving this one and yours truely will be getting a new car. I had several of the CRX Si models in the 90's and hoped this would be the same. It's close, but not the same. Love the exterior and most of the interior. It still a blast to drive but Honda, please offer a non Hybrid model. Thanks for making driving fun again!

Awful rear vision Harsh ride Much road noise Mediocre milage 34-35 Peppy in sport mode Turns heads everywhere You can pump the driver's seat height up or down Great handling Chicks love it............

So many things wrong with this car. First its low to the ground. It has no side viewing to the right and has a terrible blind side. I guess as to right a right turn. Its motor is very loud like a rumble. The hight of the car is low. I'm 5'6" and I just make the top of car. The mpg is not what I thought. On Econ it just get 34 mpg. No arm rest. I made a bad choice on this car.

Continued from part 1... So I like the style, the luxuries, the shifting, the ride and the economy of my CR-Z. What don't I like? Well, it does have a massive blind spot to the rear. But adjusting your mirrors properly addresses that. The HID low beams do not light up the road very far in front of you and are a disappointingn upgrade as part of the EX model. And then there is the second "Hybrid" part of the car, the electric motor and batteries. While some would define the CR-Z by this part of it's hybrid. And I suppose that is why some are so disappointed by it. Contrary to other posts made here, the batteries don't weigh 400 pounds they weigh 83 pounds and the entire hybrid system weighs about 175 pounds. But I do think that this 175 pounds, while adding some to the car's fuel economy, really doesn't earn it's keep. I say this because the other car my wife and I drive is a 2009 Honda fit. And our Fit manages 35 mpg and offers a bit faster acceleration than the CR-Z. I believe that had the CR-Z simply been equipped with the same power plant as the Fit, it would have achieved at least 35 mpg for us and would have been 175 pounds lighter and would have had even a bit more cargo space, as the batteries are housed below the spare tire under the cargo floor. Having said that, I still get a kick out of the hybrid part of the CR-Z and am amused by it's regenerative battery system and Internal Motor Assist. I think the CR-Z could have been a bit better a car with a different power plant and hope that maybe someday there wil be a sport or type R edition offering more power at the expense of fuel economy. But in no way am I disappointed in this car. It is fun to drive, gets great fuel economy and is a certifiable bargain at it's $19,950 to $23,950 price point. All in all the CR-Z is a very good, if not quite great, little car. And this is a secret that only owners are likely to know.

I have owned dozens of really great cars, from the Acura NSX, to the original CRXsi, to Porsche, 911s and Boxsters, to the BMW M-Roadster to the current generation Honda Fit. I am not certain that the CR-Z has earned it's spot among these iconic cars, but it definitely hold it's own among sporty economy cars I owned like the second generation RX-7, second gen MR-2 turbo and various Toyota Celicas and current gen MINI Cooper. What seems to be the source of so much controversy about the CR-Z is the word "hybrid". To some this word alone implies that the cars single mission must be ultimate fuel economy. Then Honda also dares to call this car "sports" and to some this seems to mean it must out accelerate a Corvette or whatever your benchmark for a sports car is. But for me the CR- Z is hybrid of a sports car and an economy car. And in that role it fits just fine. It looks sporty, shifts as well as any sports car I have owned and gets better fuel economy than any other car I have owned. Sports hybrid is fine by me. The number one feature of the CRZ is its style. It has a unique style that looks nothing like anything else on the market. You either love it, or you don't. For me the style works and I like that it carries forward the unique style and utility of the orginal CRX. But that is where the similarities of these two cars end. The original, ultra economy, CRZ was designed to be a super light weight economy car with no additional frills. The ride was rough but it's light weight paid the dividends of great gas mileage and super fun handling when trashed about. By comparison the CR-Z is more like a personal luxury car that includes many luxuries and safety features never even thought of in the era of the CRX. It rides much better than a CRX, but in return loses that scalpel like handling that was possible from the CRX. And in today's safety ruled car regulations a lightweight runabout like the CRX will never again be sold by any major car manufacturer. My wife and I are averaging 38 mpg from our CR-Z. And this is also just about the overall average among the 75 or so CR-Z owners reporting their real world fuel economy on the CRZforum message board. And while there are very few cars on the road that can compete with that, some critics think this makes the CR-Z a failure because it cannot match the fuel economy of a Prius or that of the original Honda Insight. To this I would point out that the fuel savings from getting 50 mpg instead of 38 mpg amounts to 95 gallons over 15,000 miles. Or exactly the same amount of fuel saving from getting 22.9 mpg instead of 20 mpg. And who would call one car a failure because it gets 20 mpg instead of 22.9 mpg? I love the fact that the CRZ is a two seater with lots of cargo space. This makes it a very practical car for my lifestyle. But it also ensures that CR-Zs will never sell in big numbers because most people need or want that back seat. And that is just fine by me because I would rather drive something unique. I would second all that SethDove previously posted about the comparison of the CR-Z to the MINI. We owned 2 MINIs over the past 8 years and while they were stylish and fun, reliability is not a trait that one could ever associate with a MINI. But I can feel secure that the CR-Z is pure Honda reliability wise. Continued in part 2

I first saw an ad for this car over a year ago and decided I wanted it then. Once they came out, it still took 3 months to get the model that I wanted. It was worth the wait. This car is fun and sporty. I'm getting really good gas mileage so far. I realized when I test drove the car that it has bad blind spots. I'm willing to live with that!

Some reviewer claimed the battery pack on this car weighs 400-pounds, and another claims it adversely effects handling. One wonders what would happen to this car if you sold the battery pack to a needy Insight owner, and ran it sans battery pack? Would it handle better? Would performance suffer much with the decreased weight? Horsepower to weight ratio would be roughly equal to my 1981 Prelude without the battery; how bad could it be?

The new CRZ has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Here's a car that gets mediocre mileage for a hybrid, is just about dead last performance wise, and only seats two. Whats the point of that rear window anyway. It's so flat, the only thing you can see out of it is the sky and you're forced to use the smaller rear window which impedes visibility. For 24k there are many better cars around.

My husband and I bought our 2011 CR-Z at the end of Sept 2010, about a month after they were released in the USA. We live in Boston, where parking is a challenge at best, and put a decent number of miles on our car, so we wanted something small & easy to park with reasonable gas mileage. The CR-Z is a great fit for us. We rarely drive anyone other than ourselves, so having just 2 seats has not been a problem. We used to have a Civic coupe, and the CR-Z is smaller on the outside, but just as roomy (if not even more comfortable) on the inside. The car has the 3 modes: econ, normal & sport mode. For commuting, we generally use the econ mode, but the sport mode is great for accelerating. The CR-Z is not a muscle car sportscar, so you don't have the huge engine with lots of power behind it, but that also means it's not a gas guzzler. Sport mode is fine for our acceleration needs. We're averaging about 38 mpg with a mix of city & highway driving. The paddle shifters on the steering wheel are fun & reminiscent of our previous BMW 1-series. My in-laws loved our car so much, they went out & purchased one a few weeks after we got ours (and they haven't driven anything smaller than a pickup or SUV in 15+ years!).