Iowans will see a new breed of hybrid cars starting this fall, but they will have to look closely, as the new hybrids appear to be more comparable to vehicles that Americans are already driving.

Pat Miller, new car sales manager for Jordan Honda in Ames, said he is expecting a lot of traffic at the dealership when its first Honda Accord Hybrids start to arrive later this year. He thinks that people appreciate the direction Honda has taken since it introduced its first hybrid, the Insight, to the public, later followed by a hybrid Civic.

Similarly, Stephanie Scott with Dewey Ford in Ankeny said she is fielding a lot of requests for information about the Ford Escape Hybrid, which is also supposed to arrive in showrooms before year’s end.

“There’s no doubt that the hybrid concept is going more mainstream,” Miller said. “When we receive the Accord, I think the interest will just explode from there. It will allow the family of four to have a hybrid as their main car.”

Up until now, the hybrid models such as the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius have typically appealed to childless or empty-nester couples, such as Stu and Nadine Calhoon and Cheryl Cibula and her husband, J.P. Golinvaux. The Calhoons bought their 2001 Toyota Prius used and have driven it for almost a year now. Stu said their motivation for buying a hybrid was fueled by their desire to protect the environment.

“We’ve always driven economy cars as much as possible, and we’ve been interested in the hybrid idea since we became clear that it was a viable thing,” Stu said. “It was perhaps, more money than we should have spent, but it was a sacrifice we could rationalize.”

But, the Calhoons have not sacrificed comfort or luxury by buying the Prius. Compared with the electric City Car that he owned during the 1970s oil crisis, which lacked adequate heating and cooling and had to be plugged in every night, the Prius is an amazing improvement, he says. Nadine drives it to work daily, and it serves as the couple’s primary vehicle when they travel together. After putting 15,000 miles on the car, Stu has only positive things to say about the driving experience.

“Contrary to what people think, we think that it is a very lively car,” he said. “If you’re sitting on the freeway at 75 and you need to accelerate for some reason, it will rev right up.”

The Calhoons say their four-door Prius averages about 48 miles per gallon in city driving. Cibula, who drives a smaller two-door 2000 Honda Insight, said she typically gets 45 miles per gallon in town and 60 on the highway.

“It’s an interesting little car,” she said. “Because it’s so small, the mileage depends so much on how you drive it. If you do the speed limit, you’re going to get around 60 miles per gallon in it, but things will affect it, like if you do put the air conditioning on.”

Cibula and her husband take turns driving the Insight. During the summer months, he tends to drive it to Ames for his daily commute to the Iowa Department of Transportation, while she drives it from West Des Moines to work at Meredith Corp. much of the rest of the year. Since 2000, the couple has put 40,000 miles on the car, including a recent trip to Texas. She says, so far, there have been no real surprises or repairs to report.

“It handles just about like any little car,” she said. “It’s not one of the big, comfortable luxury cars at all, and you get a little tired if you try to go a long way in it. But overall, if you’re used to driving little cars, there’s not a lot of difference to it.”

One thing Cibula has noticed is that even though the Insight is small, it feels roomier and more solid than other small cars she has driven.

“With some of those little cars, you shut the doors and feel like it’s ‘tinny’ because it’s so light,” Cibula said. “This one feels like it has some weight to it.”

But because of the car’s size, Cibula usually avoids driving it on the most inclement days. The couple already had two cars when they won the Insight in a raffle at the Des Moines Botanical Center in 2000, so they generally drive one of the other vehicles when weather is threatening. Yet it’s hard to pass up driving the Insight with its fuel efficiency.

“I’ve been snickering at the people driving the big vehicles when the gas prices went up,” she said. “We go and pay $12 for gas when some of them are paying $50. It makes a big difference.”

The money saved on gasoline is something many potential buyers take into consideration when they’re shopping for hybrid cars at Jordan Honda, Miller said, particularly with the Honda Civic, which is offered in both standard and hybrid versions.

“What deters some folks is that the Civic hybrid is more money,” Miller said. “An automatic transmission Civic might cost $16,650, where the hybrid Civic is about $21,100.

“That $5,000 difference doesn’t fit in everyone’s budget. A lot of people will say that they can still get 38 mpg in the Civic, and it would take a long time at 48 mpg to make up the difference. We have number crunchers who might not buy it, but then we have people who want to do what is best on the environmental side, and they say it’s a small price to pay for doing their part to help.”

Miller said he expects similar comparisons to take place with the new Accord hybrid, which promises to offer to what customers would expect from the standard Accord, including the power found in a V-6 engine, but with the fuel efficiency of a small car.

For couples like the Calhoons, there’s no question which car they would choose between the two, and they would like to see others start to follow the hybrid trend too.

“I guess that we’re among the people who are convinced that our natural resources are limited, so we would like to see everybody driving more economical vehicles, both from the fuel point of view and from the materials used,” Stu Calhoon said. “We bought it as a statement about the environment, and the way that the car feels to us is a bonus.”

BUSINESS PUTS HYBRIDS IN FLEET

Ames residents are growing accustomed to having their pizzas delivered by hybrid cars. Two of the Pizza Pit’s five delivery cars are Honda Civic Hybrids, according to restaurant co-owner Tom Northrop. The delivery cars are driven upwards of 12 hours per day, for a total of 30,000 miles per year. The hybrids’ of higher gasoline mileage was a major selling point for Northrop.

“We thought that we would try it and see if it saved us money,” he said. “We bought our first one two years ago and the second Civic Hybrid last year.”

Along with the higher mileage, Northrop factored in the income tax breaks that have been available for new-car buyers under the federal clean-burning fuel deduction. The incentive is being phased out, which concerns him. But he is still planning to look at hybrids in the future.

“We are getting about 40 mpg, and they advertise it as 47 mpg,” he said. “We’re happy with the mileage, considering that we’re accelerating and stopping and going all the time.”

He says he’s not concerned about future maintenance. He might do a trade-in around the 80,000-mile mark, when the factory warranty expires, which is when he would trade in most cars anyway.

“We’re thinking in the long run that it won’t cost any more than a regular car because you’re using less gasoline and repairs may be less, and if everyone were to do that, it would help the environment overall,” he said.