I decided to upgrade from a Fender Squire. I tried about three Fender Stratocasters in our local shop, and found the Highway 1 just felt and sounded the best.
The look and finish is great. I have noticed that the pickguard has a nice aged off white look.The ultra thin finish is perfect, as I am not that keen on high gloss guitars. I think these guitars will age really well. The reverse coil pickups, I think do sound thicker in sound, this maybe causes the bottom end to be a little too thick in sound, but the dynamics of the coils and tone knobs allows adjusting the tone to whatever style suits your playing, and the thick bottom end can be adjusted out.
My guitar has the maple fingerboard, which took some getting used to. Compared to my old Squire the frets felt huge and the fingerboard just felt too big!! However it was really just a matter of my hand getting used to the feel of the fingerboard, and I now find it fine.
Negative things. The guitar came very poorly set up. Fret buzz everywhere and action too low. I gave it back to the shop, who sent it to their guitar repairer. A total waste of time as it was only slightly better when I got it back.They blamed most of it on the fact that I liked it tuned to Eb??
I then took it to another guitar shop, who recommended thicker gauge strings,that and another setup, and the guitar is now awesome (even in Eb!!). I like quite a high action and love thick strings for that blues sound, and the guitar does not disappoint.
Overall if you are looking for a US built strat,give the Highway 1 a go. I have to say the price is a big plus but I would have spent the extra money on the standard US strat had it sounded better but it didn't. I guess the moral of the story is always try as many guitars as you can, and never buy a guitar without trying it first. Every guitar is unique,why risk spending all your hard earned cash on an online purhase when you can try guitars in a shop and find the one that suits you??
The tonal improvement over my old Squire is huge, and I always thought my Squire sounded great!! The only one thing I would say to Fender is,include a hardcase as standard (UK), and teach people in the factory how to set guitars up to be at least playable. It's such a shame, as Fender strats are beautifully made, and set up right,would be a joy to own from the moment you get one home,rather than after weeks of adjustment. I've owned several guitars but for me the Fender strat offers the most qualities I like from an electric guitar, plus the list of great blues players that have all made the strat their number one choice of
instrument, makes it the guitar of my choice. I play my Highway 1 through a VOX Valvetronix 100.Hope this helps.

these guitars are now end of the run into a new decade an the new american standard takes its place,they,ll be highly sought after without a doubt the looks an sound is awesome bearing in mind they launched in 2002 an didnt look any differnt from the american series except they had differnt pick ups , which annoyed everyone who had paid £900 for the american series £400 more than the highwayone,and the CARONA model previous to it,run for only 1 year because evryone was complaining that its was a mexican /american the mexican factory got them in to paint then they went back to carona factory to get assembled so in all the distain over the highwayone they remodelled it in 2007 put a 70s wide headstock and kept the 60s vintage body an put alnico3 pickups EUREKA a hybrid a guitar in its own right differnt looks an sound an even better than strats, at double the price,,FENDERS way of saying,,GET IT UP YOU~s,after all they ,re in market to sell guitars they,re not there to be dictated to by collectors and purist,s that have allready got them, overall you cant go wrong these guitars are the best value american strat ever sold,, people are snapping them up now i,m glad i bought mine wont be parting whi it ever ,, go BUY one marks 11 out of 10

Brought my Honey Blonde Highway Strat 2nd Hand (2002) not that you can tell, fantastic guitar great sound and play ability would recommend this guitar to any proffesional.

Cannot give any negitive feedback on this Stratacaster.

The Fender Highway One Stratocaster is a beautiful instrument, it is a working piece of art. The alnico pickups sound vintage and sweet and the humbucker has good thick distortion. I bought the Satin finish and it just looks solid, tough, and vintage. Only bad point is the bridge, these old bridges are obviously not going to be as good as the new Floyd Rose style, however, it does stay in tune pretty well.

these are awesome guitars well worth the money. mine has been played side by side with an American custom shop model,(friends in a band) Even he said it was hard to tell the difference beetween the tones on both guitars and how well the highway played. How awesome is that! Fender Highway One Stratocaster, they play like butter,awesome tone,i have a 2006 60th anniversary in honey blonde,superb.

Great looks, good typical strat sound but the thin E string has no punch. It's a good guitar and cheap, recommended.

The Fender Highway One Stratocaster is very gigable and rockable, i love this guitar.

The Fender Highway One Stratocaster has a lovely sound but I'm not a fan of the finish they've used. Overall, a very good guitar at a nice price.

After painful, droned hours of a guitar search the feel of this guitar's neck just stood out so much even though it was the first one I tried! The variation of tones is remarkable from the vintage 70's sound to the Gretsch jazz (but obviously not the real thing!). Definitely value for money considering for £500 you could only get a Gibson standard SG, the usual Jag's being around £600 and American series teles at around £600.

I tried several Strats in the shop including some much more expensive models and this one stood out for me. Lovely set-up and action, beautiful tone, very playable. Love the 70s headstock and jumbo frets. None really. I can't understand why some people have a downer on this model. Maybe it's not quite the classic Strat tone but it has a awesome tone of it's own. This one's a keeper!

The Fender Highway One looks fantastic, sounds just awesome. The bridge humbucker sounds particularly good. This guitar is more versatile, to my mind, than a standard strat, as I seem to be able to get a far greater variations in tone etc, as you can get the real solid humbucker sounds, but also the classic strat neck sounds, so anything from hard rock and metal, through classic rock and to blues sounds great. This guitar has massive frets, and as soon as I picked it up it felt so comfortable it was like id been playing it for years. Good value for money, American made. Real deal, and I think sounds just as hot as the American standard, and miles better than the Mex.