I spotted this special edition, at a Home Depot parking lot. I guess today’s hippies don’t cut and mill their own trees for construction projects, nor drive old VW buses. Hey, I came of age in the sixties, and owned a Prius for many years, so I can poke some fun.
For those using a smaller screen or struggling to decipher the font (Bellbottom Laser?), here’s a close-up.
For what it’s worth, the quality of the floral wrap was flawless and the general cleanliness of the car really stood out among the work trucks and otherwise dusty vehicles of a dry California summer with water rationing. Another stereotype smashed.
My older sister is on her 3rd Prius and is trying to get me to consider one for my next car. Part of me knows it would be the most practical car for my needs, especially since I live in nearly flat as a pancake Florida, but a BIG part of me rebels at the idea of being practical. And to me, a Prius says practical and sensible the same way that suspenders worn with a belt say practical….or at least sensible.
BTW, I tried to inject a bit of flower power into my daily driver in the late 60s. I hand painted several large flowers on the hood and trunk of my hippie (wannabe) mobile, a 54 Plymouth Savoy 2 door sedan.
Having had several, if your trips are long and at high expressway speeds, I found a diesel Jetta was the best by far. Our ’06 Jetta TDI was way more relaxed and efficient especially in the mountains. Our daily commute now is 30 km at 60 Kph average, so we are best with our Ct 200h now. VW really blew it, the TDI’s were fab for long distance highway driving bar none!
A new Prius is only practical if you drive lots of miles. At 12k/year or less, a Corolla hatch for $5k less makes more sense. I’ve done the math.
However, a used Prius can be a great deal. I bought my 88k-mile 2008 11 months ago for $7200. Even figuring that it will need a $3k battery sometime in the next few years, it’s still a great $10k car.
Unless your Prius has been abused, I wouldn’t worry too much about replacing the traction battery; they’re very long-lived. It’s the first generation Honda Insight where the hybrid battery replacement issues arose. Unlike the Prius, Honda designed the first Insight to go deeper into the battery’s reserve. It got much better fuel mileage, but the trade-off was shorter battery life. It had actually gotten rather commonplace to the point where cost was down to around $2k.
Toyota designed the Prius to use the battery in the ‘sweet-spot’ of much longer battery life and somewhat less (but still exemplary) fuel mileage. Unless it has been damaged in an accident or, say, ran out of fuel where the Prius’ onboard battery use limiter was overridden and switched to emergency battery power to get to a gas station (a couple miles, at best), a Prius traction battery will last a long time. I think they used to have something like an eight year warranty when new.
Sigh! Another Prius reinforcing owner stereotypes. After we drove our new one off the lot, we got a headshake from a Chevy pickup driver who falsely assumed we were Virtue Signaling Tree Huggers or something. Ours remains bumper-sticker free.
My wife has a cousin with a Prius that also smashes stereotypes. It’s black, he’s had blue flames installed on the front, and while it has bumper stickers, they are all anti-what one might expect to see on a Prius.
I wanted to get pictures of it to post here for smashing stereotypes but thought it tacky to get pictures of it while at the cemetery for their uncle’s funeral. Just saying. 🙂
Good on you for funerary discretion. Hot-rod decals or a phony “Prius Sport” trim package (complete with zero-downforce spoiler) would be hilarious.
Or you could go the other way and do a Prius Brougham!
One of the Prii I owned had a Crown Vic ‘Police Interceptor’ emblem on the rear deck.
Every once in a while, I’d spot someone laughing in my rear view mirror.
Pretty hard to make that car any uglier, but they succeeded.
It’s been done. Although not electrically.
(Does that make the ’69 Barracuda Mod Top the acoustic version? 🙂 )
Analog, with Prius the digital?
My mother-in-law had one of these. Unfortunately her other son wrecked it in the Arizona desert many years ago. The Mod Top was what I thought of immediately when I saw the photo of the Prius. We loved that car, and wish we had it back, though I don’t know how well the years would have treated it. We’d probably have had to deal with rust under that crazy vinyl roof, torn upholstery (impossible to replace), etc., etc., but I’d bet that 318 and the TorqueFlight would still be humming along just fine.
I believe if you don’t have anything nice to say you should say nothing. Except in this case. Bleecchh!
I was in sales at Toyota for a few years, say what you want about the Prius, but they are very durable, with low total cost of ownership, and battery failures are few and far between. We regularly saw trades and vehicles in service with 300k plus on the original battery.
As an 18-year Prius driver, my reaction to this one: Bummer man! What a bad trip!
Gee, I don’t get the hatred. I kinda like it.
All it needs is some blue flames (like Jason’s wife’s cousin) and some pinstripes front and rear and inside.
Twin rear deck antennas like a 1960 Impala.
And a tiger tail sticking out of the gas filler.
I’ve seen worse.
Yeah I don’t get the hate either, I’ve seen way worse.
I find all vinyl wraps resemble gift wrapping paper at best, but this is ridiculous!
Since I’ve reached the point in life where interesting = motorcycle, and my only car is my Kia Sedona, cars have become transportations appliances for me. To the point where I’ll consider a Prius, and the more outlandish the styling the better. Aka, stick that weak sauce second generation, it’s almost as unnoticeable as a Corolla. Fourth generation for me, all the way.
Biggest thing stopping me is if I’m going to go that far, I want a plug-in hybrid or a full electric.
I’ll get back to interesting cars the day the doctors forces me to sell the motorcycles off.
Two of the first people I knew with Priuses were both serious motorcyclists. And when we bought our Prius I had a Ducati. The Prius is gone but I still have the Ducati. It has no stickers other than what it came with from Bologna. I preferred the Prius in the rain, and it got slightly better gas mileage as well.
My favorite Prius. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/17/this-souped-up-2005-prius-srt8-leaves-jay-leno-in-the-dust.html
I like the fins on these. I like them better on a ’60-’61 Chrysler, but Toyota gets points for a fun touch on an appliance car.
I’m with JPC, they should have gone for a full Mod Top.