Amber had been driving a Corolla for a while, which was unacceptable. So we decided to get a new car for her.
One of the major requirements was that its gas consumption be better than the Corolla (city 26mpg, Hwy 36mpg, combined 30mpg).
From the short list fitting that requirement, we decided to check out Honda Insight, Lexus CT200h and Toyota Prius.
We did not like the Honda Insight. It looked and drove like a small, underpowered car with no coolness factor. It was also smaller than the Prius and had worse gas mileage.
The Lexus CT200h was nice. In terms of the engine and platform, it seemed very similar to the Prius with the Lexus touch of higher end comfort and a little bit more sportiness. It was a little more expensive than the Prius with compatible features. The bottom line was us was the size. My G35 coupe has very little trunk space and a tall adult cannot sit in the back seat. So we wanted a family car that could fit us.
The Prius is a nice car. It does feel a little different driving than a regular gasoline engine car. Also the higher end trims feel and look nicer than what one expects of Toyota cars.
We considered waiting for the 2012 model but since there are going to be no changes to the regular model and we weren’t interested in the upcoming plugin hybrid or the wagon, we decided to get the 2011 model.
We got the Prius Four with the solar sunroof option. The solar sunroof basically keeps the car at outdoor temperature when it is parked out in the sun so that the inside of the car doesn’t turn into an oven, important here in HOTlanta! It also contains the navigation system and my daughter is fascinated by the speech recognition of the system.
We got a 1.85% APR for a 5 year loan and got the car last week.
Of course, we are crazy, so as soon as we got the Prius, we headed to North Georgia on a long drive.
