Your Humble Blogger’s house has been a Prius house for three months now, more or less, so perhaps it’s a good time to say a few things about it. The below should be taken as one fellah’s feelings, and Gentle Readers should keep in mind that YHB is not the primary driver of the thing. Things YHB Likes about the Prius:
- 50 miles per gallon
- Sensible default # 1: when you turn the car off, the headlights go off, too.
- Sensible default # 2: If you are in drive, and stopped, and turn the power off, it puts itself into Park and then turns off.
- The transmitter entry/ignition thing, so you don’t have to go into your pockets
- The continuous mpg reading
- The big touch-screen display with a ton of information of various kinds
- The digital speedometer, which makes me think it’s always accurate to within 1 mph
- The seats
- The radio controls
- 45 miles per gallon
- The rear window
- The Fisher-Price gear shift
- The cruise control controls (control controls)
- The windshield wiper controls
- The controls for the headlights, particularly the high-beams
Did I mention 50mpg? Since we’ve put something like 6,000 miles on the car so far, we’re particularly happy about the 50 mpg, even if this last tank is down to something like 45. There’s other stuff that I could have an opinion on, if I had to, but mostly it’s just a car with good mileage. Of course, YHB doesn’t like cars (as may have been mentioned here previously), so that influences the whole thing. I wouldn’t have bothered writing a list of things Likes or Dislikes about the 1998 Saturn SL, you know.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
how’s the interior space? it seems like a very useful body design.
in 2003 we were looking at 5 cars:
chrysler PT cruiser
ford escort wagon (used)
mazda protege5
toyota matrix/pontiac vibe
toyota prius
the focus wagon was out for a variety of reasons, mostly that nobody who wrote about cars was particularly happy with it or its build quality. eventually we decided against the PT cruiser for the same reasons. then the escort wagon got knocked out because it was too hard to find one in good condition.
at that point it was really up in the air. in the end we made our decision by color and it’s turned out well. i have now driven a prius and it would have been great – probably cheaper to own ultimately because i wouldn’t have been up at 1 o’clock learning to drive it and greatly increasing the odds of getting hit by a drunk.
One of the things I really like about my Matrix is that the lights not only automatically turn off when I turn the car off, they automatically turn on when I turn the car on, thus freeing me from ever having to think about them at all, except when I want to turn my high beams on. This is only occasionally problematic when I drive someone else’s car, and forget to turn the lights on, and am baffled as to why the road seems so dark.