We’re living with a Toyota Prius: is it, dare we say it… *desirable* now?
We very nearly didn’t get this Prius. Not ‘we’ as in the Top Gear Garage. ‘We’ as in Europe. See, the Prius was invented to be The Hybrid Toyota. But now, almost all Toyotas, from the little Aygo though the C-HR and Corolla up to the RAV4, are hybrids. It’s only the Land Cruiser, GR Yaris and Hilix (in the UK) that aren’t semi-electric.
So you can see Toyota’s logic with the design of the new Prius: why make it another practical hatchback when you already have umpteen sensible hybrids doing the same job. That explains why the new Prius looks sort of sensational. A low, tensely-surfaced wedge with a bonnet-to-windscreen slope a Lambo would be proud of, it stands 50mm lower than the old Prius, and its stiffer, stronger body cradles the battery and fuel tank lower still, to help the centre of gravity.
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Eh? In a Prius? This is all very disconcerting for Top Gear. For decades this thing was the runt of The Cool Wall, the butt of all jokes. The only time you were glad to see a Prius was stumbling out of a nightclub into sleet and hail. But now look! It’s sleek and potentially sporty. We feel unsettling stirrings of desire.
It’s also quick enough to keep a Golf GTI honest. Now a plug-in hybrid only in Europe (to distance it from Toyota’s mainstream ‘self-charging’ hybrids) it teams a 150bhp 2.0-litre petrol engine with a 160bhp e-motor. Overall, there’s one hundred more horsepower on tap than the old Prius, and it’s quicker from 0-62 than a GT86. What the heck is going on?
Promising up to 53 miles of all-EV running, the fifth-gen Prius starts to look like the best of all worlds. Ours is in ‘Excel’ trim: the top spec costs an extra £2,100 and lops eight miles off the battery range because of the sexier rims… which the pretty-Prius now deserves.
So, this asks many interesting questions. Is the Prius now a style object – a car to be seen in?
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Is it a quasi-hot hatch with an eco-conscience? Is it too rakish (and too expensive) to be a minicab?
And was Toyota correct to reverse course and sell it in the UK after all, U-turning on its original plan to save it for the US and Japan while reasoning our hybrid selection was good enough?
First impressions are mostly positive. The car seems allergic to the petrol in its own tank so barely sips any even when the battery is drained – which is the whole point of a Prius after all.
Perhaps I’m giving the stylists too much credit – it’s not proving to be a head-turner, but I like the way it looks a lot. Feels narrow too, and usefully compact in a car park.
As per all modern Toyotas, the beep and bongs are insanely overactive, and the motorised tailgate has a (sadistic) mind of its own. But there’s going to be more to dig into here than any Prius we’ve ever seen and, um, ignored before.
