I wish the Toyota Prius wasn’t so ugly. I wish it wasn’t so expensive, either. Some cars are ugly-fun, like the old Beetle and the new Beetle. The PT Cruiser has the charm of a friendly bull terrier.
Yet in another year or two I’ll be forced to buy a Prius; my car will have given out. I need good mileage. Besides, I want the status of a hybrid, and all research indicates how well made it is. Its interior is anything but ugly.
Meanwhile the federal government in fits and cold starts is pushing for better mileage. Gasoline has dropped the last 10 days, but hovering around $3 just means we won’t see $2.149 a gallon ever again. The idea of 35 mpg is terrific; we Americans are Ford-Tough so we can take it. We don’t necessarily as a country need hybrids. A car like the Honda Fit already gets 31 mpg (The Prius showoff is 46). Detroit is working on gas cars and hybrids big time, though it still sees lots of miles on sport utility vehicles, and why shouldn’t it. My countrymen still are buying them, and mass looting of filling stations seems years away.
Reports on improving mileage have been everywhere for years, of course. Seven years ago, we chose a wagon (VW Passat) over even a small SUV because its mileage was in the high 20s, not the teens. But there’s a big missing element in these articles: Mileage in the 30s used to be no big deal.
I bought a Geo Prizm new in January 1995. It gets the same mileage now as then — 34 to 36 mpg. But it’s nearly 13 years old. I bought its third set of tires in November. All of a sudden, the starter/generator takes two to four times on a cold engine to turn over. That will get fixed this month, and I’ll enjoy the little car for another couple of years. I’m not ready to afford the Prius, and there’s no car on the market that gets close to 35 this side of an Italian motor scooter.
The Prizm (a Chevrolet-Toyota collaboration) is not a micro-subcompact like the Fit. It is a small sedan; the rental places would classify it as a four-door compact. It has a full trunk and air bags up front; it rated well at the time or I wouldn’t have bought it.
My beef today is 10 to 15 years ago, the Prizm was not unusual. Toyota had similar Corollas. The Honda Civic was that size and mileage. The American Big Three had comparable models such as the Nova. They featured city driving in the high 20s and highway in the 30s.
Current articles when they do approach this angle say today’s cars have lower mileage due to being heavier, mainly from safety features, and that consumers are insisting on bigger engines. Lots of current models need premium gas; now that’s faulty engineering.
No car buyer has a chance to insist on anything; you go to the lots and choose what is offered. It’s like shopping for athletic shoes in a color other than black or white. We buy what is out there. People just might buy high-mileage cars that are small but not tiny. You’d think that if cars of the 1990s often had mid-30s for mpg that today automakers would have developed affordable lines in the 40s, besides the hybrids.
The Prizm is four-cylinder, but that’s still plenty of pep for freeways; I remember the Beetle of my teen years where you had to gun it and it still felt it would help if you opened the door and pushed it faster on the entrance ramp with your foot.
Something is warped in the overall car business. I’ll have to keep my little car maintained, and with luck in a year or so I’ll find a second-hand Prius from this century or a third-hand Accord from the previous one. -30-
