[mikester]

We really like our Prius, we've had it since 2005 and as a car overall it has served its purpose well. It's a great grocery getter, it gets very good gas mileage without much effort but gets even better with a little effort.

It was cheap, we couldn't have gotten the same quality car for the price (~$23k after tax, tag and title). A corolla is significantly smaller in cargo area and passenger area. A Camry is slightly wider but a few thousand more. The Honda's in the same class are also more expensive. We wanted a hatch back too - not many out there. I use it to haul my radio control airplanes and I can get even my largest planes in it almost comfortably (80" wing).


Over time, we've lost some of the mileage, I'm not sure if it is my wife's driving but when we got it I could get 48 mpg out of it. Today however I have to work to get 42 out of it. We've got about 45k miles on it. So, I'm not terribly pleased with that loss of mileage but overall for the price and what we got - I'm happy enough.

My volvo V70, which has a bit more passenger and a bit more cargo space gets crappy mileage (19-22mpg city) but I bought that used...