Best Sedan for the Money
We own two Priuses, both 2009s. One is a standard edition, the other the Touring Edition. Both have over 120,000 miles on them. I bought the Touring Edition new, and we liked it so much we bought the other one with 49,000 miles on it.
Most cars are holes in the road you toss money into. But these Priuses have been THE MOST reliable, dependable, trouble-free cars we have ever owned. They're also the lowest cost per mile cars we could own. They ride comfortably, can haul a lot of stuff with the rear seats folded forward, and can haul the four of us and our gear to Florida and back if we put the Thule roof rack and Sears X-Cargo on top.
I get 41.5 MPG in the Touring Edition (wide tires have more rolling resistance). My wife gets 46.5 MPG in the standard edition. Those are long-term, real-world averages, spanning dozens and dozens of tanks of fuel.
The ONLY caution I would have is that if you buy a used one, DON'T buy the Touring Edition if it has HID headlamps. They are a known failure point. If the housing leaks, rain gets in, drips down onto the ballast/computer, which takes out the lamp, which costs over $800 to repair. Toyota is particularly intransigent about this, but I've heard from several people who had both of their housings leak and ruin the assemblies just like both of mine were ruined.
The Nav system is irrelevant now, in the age of smart phones, and is particularly hard to use, anyway. Once I had an iPhone, I quit using it, since it is based on a DVD that is very expensive to replace.
In several states, the car is mandated to carry a 150,000 mile/10-year warranty on the NiMh high voltage traction battery. The claim is that less than 5% of these cars require traction battery service or replacement before that point. So we plan to keep our cars at least that long...
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