Choose 2012 Prius Five or 2012 Elantra Limited?

Run some numbers if you can for 3k to 7k miles per year total miles driven. My driving would fall in that window for sure.

Thanks much,
Mike

 

No doubt. I told the wife if we were to move to Kentucky, southern Ohio or southern Indiana that we could drive our summer cars more often. That's her work territory as well as your state The darn salted roads up here leave us little time to drive them. We had snow until the end of April this year and it takes a heck of a lot of hard rain to get rid of all the salt and sand piles on the roads. Most people just drive whatever and don't care about rust but we would never let our summer cars see salt, ever That reminds me of Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters, ever ound:

Mike

 

Sitting in Peoria Illinois now eating dinner. Getting 32 in town and 37 mpg on the Interstate. Running 71 mph on the Interstate. A/C is screamin cold, audio system is freakin awesome for a base system. No Nav in this one. Seats have way more side support than the Prii seats. Throttle is very touchy but I am getting smoother as I rack up the miles behind the wheel. Suspension is softer than the Prii. It needs springs. Swaybars seem decent. Rebound is a bit quick so better struts would help. Absolutely zero drifting in cross winds. Car is loaded with 13 days of cloths for three people and some antique glassware we bought today There is chassis flex felt but the Prii flexes too. Both cars would benefit from braces. More info later as I have to hit the road to Louisville Kentucky now

Mike

 

Arrived at the hotel in Louisville at 2am I clocked in ~18 hours from home to here with the usual stops. The mileage was about 700 miles today. I forgot to write it down before I came inside the hotel. Darn close to that. Anyhow, gas mileage is looking darn good for the Elantra loaded this heavy. The fuel computer is very accurate. First tank that I filled and ran down to nearly empty
Calculated 38.8 mpg
Computer showed 38.5 mpg
430.8 miles with 11.1 gallons to fill it to the threads

I was using the first tank which came with the car to use the car's computer to show me gas mileage in town driving. The car is a piece of cake to get 32 mpg driving normal in town. Stoplights, turns, hills, idling, the usual in town stuff.

I did nothing other than normal driving on the Interstate. I had right foot to the floor on ramps, passing, idling at three rest areas while we did our duty The cruise was set to 71 mph. Earlier I got a nice fancy sheet that said I was exceeding the posted speed limit on US-61 but it was only a warning by a Iowa Trooper I thanked him for being so kind. My wife was freaking out as she thought I was gonna get a ticket.

OK some other neat stuff about the Elantra. The turn signals; push the lever momentarily and it will automatically give three flashes to the blinkers. No need to hold it while merging or changing lanes on the Interstate. Just tap it and it blinks three times Pretty cool, I have never seen this before.
Seats are super comfortable. No sore behinder on this trip.
I mentioned the audio system. Wow, good freq response from shakin base, superb midrange to killer highs. I am very impressed with the audio system. Not muddy at all. We played dance, rock, country, rap and some real oldies and it sounded damn nice. Music played from a USB stick is good too USB and AUX input is standard as is XM Sat radio.
Storage; man this car has pockets for nearly anything and placed so you can find them while driving. The rear storage is huge like a Prius has.
Controls; everything is lighted a real pretty blue color and it looks freakin saweet at night :rockon:
Acceleration is strong. The 6 speed tranny is incredibly smooth and always shifting at the right moment. No bogs no weird shifts. I'll have to look up the spec's but my gut feeling is this car would eat a Prii from a dig and keep on going. But we know neither is a drag car Just sayin

What do I miss? I really miss the ICE shutting off at all stops and going down hills. To compensate for the B mode coming down 6% grades, I used the manual shift feature of the tranny to get engine braking and it did well. I think Hyundai calls it Shift-tronic or something like that. It works perfect.
The Prii headlamps are brighter than the Elantra's. The Elantra headlamps are totally adequate but the Prii lights are like blazin light sabers in the night. I am more used to Toyota headlamps since I have been driving mostly Prii and other Toyota's for the past three years. All of them have wicked bright lights.

So that is day one of the Elantra test drive road trip. The three of us (Wife, Son & I) counted tons of Gen III & Gen II Prii today. No Gen I seen which was weird. Usually we see a few Gen I Prii on road trips. None so far. I have cluster pictures I took tonight if anyone wants to see. This week and weekend I will be doing some Kentucky back road driving to see how the Elantra does in gas mileage and just plain old driving as I have done for several thousand miles in Prii. My thoughts right now, own both a Prius Five and a Elantra Limited. Unfortunately I haven't won the lottery, so I have to choose only one. Which one will it be? Each car has it's benefits, good points, and bad points. Tough decision. More driving time needed.

I need to get some sleep
Mike

 

Day 2:

Cruising around Louisville Kentucky​

Today my son & I drove around Louisville in rush hour traffic to see how the car handled zooming in and out of lanes as needed. The usual driving stuff you find in a city From now on I will go off the car's mileage display since it showed me it was darn accurate. Leaving the hotel the first thing I noticed is the lack of luggage and people weight. The handling was way better not loaded heavy. No issues other than understeer feeling in tight off ramp corners. This is no track car but it could be setup like one if a guy wanted to do so. Same with the Prii, it can be turned into go-cart handling with some time & money. Anyhow, huge improvement in driving pleasure. Drove past a couple Toyota stores and low & behold, no Gen III Prii to be seen. Hmmm, remember I still need to at the very least sit in a Five to see that factory leather. Frustrating to not be able to find one yet. I know I have been talking cost this and that, but my wife will never forgive me if I don't do my research right and see what the Five is all about. Remember that I, as well as her, am very very biased toward the Prius. Heck we play the spot the Prius game EVERY time we drive around. I wish there was an iPhone app for that

OK so back to driving the Elantra today... I am noticing the mpg guage slowly climbing since we left the hotel. This is city driving with absolutely no special right foot methods. I want real world gas mileage figures on this car. We stopped by a couple Hyundai stores to just look around. Ended up chit chatting with a younger sales guy at Hyundai of Louisville. Nice store and nice staff there. We talked about the Elantra's and the Sonata. I told him the Prius Chat people have been telling me this and that about the Sonata and that I should drive one. I didn't drive one there as I would rather rent one to get long term seat time in one. The one thing I noticed a few weeks back when we were in a Hyundai store was the Sonata is freakin huge like a Camry. Sure it would be a cushy ride like the Camry is but dang that would eat up a lot of our garage space too I have always liked smaller cars for my summer vehicle. Winter time, give me my AWD SUV any day

Coming back to the hotel we spotted a Salsa Gen II which was cool. Those colors are not so common in our travels at least Again no Gen I Prii Don't these Kentucky people drive them anymore? The road had this construction going on and the right lane which I chose to drive in had those freakin rumble strips in it. I ended up right foot to the floor to get my butt out'a there and my son said hey dad this thing kind'a fly's Yea it has some decent zip without that luggage dragging us down. The Prii is the same way of course.

So back to the hotel we end up and the mpg display is showing me 37 something mpg. I had gassed up in the wee hours this morning on our way into town and reset it then so it had to start all over again from scratch. It was showing 35.5 mpg from last nights short trip from the gas station to the hotel. 37 mpg is not bad for zipping across town in traffic, sitting at stoplights and plain old regular driving. It's still showing this car gets basically 10 mpg less than a Prii driven by a regular person doing nothing to get good mpg numbers. 10 mpg less city or highway. Note that last nights mileage was on Iowa Ethanol 87 octane gas. The RAV4 I drove a couple weeks ago got 30 plus mpg on that same gas from that same station. For those that say E-10 hurts mileage, I don't know what to say about that. Not with me driving. Same with a Prii we drove a few weeks prior to the RAV, filled up with Iowa Special Blend E-10 and it got better mileage than gas from other states. Weird. Must be in the corn :rockon:

So after a couple days & a night driving the 2011 Elantra, I am liking this car. It gets decent gas mileage for what it is and costs. I still am a Prius nut so don't write me off just yet :wave: And to those with a liking for Ford's, I am happy you like your Fusion's. I just don't want a new Ford at this time My wife has a Escort ZX-2 that she likes :bored:

Mike :tea:

 

All highway miles. It was on the route US-61, US-52 from Davenport Iowa to Minneapolis Minnesota if you want to see it on a map What kind of driving do you do to get 22 mpg?

Mike

 

See post #130. The computer shows .3 mpg lower than actual calculated

Mike