Considering a Used Gen 2, What Do I Need to Know?

Ah well. My wife is 15" shorter than I am so we've been kinda wishing for this for a while. Haven't had it yet, so living without it won't be that big of a deal.

I hope to be able to go look at a couple this weekend. Was really wanting the camper sold first, but that's taking longer than I thought it would.

 

Thought I'd post an update. We sold the camper last weekend and stopped today to look at our first Prius. We didn't think about most dealers being closed on Sunday, so we only could only look at the outside of the car. This is a package 4, I think, 2007 with 121K for $9K. A stained interior (despite evidence of shampooing), a damaged front bumper and worn out tires mean this one is out.

Looking through the windows, it seemed like there was plenty of room inside for the 5 of us. Not minivan or 3 row SUV space, but enough. But, what surprised me was the very small trunk, at least what I could see through the window. As a hatch, I expected more room. Of course, I wasn't thinking about the battery which lives under the rear foor, right? It looked like a large cooler or suitcase would fill it up. I was planning on installing a hitch to take our hitch mounted rack, but I'm concerned that for a week vacation even with the rack we won't have enough space for the 5 of us and gear. I'll have to read up here on experiences with roof top boxes and what they do to MPG. That's what I like about the hitch rack, it doesn't add to wind drag.

 

Interesting, I'll have to look at that when I get to drive one. Doesn't sound like a lot of usable extra space when packing for a trip. Not much fits in a 6" deep space. I plan on taking my big cooler with me and putting it inside to gauge the space better.

 

I'll look at all of those, thanks.

What about load capacity? I'm seeing a bit of concern around here about weight. Am I right that the load rating for a Gen II is 800 lbs? If so, then two adults and 3 teen girls doesn't leave a lot of extra capacity for gear.

 

I've got a hitch mounted cargo tray we used with the SUV, so my first mod would be a 2" reciever hitch for that. If need be we could add a roof top carrier too.

And you're right, even if my road trip mileage drops to the low 30s, I'm still beating the best my SUV did (22 highway) by 10.

My bigger concern now is load rating. I need to dig into that. I assume it's a conservative number, meaning going over a bit will be fine, but I don't want to exceed it by a lot every time we travel.

 

That's another option, but that'd be harder to store than the rack I have or a roof top carrier. I don't have a lot of extra room. Then again, a Prius will take a lot less room in the garage than the Outlook.

 

Looks like the spec on the Prius is 810lbs. That's 162lbs per each of the 5 passengers. I'm going to need to borrow some from my youngest.

My 5000 lb 8 passenger SUV is 1576, or 197 per passenger. Still, we rarely have all 8 seats filled (it has happened) where we will regularly do so in the Prius, and usually with a load of gear too.

I suspect that number is set more by their liability lawyers than engineers, but I'm not sure I want to count on exceeding it by 30% on every road trip.

Then again, my second choice vehicle (Subaru Outback), while larger inside, is still only 900lbs capacity according to what I've been able to learn.

 

Find me one for under $10K and I'll take it. (We're looking for 'well used' to minimize our payment.)