Ride Quality (a Prius secret)

The longest trip I have taken so far was 160 miles. Great trip and ride!

 

I've complained for years that the car makers have paid too much attention to the car magazine writers instead of their customers. Not everyone likes the same kind of vehicle.

 

I went 1,000 miles in one day in our 2006 and can't complain.

Tom

 

When I changed my suspension to Tanabe coilovers and added strut tower bars, the handling improved like I got a new car. The difference was night and day.

However, the ride quality tanked and noticed more rattles. I adjusted the coilovers many times to balance things out. I end up reducing tire pressure to factory recommended 35/33 PSI.

 

Thank you for creating this thread. It's a great topic to investigate. I agree that the Prius seems to have markedly better ride quality than most other mid-sized cars (I rent cars a lot, so I've driven many different ones). It's one of the reasons I bought my Prius II in the first place. I've test driven the PIII and noticed that it seemed to have even better ride quality than the PII.

The difficulty with assessing ride quality, even if you can quantitatively measure it, is that the road conditions impact ride quality just as much as the car itself. Same goes for the the driver. How the driver accelerates, brakes and steers can greatly affect the ride quality as perceived by the passengers.

The way to negate these two important variables is to test a vehicle on the same exact course using remote control technology (no human driver).

 

I've done 2 cross country trips in my Prius since I got it in February of this year, and I find the ride just fine. It is no Lexus, but at 5 times the price I expect there to be a difference.

 

My passengers love the ride of the Prius. I get positive comments about it all the time

 

I've noticed the 2009 Prius non-touring ride quality can be very good, like a floating on air feeling on some smooth roads.

You know a lot of the Car and Driver / car journalist enthusiast types love to take a loaner car and whup its butt on some backroad. And of course they rave about the ones that can tear up a curve. But, ya know, none of that really matters when you're stuck in commuter traffic after a hard day at work.

And it's hard not to appreciate HSD when moving forward on battery in traffic.

 

i think the ride quality is superb, but i think gen II seat could be firmer and telescoping wheel and 8 way adj. drivers seat would make it 100% better. oh, and a quieter ( road noise) cabin. i much prefer our hycam down to fla and back.

 

I am with you! Having a 8 way power seat would be Awesome! I just had Heated seats put in and that helps a ton!

 

FWIW, even though I like my Prius, I'm not too impressed by the ride quality of the 2nd gen. To me, it's comparable to that of econoboxes. I think people who have driven mid-sized cars tuned more for luxury/soft ride would agree w/me.

My 02 Maxima had a very smooth ride, almost to the point of being too soft. It really hurt it in terms of perceived and in conjunction w/the tires, actual handling.

The HyCam I had as a loaner for 1.5 days had better ride (not surprisingly) than my Prius. I liked the ride of the Lexus HS 250h I had a week test drive of.

My Prius is somewhere in the middle in terms of ride quality and comfort between my Maxima and my VERY harsh 350Z (which is accompanied by bounces after going over bumps, even when new).

 

That is too true.
Of course, you cannot make a comfortable race car, but not everyone wants to race his car.

I remember the hydraulic suspension of the Citroen XM: No matter how bad the road was, even speed bumps at 30mph: You heard bumps and potholes, but you did not feel them - amazing.
Moreover it did quite well even at 120mph on the German Autobahn.
Once I was driving several miles with approx. 100mph and a flat rear tire before realizing that there was something wrong.

Too bad that car magazine writers and their readers get more excited about a Lambo (they will never be able to buy) than about a techncal jewel like the Prius.

 

I just upgraded from a Gen II Touring to a Gen III trim III. I realize that the touring model would have a somewhat rougher ride, but I had compared it to the std Gen II over the same broken-up roads, and the difference wasn't that much at all.

When I first test drove a Gen III, I headed right to those same roads, and what a world of difference. The Gen II didn't, to me, have the degree of comfortable ride I found in the Gen III.

I'm not a boy-racer, so I don't push the handling of my cars to their limits by any means. But from testing it, I know it's capable of a lot of sharp maneuvering if needed.

Now, then, there's also my 2001 Sebring Convertible. As you'd expect, the whole body flexes over broken road etc. I have a strut stabilizer which will go on in the next few days, in large part to improve handling over rough circumstances. In this case, it'll be interesting to see whether ride comfort improves or falls off somewhat. (Mainly because it's fantastic on good road, but hardly so on broken road or train tracks.)

 

2 weeks ago I took a 3rd Gen III / nav along Skyline Blvd between Saratoga and Redwood City. It's a 50 MPH road that motorcycles and sports cars like to use for fun. Curves not too sharp, but quite a few of them. I was able to keep a good pace right around the speed limit except for tighter curves.

The 3rd Gen III feels more solid and confidence inspiring than the 2nd Gen non-touring.

So the 3rd Gen II + is now a good touring car.

Last year on a twisty run in Wine country, Hwy 128, 75 miles of turns, I didn't feel too confident in the 2009. It did not offer that solid feeling I look for when the going gets rough on a very twisty backroad.

I had to pull over for locals at least 4 times on that stretch of road.

I had to pull over and let an Odyssey Minivan go by on a very twisty, looking over cliffs section of Hwy 1 South of Mendocino.

I suppose the Touring Prius is more agile on tight twisty roads.

 

The Prius rides pretty well...but I would hardly call it a "great" ride. The Camry for instance rides much better, as do many midsized cars.

It rides well for an economy car...better than a Yaris or Corolla.

Why do you think a Lexus costs $125,000? The Prius is actually more expensive than some Lexus models. There are MANY cars for what the Prius costs that ride much better.

 

I paid under $10k for my Prius, and we paid over $50k for our RX350.

The Rav4 we have I think is below the quality of the Prius as well, but it was only around $8k or so and is substantially older (2003 I think).

Also the LS600h comes out to about that price, and is much much nicer. Reclining back seats with massagers built in... yummm...

 

3000 km in 30 hours and I finished the journey reasonably fresh considering. I couldn't do that in a domestic car. I have a feeling the Aussie Prius is a bit stiffer than the US version though.

 

Thats not a fair comparison though. You're comparing a used Prius to a new RX. A loaded Prius is $34,000 and the RX starts at about $42,000. Hardly 5 times the price.

Do you mean domestic as in a US car or a Australian car?

PLENTY of great riding US cars.

 

Is there anything that can be done to the Prius Gen II to improve the ride?