I picked up my new Prius (Premium package) in Mississauga on Aug 27, 2010 - only to find that it has a manufacture date of July 2009. The dealer of course offers no explanation, though they say 'call us if you have any questions', but to this one, they only say, 'it makes no difference' I want to know if the car has been sitting out through 13 months here at a dealers lot, or if it is normal for Toyota to take many months to deliver to Canada? These guys didn't even run the ABS ECU update based on the Feb 2010 recall - did'nt seem to care that it was missed. Ther are also some TSBs that I see now that are relevant to the early 2010s - which mine is, even though I just got it. Now I wonder if there are other things that could be affected sitting out for a year - std engine oil stagnating for a year, other fluids gathering moisture, rotors rusting (I notice just a bit), effect on the paint and finish (it is an extra year older already) Could Canadian members please comment on their date of manufacture vs when they purchased the vehicle. Also, do you think I should ask them to do an oil change, etc (basically perform the 1 year service now) thanks
I don't live in Canada, but that doesn't prevent me from telling you that 13 months from manufacture date to delivery is not normal. Have you confirmed the manufacture date on the B-pillar sticker? If it was manufactured July '09, that means it's been sitting on a lot somewhere for a very long time. How many km were on it when you took delivery?
The pillar sticker is where I got the date from...since it is not on any of the sale docs we sign before taking delivery - so by then there is not much I could do. The car only had 35KM on it, that I am told was from driving it over from another dealership that they traded it with (for my color choice) - other than the polished exterior being a bit grimy, and the A/C display a tad scuffed, it looks clean in general
That is almost hard to believe because the Prius had a waiting list last August, we had to wait a months to get our Premium with solar roof we pick up ours Aug 29 Our built date was 07/09
Prius are delivered to Canada just as fast as to most other countries. Expect one to two months at the longest. As you are in the east, it takes an extra week or two for the boat to get there. The west coast is only just over a week. The car is made and parked in a lot in Japan. It waits until the boat gets back from the latest trip. That wait could be from 0 to 3 weeks. It takes 1-2 weeks to get to the west coast and 2-4 weeks to get to the east coast. Add a week or two for delivery to the dealer. I'd check your 12V battery. It's the only part of the car that will suffer from sitting on the lot for too long. It's possible the car was delivered to a dealer who couldn't sell it for one reason or another. Most likely incompetence.
This was a dealer trade, for the color, but even the one my dealer had on his lot was delivered to him in Aug 2009 (that I saw on their internal paperwork by accident when they were trying to convince me to take the dark grey instead of silver). All along though, I did get the distinct impression that they were trying very very hard not to sell me a Prius for some reason...so its not just incompetence in sales..probably something to do with thier cut on the sale
It could have been a customer special order that fell through...that's what happened to my last car. The special order customer took months to finally get around to admitting they had gone into bankrupcy leaving the dealer stuck with a very old car.
IF you did your homework well, you'll notice that the price is different from the newly delivered Prius. It's about $400 cheaper. My dealer tried to pull this on me too.
No it doesn't. It takes about 1.25 months to bring in a car from Japan to the Port of Vancouver (From order to delivery at dealership)... then extrapolate that to eastern Canada (~1-3 weeks for train transit depending on location). I was told that in my area, the Premium w/Solar is the most popular but I would think the Premium would be a close 2nd so it's surprising that it sat on the lot for nearly a year. I wonder if they could sell it to you at the price in July 2009 lol. There has been two increases for the Premium package since then (See the Knowledge Base section that's currently located in the Gen 2 Prius forum for detalis). Heck, my car is a Jul 2009 build that I picked up in Aug 2009!
I got lucky when I bought mine. I bought it on July 9th. The built date was 06/10. It had only 2 miles on the OD.
I wrote to Toyota Canada about this, and it took them a while to reply - simply saying that I had to talk to the dealer about the possible consequences of having the car sit out for 13 months before they sold it to me as new. In the meantime, before I got this above one line reply, tired of waiting, I also called Toyota Canada, and the rep I spoke to said this was 'definately unusual', but did not comment further, since someone else was looking into my emailed query. The dealership meanwhile first stated that this is completely normal as this is how long it takes for the vehicles to come here by ship from Japan. When I told them that is BS, they changed the story to 'we don't check the manufacture dates of the car'..... I don't even know if this is something I should overly concern myself with, or if there is even anything I can do about it to remedy the situation. So far the dealer has agreed to have one meeting with me where they will dig up all the TSBs related to the 2010 Prius and check against my car, so that I don't have to discover each problem and struggle to get them to fix them one at a time (the service tech had initially claimed never to have heard of a brake related recall on the Prius!). So far I have the rear squeak and the fuzzy AC display.
Well even if it was built last year, your car is fully cover by warranty and it has only 35km when you pick up the car..........for me its still a new car. Sorry to hear that you are dissapointed but if every time they are selling a car they are looking at the build date to give you a better price they would never sell any car! Hope you will still enjoy the car!
Technically, doesn't the warranty start at the in service date? (which is usually the day before you pick up since they would've done the PDI the day before)
On the bright side, you won't have to breathe so much offgassing from new plastics. The main downside I would think is that components with lifespans dependent on age more than wear are one year older than they might have been. If you are planning to keep the car past 10 years then the possibility of the battery failing a year sooner that it otherwise would might be a factor. If you drive very few km per year, then tire hardening may lead you to want to replace the tires a year sooner. If neither is the case then I would be somewhat disappointed but not too concerned.
Your response mostly sums it up - I'm just dissapointed I guess. As for the warranty, I know it kicks in from the in-service date, but I do plan on keeping it past the expiry of the 3 year warranty and there are at least 3 problems that are addressed by TSBs and Recalls that I have run into so far, which were fixed in newer manufactured models - don't know about all of you, but in general I've found dealing with dealerships on free/warranty/recall services a bit cumbersome - shouldn't have to do it right after driving the car off the lot. Thanks all for your responses.
