My loaded 06 Driftwood Pearl Prius

Yay!

My dealer left me a message yesterday and told me that my 06 Driftwood Pearl Prius with Bisque Leather has arrived to their "warehouse". I think/hope I can pick it up today. I'm really exited, the last few weeks have been horrible and I've been obsessively thinking about the car and reading priuschat.com. I have a pretty good theoretical knowledge of this car (and I was able to borrow one for 24 hours). It will be fun to get some real world experience. Let's just hope that the NorEaster stays of the coast until I'm safe and secure at home.

It will be great to have a new car. I think this car will stay with me long, or at least until a good plug-in hybrid or true EV car is offered (and even then we will probably first trade our ICE only car).

Damn. I just realized I forgot my Camera at home :-( Oh, Well!

 

Thanks! This is great to hear. Several posters have indicated the same thing that the 06 is a little more refined then the 05. I borrowed a loaded 05 and found it suprisingly refined but it didn't have leather. So if the 06 is slighly more refined then the 05 then I will be very happy. I did get about 47mpg in the loane (54mpg for my commute) so I'm exited. The thing I was most disapointed with was the 05 screen so I was very happy to learn the the 06 have a new screen and updated graphics. I'm hoping the GPS screen will look better.

Can't wait to go over there in a couple of hours

 

[Swedish] Hej, Lustigt at du ar fran Sverige. Jag ar fran Stockholm men bor i Boston nu sedan ett par ar tillbaka. Ar Prius vanlig i Sverige?

[English] To bad about the wait. I waited about 2 months for mine. I found that shopping around helped. It seems like larger dealers are gettting them in faster so even though I prefer to support small dealers I decided to get one as soon as possible.

We don't really have a great queue system here either. Most dealers are very non commiting to telling us when the car will arrive and it seems that Toyota are quite random in their deliveries. That said the dealer I will end up buying from actually could show me a car on it's way in (on a boat from Japan) and he was decent of keeping me updated during the shipment. The other dealer I worked with couldn't give me such a firm comitment.

 

I didn't know leather was uncommon up here. It was actually not my 1st choice (I was looking for a #7) but now I have grown accustomed to the idea... I think the waiting list for prius is shrinking in general

 

Yeah my test drive was in a little snow as well. I was pleasantly suprised how well it handled, better then my 96 Maxima with no ABS . Not that I thought it would handle bad. That said I don't think I have the heart to go play in a parking lot just yet....

 

So I took delivery yesterday afternoon from IRA Toyota in Danvers, MA. They are a nice dealer, a little too big for my taste (I prefer Woburn Toyota) but very professional and never tried to push anything on me that I didn't want.

The explained the extended warranty and tried to sell me ona $1300 dollar ("down from 1800") end of month special. I didn't mention that I could get it cheaper from here since I'm not interested in the warranty but they stopped pushing for the warranty (or any other adds-on) as soon as I said "
no". They never tried to sell me fabric protection or paint protection or any other things. So while I was skeptical in the beginning, I must now say that they are a good dealership.

I love the new car, though I understand how so many people panic when they buy a Prius. You def. don't get the mileage out of the box. I drive the car as I drove the Prius I borrowed and see a 10mpg difference so far. The temp is a little colde (31 vs 42) and I can feel that it doesn't roll as well (I guess it's new tires, new engine etc). It's a little frustrating but I'm sure it will get better. the prius also behaves different then my old Maxima (it will be missed) and like to accelerates at a different tempo, gliding feels different etc.

I think the 06 is a nice upgrade to the 05. The biggest improvement in my mind is the new screen and graphics. The GPS looks so much better with cool split screen display at interesction (with an 3d ish representation of the intersection). All the other controls also look like they have been designed to look good instead of the simplest box the engineer could find. It's a big improvement.

I also really dig the back-up camera. It feels more useful then I thought. It's nice to know that there are no kids, pets, toys etc behind the car and I dare to back-up closer to the car behind me.

The stereo also sounds better. I think it's the same stereo but I think the tweaked the equalizer for this year. The sound is less muddy then on the 05 and the bass is a little less prominent.

I did bond my phone with the car and people seem to hear me well when I call. I just need to figure out how to transfer my phone-book. (I think John's using the same Ericsson phone as I).

The speach recognition works suprisingly well. It have guessed the right streat everytime so far. The only problem I've had is that it guesses "79" when I say "49". But still having programmed neural networks in school I know how hard it is to do well when you have so many choices as all the streets in a city (they also have to do text to speech convertion and then compare with my voice I guess) so it's quite impressive. They system is a little slow. I wich I could turn off the woman telling me what to do and simply beep me when it was ready for a new command (what it's looking for is seen on the screen anyway). I think it's more of a gadget then anything but still impressive.

I think the interior of the 06 is nicer then the 05. The velvety dash looks nice to me and the car with bisque leather and chrome accents def. reminds me of BMW. I can't say if the car is more queit then the 05 but the Prius is a lot quieter then the Maxima in city driving and a little louder on the freeway. There is a lot of tire noise in the car. I'll see if this gets better as the car breaks in or I might upgrade the tires to something a little quieter.

I'm love this car it's a blast to drive. Did I mentioned that I really like the driftwood color? I wasn't convinced when I signed the contract but I must say that this is now prob. my favorite color. It's not beige at all but shifts color in different conditions. It looks a lot darker (with a green tint) at night yet rusty gold during the day. It's sweet and stands out. I thought it was gonna feel a lot more beige and it doesn't.

 

Interesting, it didnt' seem on the 05 I test drove (for 24 hours) that it would do that. It could have been the zoom level (I haven't played with either). the graphics here in Boston have been very useful and seem reasonably accurate (I've only tried the outskirts of the big dig, will try the tunnel tonight).

 

Yeah, I suspect they are low right now. On my list of todo's before the car was to get a meter and a pump. Since the car got here earlier then I thought I have neither. Will try to pick it up on the way home. The car feels soft so I suspect the tires are at or lower then recommended.

I did get about 51 mpg on the freeway at 55mph on relativley flat ground so maybe it's just me lead footing it (or actually I suspect the oppisite).

 

checked out tire pressures this mornign and they where set to 34-35 all around. Bumped it to 42/40 and the car is so much nicer to drive. I wouldn't consider it bumpier but when turning it provides me more confidence

Bought a small craftsman 12V pump to do the work, and I guess I didn't understand how it worked at first. It's supposed to have a preset but something went wrong and I ended up with like 65 PSI in the tires. I'm glad I figured out what was wrong and took the pressure back down! Still I hope I didn't damage the tires (I doubt it), but the too high pressure was only for a couple of minutes. I'm also gonna rretrive my better pressure meter from my motorcycle and check the pressure using that instead. I don't feel confident that the craftsman is accurate.

So, pepole! Make sure to bump your tire pressure. It makes the Prius feel more connected to the road with out making it harsh.