Pretty cool little article on a Gen 1 owner. 12-Year-Toyota Prius Owner: "This Car Drives Like A 5-Year-Old"
7 accidents are enough to send any car to it's grave, but I would have enjoyed reading how much the author is willing to spend on the battery to keep the car on the road.
My 1990 Honda Accord LX 4dr automatic was still running 20 years - but it was rusting from the inside out because of less than perfect body shop repairs after multiple accidents. The rust doesn't show up until about 6 or so years after the accident... For my Accord it didn't start to show up until about the 14th year ( about 7 years after my first major accident - one of several accidents ). If you want to keep a motor vehicle looking *like new* for a long time - don't get into any major traffic accident that requires a trip to the body shop. Four years after installing a replacement third party rear bumper, the paint started to peel off of it. Consumer watchdog groups don't track auto repair long enough to observe the consequences of using lesser quality inexpensive body parts - so it doesn't show up in their local rating system.
I came up behind a 1st Generation Prius the other day. I did a double take just for a second when I saw the Prius name on the trunk of a small sedan. I guess I just associate "Prius" with the 2nd and 3rd generation look.
one of my work buddies bought my next door neighbors' generation 1 prius and after 150,000 miles he had to replace the traction pack. Seems it cost him a little over $2000 - and he's never looked back. The 11 year old car is worth little for resale with a bad pack ... And yet throwing a couple grand will yield him a ton of economical transportation miles for not too much money - compared to tossing the car and buying a newer one. .
Absolutely, $2k investment in an otherwise car in good shape is a wise move. It's the "in an otherwise" aspect that can be difficult to sort out.
We bought our first Prius used, a 2003 with 49,000 miles that now has just under 160,000 miles and would share these thoughts: 52 City / 45 Hwy - original EPA rating, we still see an annual, 52 MPG which we also get at 65 mph 600 Mile Club | Page 14 | PriusChat - driving an efficient route and it returns even better performance Who should and should NOT buy a 2001-03 Prius | PriusChat - ideal owner has a set of metric tools with wear marks, repair manuals, a Prius-aware OBD scanner, a place to work on it, and alternate transportation Prius - UPS Project - it is a good car for experiments including oversized tires, lubricant studies, and spoofing the control laws. Bob Wilson
