New Owner

Well, I've been a lurker around here for, oh, a little over a year now. I figured today was as good a day as any to actually register, since I just got back from Hoover Toyota in Hoover, AL, where I bought a Barcelona Red '06 with package 5. I've been checking their inventory every three or four days since the first of the year waiting for a 5 in any color beside white, black, or silver - today one showed up.

I'm upgrading from a 2001 Echo 4 door stick shift, so I will be seeing only modest improvements in gas mileage, but great improvement in room, comfort, and "nerd factor" (already digging the Bluetooth handsfree and aux input for the iPod).

Oh, well, back to work... I'll post my first few days' observation soon....

 

Ya know, folks like to bash the Echo for being tiny, but since I've owned mine, I've parked it beside other cars that it DWARFED on a regular basis. Those little BMW convertibles, a Honda Insight, a Geo Metro, a Mini Cooper, a Miata... the list goes on. I'm over 6' tall and am not at all cramped in it. Now, you'd have to be a midget or be missing your legs to sit in the back seat behind me...

And you can't fault a car that goes 90,000 miles (and looks set to go another 90,000 at least) with nothing but scheduled maintenance, acheiving an average of right at 40mpg. I'll almost be sad to see it go, but I've been wanting a Prius since before I bought the Echo.

 

Well, at least the speedo is right in front of me in the Prius, but the touchscreen is about in the same line of sight as the Echo's instrument pod was.

The Shaven Yak was a minor character on Ren and Stimpy, a very disturbing cartoon show from the early '90s.

Yep, the Echo->Yaris is really just a name change (it's always been called the Yaris in Europe I think) and a minor styling refresh. Well, that, and it brings the two-door hatchback to the US for the first time, to compete with the Civic Si I presume. It's a good thing they still aren't selling the four-door Yaris hatch here - otherwise, I might have convinced myself to buy it instead of getting the Prius.