First REAL roadtrip!! My car has around 5600 miles and I'm doing a road trip from Sacramento to San Diego with a few stops in between. We'll be driving down all in one day. I'm hoping to see what kind of mileage I get and how comfortable (or uncomfortable) the ride can be. LA traffic will... interesting. Can't wait to see how things turn out. I'll update once I'm there.
You should find the C a capable car for long trips. I've driven my C on numerous longer trips without issue and also got excellent mileage. On one trip I drove 800+ miles in one day. Not the smartest thing to do, but, I'm a retired truck driver, despite my age I still do stupid things. The exception is buying a C, it was a smart move and I have not regretted it for a single moment.
See my posts from last year concerning my long trip throughout the Western USA here: Vernon Birdman on the road | PriusChat By the way, I will be starting another road trip and posting next month when I once again go on a marathon trip from Vernon, B C to Palm Springs, Ca and points between.
I've done several 500 mile days. The seats are not all that bad. I've sat in worse, to be sure. The trips were just fine.
I've done several long trips in my C2... I find this car comfortable and capable in all I've asked of it. As for LA traffic... be confident. This car can handle it just fine, it's really up to you as to how you'll fare.
The trip was great. We had calculated that we would need around $100 total for gas and ended up using only $91. On the first day there I was worried about the weight that the car would have. I had never driven it up anything when it was this loaded. The trip was fairly comfy, thankfully my passengers weren't very big. I'm 6'2 but my passengers are all around 5'8 or less and in good shape. They were comfy in the back and fell asleep often. I would not recommend this car for road trips if you have big, tall or bulky people, but for us it was good. We also had a lot of clothes that we brought. Had we packed in pairs we probably could have gotten the space down a bit. It took us a while to tetris everything into place, but after a while we made it work and I didn't even have to block my rear view. After packing the trunk full we were off and to be honest I didn't notice any major or dramatic difference in anything. Cabin noise did get a bit annoying if we didn't have anything playing but it wasn't a bother. On the way there we got 51mpg thanks to LA traffic. :/ On the way back we were getting around 46mpg, but since no one was in a rush and since we wanted to save money we slowed it down dramatically (when we could) and got it up back to around 50 for trip average of 50.3mpg on a 1,134 mile total trip. Overall, I think the C is a good road trip car if you're cheap and small. What this car lacks in comfort it makes up for in gas mileage.
I will begin posting my stats and pics for the trip from Vernon, BC, Canada to PAlm Springs, CA during the last week of August. The trip will be via Kennewick, Wa, Twin Falls, I'd and Henderson, Nv