New Owner, First Car Purchase

Hey all,

Just bought a brand new 2014 Prius C Two in Blue Streak Metallic this weekend. It's my first car purchase on my own. I'm a big car enthusiast and admittedly this wasn't my first choice. I was pretty dead-set until last week on picking up a used 3-series BMW or Jeep Wrangler. But with some strong urging from my parents it was the best and most practical choice and I'm happy with it. I'm starting a new job in two weeks and I'm going to be commuting 62 miles round trip every day so between that and the discounts and incentives Toyota has on the 2014's to move them off the dealership lots everything worked out for the best. We had a great experience at the dealer we went to and got a fantastic deal on the car.

Here's the Prius:



And here's the car I'm coming from that got traded in for the Prius:



2003 Nissan Maxima GLE. First car that I had for almost five years, bought with 115k miles and traded in with 148k. Great car that was really hard to let go of. Had the bulletproof Nissan VQ35 engine with a lot of power. It was in great shape for its year and mileage and had every option except navigation. I definitely will not miss filling up with premium and fuel economy that often dipped below 20mpg though.

Looking forward to being a part of these forums and will probably do a lot of lurking to learn about all the in's and out's of this car as well as care, maintenance, and accessories. I'm big on OEM+ modding and little tweaks to improve the way the car came from the factory so I'll be on the lookout for things that fall into that category on here too. Bonus points if you can spot anything I did to the Maxima for those who are familiar with the A33 platform. Cheers.

 

Thanks for the welcoming words everyone. I realized I omitted kind of a big detail in forgetting to mention that my parents actually already have a 2013 Prius Three that they got new right around this time last year. So I'm already familiar with the Prius and this isn't something completely new to me. I've never minded driving it, it's a great car and I actually liked that we had it because whenever I needed to go buzzing around town to run errands or something I would borrow it and enjoy using practically no gas instead of having to take a hit from the horrendous city mileage of the Maxima.

I was really excited when I got the job I'm going to be starting about finally putting the plans in motion to pull the trigger on a big car purchase. I was planning on sticking with the Maxima for a while longer while saving up for something Jeep/BMW/etc. However, some reliability issues came up with the Maxima and that's where my parents came in pushing me in the direction of the Prius C. They made me realize a different vehicle was an immediate need for me to have reliable transportation to get to my job and between the gas mileage, Toyota reliablity, and unbeatable price buying new, getting a Prius C was a no-brainer. So while it wasn't necessarily what I was expecting to get for myself, I know I definitely made the right decision buying the Prius. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to be in a position to have bought a brand new car at my age and I'm very confident I'll grow to love it, especially when gas prices inevitably shoot back up from where they've been the past couple of months.

I've already been lurking on the Prius C forums and the plug and play radio swap for the OEM touchscreen unit from the 2012/2013 Corolla or 2013 Highlander has captured my attention. I think this is going to be the first big thing I do to this car once I have the funds in place to buy both the head unit and dash kit.