In response to all of my car (gear head) friends who makes fun of Prius, I recorded this video just for them.
I took the wife's 2011 Prius 2 to the track last year and the best ET was 18.00 seconds flat at a hair above 80 mph! For comparison, the 84 Horizon in the avatar at the beginning of the year was 1910 lbs and had a stock internals 2.5 motor from a 94 Shadow in it with an automatic transmission from a 89 Daytona turbo in it with a full manual valve body. The motor had been converted from the efi set up to my carb set up. For consistency I run base timing only. Back then the Horizon would blow away the much heavier Prius...running in the 16.6 range, but ONLY 78 mph! At the middle of the year a simple cam swap now has me running the old Matchbox in the 15.7s at 85. BTW...around the Indy area I would say over half the Prius drivers drive FAST and way over the speed limit. The mpg is still greater than about all other cars at speed.
"It's not the car, it's how you drive it" I'm currently in a 1992 1.8 Golf with 75bhp, certainly not a fast car but am often passing folks who can't help but dawdle. Found this video yesterday which shows nicely that the Prius is not 'slow'. (Remember folks, it's in Germany so in km/h...!)
I broke 100 mph last Saturday evening on I78 in NJ, and I'll bet that people who were pulling over for me to pass were a bit surprised after I went by.
You don't see people on Facebook because priuschat.com is so good. A quick google search would reveal that to the author!
I keep saying....it's not the car that people care always bagging on. The CAR is actually fairly swift from zero to about 20, and there's no vehicle speed limiter.....so you can sucker your truck buddies into a VERY embarrassing situation on the interstate, or just challenge them to a 1 mile race at a social gathering.....IF you know what you're doing. Just remember.... Priuses ARE slow. They take almost 10 seconds to wheeze their way up to 60MPH, and a ragged out F150 will stomp a mud-hole in your butt if they're inclined to remove their vehicle speed limiter! Just as I've embarrassed more than one truck with my G3, I've done the same thing with lmy mostly stock Sierra. They always have the same look on their face when my truck doesn't stop accelerating at 100..... Know your capabilities. Know your opponent. Oh yeah....and know the terrain. There are very few places where you can grab-nice person with your buddies on the interstate at 100+ MPH. We have some where I live....we also have places where the roads are clogged with people that are just trying to get home from work and run the kids to soccer practice.
