Finally comes the real Gen 5 Prius review

Interesting review, I am looking forward to test-driving it myself eventually. My first question - who constantly looks for the parking brake when on a test drive of "a few blocks"? I only apply the parking brake when turning the car off and I'm on a slope. But any rate, that's something you'll get accustomed to after a week of driving. I just hope you're not using it while actually driving on the street!

Speaker quality doesn't matter to me, I'm not an audiophile. I like to keep the radio down enough to be able to hear a little engine noise and tire noise, so I'm alerted if something goes wrong.

Sorry, Mr. V - The old Prius was indeed a slow car, and I owned one. I'm all about fuel efficiency and don't accelerate hard, but 0-60 in 10+ seconds is hard to ignore in some situations.

The trunk does look small, and that's unfortunate. The Gen2 was great in that regard, you could really fit a lot of things into a car that didn't look big on the outside. Gen 3 was about the same I think. This one looks a bit like the original Honda Insight back end to me. But as an empty nester, I don't need anything big.

Final point, I'm always amazed by the number of people who buy a new car after owning their current one for just 1 or 2 years. IMO, that's a great way to throw away beacoup dollars - maximize your depreciation, and increase your car payments. I owned a Gen2 for 9 years, then it became my son's first car for another 5 years. In the meantime I got a Mazda 3 stick shift, and now after driving that for 8 years I'm thinking of looking at something new. The Gen 5 Prime has the best EV range for the price, and finally some good looks.

 

Yep ... double posts are still a thing ...

 

Yeah you can complain to the NHTSA about anything, and they'll shove it in a database, doesn't really mean anything, and they won't do anything about road-feel complains and "vague center steering". Needs to be a safety issue, and be serious enough. As for Toyota, I bet they were just blowing you off, and they didn't even give it to a "Toyota Engineer", just held it in the dealership service department, must've taken it on a road trip at your expense. Sounds like they eventually got you to give up. I would have pressed for some compensation for the mileage.

 

My God...

 

Yeah, Lol.
Not normal, nightmare customer for sure

 

If Toyota took it seriously enough to look at it, and at the least to pretend to address it, they must have felt it was indeed a safety issue. I wouldn't be so dismissive of Gokhan on this point.

 

Your "real review" should be re-titled. "First impressions from a brief test drive" would be more accurate. Even then it's not much use to others since it's coming from someone who clearly had a strong negative bias before they even sat in the car.

For a real review see @Will B 's thread:

Prius Prime 5200+ Mile Road Trip notes | PriusChat

Best I've seen by a long shot!

In an earlier post somewhere you said your interest in the Gen 5 was due to the upgraded 3.0 safety features. Seems like most all new vehicles have essentially the same features, though some may be implemented better than others. Some may even perform better than Toyota's.

I would think that, rather than making it your mission to trash the Gen 5, that a better strategy would be to shop various brands and models based on the characteristics and implementation of their safety features and then buy whichever one implements them best while annoying you the least.

And if steering feel is a major concern you might want to wait until Honda comes out with a new Civic hybrid. That's one area where Honda has always excelled, IMO.

Most rational car buyers would look elsewhere if they found as many faults in a particular car as you do in the Gen 5. Perhaps that's why so many here don't take you seriously and find your posts tiresome.

One really has to wonder about your psychological motivation. I mean, I owned nothing but Hondas since 1975 but I don't go on Honda forums and trash the new Civic on a daily basis.

Maybe you need a new hobby?

 

Ah, see you had your vitriol pill this morning.

 

Oh, puuleese....
You should visit some other car forums if you want to see vitriol.

He's a troll and you know it, and suffers from Dunning-Kruger syndrome.

 

it’s a Gen 5 forum, what do you expect? If the Gen 4 is so great go talk about it in that forum.

 

Hope you get your$500 back. I understand the car internet opinion thing because I don’t think the Prius is or was a slow car. I’ll stay with that. You stay with the shimmy shake. I saw the autobahn video, didn’t notice shimmy, maybe you have cataracts developing? That’s not your fault.

 

Forums like this one need to support dissenting views since groupthink is powerful, and a car is a major expense for most of us. Those who try to group-shame non-bandwagon-riders do a disservice to the larger forum.

 

dupe

 

It is the camera moving. If you've ever been in a car at high speed (I have), vibrations, bouncing, etc. is magnified. This is why very tight suspension is necessary. If I tried ANY of the maneuvers in my G4 that I've pulled off in the G5, I would be upside down in the river... Consumer Reports (lol) "MaXiMuM EmErGeNcY-MaNeUvEr speed be damned.

 

Honest complaints are MORE than welcome. Dis/Misinformation, agenda-driven posting/outright trolling is not. And I think I speak for the vast majority of the readers in here.

 

Regardless of the merits of both gens, trading up so soon seems an expensive and frustrating direction to go, especially with dealership mark ups.

 

Great point. It seems rather counterintuitive to buy a car whose reputation is based on fuel efficiency, long term reliability and low total operating cost if you don't plan on keeping it for an extended period of time. Those advantages are diminished significantly, or even negated, if you buy a new car every few years.

@Gokan says "If you have a newer [car, that you like], it is probably not worth trading in unless something in it strongly appeals to you." So he seems to agree. Taken as a whole his comments on the Gen 5 seem to be more negative than positive and nowhere close to "strongly appealing":

"It is no longer a Prius except for the badge—and not in a good way. . . . Prius is no longer what it used to be, and this is not a good thing."

Based on that he won't be buying one. But everyone has their own version of what is logical and not everyone cares about making rational and logical decisions.

"I still don't know if I will trade it in. It will eventually depend on whether I will get a good deal."

 

I've seen posts in which people say it doesn't appeal to them - but they all seem to be responses to comments you've posted here about the alleged superiority of the Gen 4. Even then, I'm not sure anyone says they are "bad" cars.

Also . . . I've never visited the Gen 4 forum. Are Gen 5 owners posting negative comments about the Gen 4 over there?