New Prius with High Mileage

I don't understand the concern about the 40 miles. Do you want a discount for that? Did the dealer let you drive the car? If you decide not to purchase it should you pay the dealer for the miles that you drove it? I can understand why the dealer is impatient with you. What if he can't account for who drove the car the 40 miles are you going to walka away? This is silly.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(flydeep @ Nov 8 2007, 06:07 PM) [snapback]536997[/snapback]</div>

I'm kinda with you. I tend to drive my cars hard myself, but before I do so I'm anal about the break-in procedure. I was commuting 25 miles each way after I bought my Prius last week (it came right off the truck with only 2 miles on it). During this commute I took side roads the whole time to avoid high speed driving during break-in. It wasn't until 500 miles that I ever took it on the freeway. For any of us that have installed items such as gears in our own vehicles know that a break-in is very important. The last set of gears I put in my Jeep I was so anal about it I used my non-contact thermometer on my differential housing making sure to get the correct temperature up before allowing cool down. During the break-in process gears especially get very very hot as they break-in. This is exactly why I'm anal about break-in in general. I now have managed to turn 1,000 miles on my Prius. Now you'll see me driving 85-90 to and from work... hey, it's baroque in now.

 

There is an undercarriage coating which is supposed to act as sound dampening

It should do this fine.

and also gives warranty against paint chipping or loss of color.

You need to look at the actual contract, not the glossy brochure. The contract will have several pages of fine print and you may not be shown one until it's time to sign. If you sit and read through it slowly you may find that the exclusions or conditions make it pretty worthless.

Under normal driving conditions does the Prius color maintain similar to other cars?

Well, mine seems to.

I read somewhere that Prius early models were prone to easy paint chip-off. How true is this?

The chips on my '01 were all caused by me using it for a truck. I still think that 40 miles could be some senior manager taking his wife out to dinner in the next town over. No big deal.

 

Yes, still applicable, except I think that they no longer provide valet instruction cards. There have been only two generations of Prius outside Japan. Improvements and changes in 2007 and 2008 are either invisible (changes to computer software and steering gear) or inconsequential (different tail lights, "HYBRID" logo on the front fender, etc.).

If you don't like or don't trust the dealer, don't buy from him. Shopping by phone, fax, and email allows one to screen many dealers without much bother.

 

the 01 prius picked up with 8 miles
tacoma with 6 miles

 

Our prius came with 80k miles, it's running just fine.

 

My 2008 Prius had about 300 miles on it when I purchased it. I guess I never thought about the fact that this was a bit high. I assumed that this was all test drive mileage, but it must have been sitting around for awhile to accrue that many miles. In any case, I don't see any huge issue with it.