Is Prius really this uncool?

Even here in California Prii are not considered cool by the younger crowd. Dumb kids.

 

I don't know.

When I was a teenager, if my parents had given me ANY vehicle that was now mine? I would of been deliriously happy and accepted it PERIOD.

The Prius get's 50 mpg. It's quiet, comfortable, can haul friends and family. IMO one of the best "Road Trip" vehicles one can have, and especially someone on a budget.

If he doesn't think it's cool? He should.

If he keeps complaining, tell him you're willing to take it back, sell it, keep the cash yourself and allow him to save up and buy whatever "cool" vehicle he wants.

 

Spoiled. Let him walk, bike or bus for a couple of weeks then he'll appreciate what he has. Then let him keep it for anothert 6 months if he plans to trade or sell the car for a sportier ride. Then he'll feel foolish how much he has to dole out for gas in the new ride.

 

Or sell the car and put the money in trust until the kid is 25. That'll learn him

 

I gave my son our old Gen I Prius for his first car lol. Then while driving it on the interstate, a deer ran right in front of him at 70 mph. Guess what the replacement car was... A Gen II Prius. He is now 19 and after 3 years of driving, he has only driven a Prius (besides the occasional times when I let him drive my TCH). He hated the Gen I and hated the Gen II at first but, a couple of his co-workers asked him if they could "check it out" and I guess they were marveling at it. Now, he loves it...

 

I think the Gen III is a pretty good looking car. I may be biased because I drive one, but I think Toyota did a great job on the styling. Of course, I'm a 41 year old white guy who listens to NPR and classic rock. My teenage son hates it, but he hates everything. Except when he's allowed to drive it, that is!

 

I'm with GC & Starship on this one. Actually, they are more charitable than I would be. My position is you can have a car when you can afford to buy and maintain one. Until then, the Prius can be used.

 

Yes, a young teenage boy would not exactly find the prius to be the must have car. I do see more younger girls driving prius's than younger guys

 

When I turned 16, I purchased a heavily used 1974 Dodge Monaco from my dad at book value. Had to pay all my own costs - no free ride, and still would have never thought to say anything negative about it to him afterwards.

 

At least you didn't give your son a Mustang, Camaro, Corvette, BMW or Porsche. Because nobody would talk to him if he drove one of those cars.

 

Quite a few kids driving those cars don't survive their teenage years.

 

I tried to get my early 20's nephew to buy a used gen 3 prius a few weeks back, and let him drive my 2014 liftback so he could see how they drive. While he seemed interested in mine, the used ones we saw at the dealerships didn't seem that good to him (lower trim or high miles), and he ultimately chose a 2014 Honda Civic EX instead. I think he was just humoring me since I took him to the credit union and the dealerships to look at cars, but oh well, at least he got a new and somewhat reliable vehicle. Hopefully he replaced his lead foot after he crashed his last vehicle.

So I tried to convince my nephew to buy a prius... | PriusChat

I wonder what his friends would have said to him had he of bought a prius. My brother mocked me a little for trying to get our nephew to buy a "grandma car", so I just tease him about having to buy gas for his Kia Spectra every week, while I can generally go 500+ miles per tank in my "grandma car", then spend less than $35 to fill it back up.

 

Well, when I was in High School, none of my friends nor myself were "cool" or affluent enough to own nice cars.

One of my friends had a Frankensteined, old, beater. It was a dangerous rolling death trap. But as unwise youth, what we liked to do was take ill-advised long road trips.

Gas....and potential emergency maintenance were the biggest concerns and costs.

Looking back? I would of loved to have a reliable, efficient road trip vehicle like a Prius.

Maybe it just takes years and experience to figure out what "Cool" really is.

 

I think this applies more

 

I'm going to turn a corner and stir up some stuff. Preface - I'm not an LGBT basher or anything.

Anyone else notice part of Hollywood and the news media doing this below, this year?

1) Our local news featured a new service in SF named 'Homobile' 6 or so months ago. They clearly showed a man with beard, bangs and earrings, crossdressed and clearly mentioned and showed a Prius coming to pick him up.

2) I specifically recall the previews of Nathan Lane flaming away while driving Cam and Mitchell's White Prius on the way to their wedding. I don't like to see any man of any orientation acting overly effeminate (Lane).

So, is this going to make the Prius more or less cool?

 

I don't think it's homophobic to ask such things IMHO.

It has been said that more gay people drive a Prius. Why? probably because over their life they've had to do things against the 'flow'. Thinking outside of the box? Questioning things? Rather than just doing what everyone else does. Perhaps someone more articulate than me could translate what I'm trying to say. Maybe it could be argued that bigots drive pickups? Pickups have been used for all sorts of questionable civil rights abuses.

Equally, does it bloody matter what car you drive? If people want to mock then they mock. Taxi drivers all took the p*ss out of me for having the Prius and some called me 'gay' for having one. So what, I saved a couple grand a year in fuel costs and for £2,000 a year you can call me whatever you like.

And if someone chooses not to buy a car because some 'friends' insult them, then they really need to stand back and question their friends and also themselves.

 

Well said Grumpy. Fortunately, I learned at a very young age that you can't live life worrying about what others think of you. Some will like you, some will not. Most of the time you can't change that no matter how hard you try.

 

Well said you two^. At first when I was 16 I didn't really like the 2005 prius my sister bought, I always felt judged when I'd borrow her car.. But after a while I started driving it more and more, I actually started liking it, I liked the looks some TN rednecks gave me.
I learned not to give a dman what other people thought of me, especially other school students.

One day I decided to sale my 2004 volvo s80 and say hello to a 2005 prius. Best decision I ever made. All my friends and family love Prii now! Saved of $750 since May 2014. BTW I'm 18 now.
Your son will probably come around to liking it, hey you can drive like a bat out of hell (like my sister) and some how still get 40 mpg! Now that's what I call fun

 

Whenever I see anyone worried about what other people think, I'm always reminded of Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, one of the 20th century's few scientific geniuses. His last book of anecdotes before he died of cancer in 1988 was titled "'WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?' Further Adventures of a Curious Character"
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article
In that review is the story of where the book's title came from:

The Feynman of this new book is the one who suffered an enduring personal tragedy in his 20's, one he rarely discussed even with close friends: his first great love died of tuberculosis during the atomic bomb project. Feynman was a brilliant group leader at Los Alamos, N.M. As readers of '' 'Surely You're Joking' '' know, he spent a fair amount of time irritating the military authorities by cracking their safes. He also became a major force behind the project's theoretical and computing efforts. And meanwhile, as the new book reveals, he was commuting down from the mesa once a week to an Albuquerque hospital where his wife, Arline, lay slowly dying.

She was responsible for the book's title and moral. When Feynman was a Princeton graduate student, trying to impress some of the great lights of physics, she gave him a box of pencils bearing, in gold letters, the legend: ''RICHARD DARLING, I LOVE YOU! PUTSY.''

''Well, that was nice,'' he says here, ''and I love her, too, but - you know how you absentmindedly drop pencils around: you're showing Professor [Eugene] Wigner a formula, or something, and leave the pencil on his desk.'' So Feynman sliced off the writing. Soon he got a letter with her firm moral injunction: ''WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?''​