I agree, although my husband was given a Camero as a rental car last week and he said the blind spots on that car are horrendous - worse than any car he's ever driven. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the navigation system. It works okay but not nearly as good as a portable (e.g. Garmin), which I've always found to be very reliable. Just yesterday my Prius system directed me right past my designation, then guided me around in a large rectangle and only announced my destination on the second pass. And the updates are ridiculously priced too.
I think it's more of the wheel to wheel well ratio. A first gen CR-V with 15" alloys for example looks fine because it's proportioned properly. When you have a large wheel well to match the larger wheel design, putting a smaller wheel makes that smaller wheel look even smaller even though the overall diameter isn't that much different.
I don't like the auto dimming mirror's default setting at Always On when starting the car. When I drive in the day time, I have to turn it off every time I start the engine.
What?!! Nobody?? Check the threads on this subject. No end of moans on this one -- though personally I think the inbuilt system has many advantages.
. . . then there's the sluggish DVD/hard-drive based GPS and bizarrely sub-standard audio controls. Kind of like their subcontractor didn't take the time to finish designing it all before they put it into production. Otherwise a fine car, especially for the money. I love almost everything about it. . . But there's no excuse for design deficiencies that wouldn't have cost any more to do right in the first place. "There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over" - old engineering adage.
I've gotten used to the odd rear visibility. The rear wiper is basically useless when there's snow on the car, though, that is for sure. I also dislike the front blind spots, as the OP mentions. My only other gripe is that the shape of the front of the car makes it nearly impossible to tell exactly where your front bumper is -- I always end up parking a good two or three feet back from the wall in my lot because I'm afraid I'm going to run into it! Of course, there's about 300 things I could list that I DO like about it.
For the first year or so, I parked so far away from where the car should be, I had to get back in the car and move forward. Same with when stopping behind another vehicle on the road. Not having a lot of previous driving experience contributed to this as well.
Thanks to EV mode it doesn't cost much to correct it! :thumb: I simply learned not to trust my judgment and go to far.
Ah, ha, perfect. The above picture highlights my pet peeve about the G3 Prius's. See the turn signal and the fog light above. Next to none of the G3 actually sold have the fog lights, as that feature is only on the pkgIV/V, I gather. Anyway, the vast majority of G3 Prius's have a stupid patchwork, fake fog light thingy that looks fake, because it is fake, to put it no more harshly than that. Granted, the fake fog light feature is common amongst almost all auto mfrs. in the non-luxury class (most luxury cars have standard fog lights). Still, I see no good reason to have the fake insert as a predominant feature making almost all G3 Priuus's look incomplete. My suggestion, either confound the differentiation between economy and luxury by making fog lights standard or ditch the fake insert thingys for sure. There, I've been needing to get that off my chest for awhile.
More and more new economy cars are shipping with fog lights - it shouldn't be considered a luxury feature anymore. So putting foglights on a standard Prius is not a bad idea -- that's how the Gen II was (all except base model). However, I don't think the car looks incomplete with the patches; the average person probably doesn't even notice them. Also, at least having the "fake insert" rather than nothing gives owners the option to have foglights. That's always good.
Oh shoot!! I just looked at that photo again and realised that my European sized plates (the legal sized option of number plates here) may get in the way of the front parking sensors and my car has it .. well, I'll pick it up in 4 hrs time. I'll have a word to that engineer... she-who-must-be-obeyed will not like that unless we restyle the plates which = $$$
For anyone with foglight envy: I've found our (stock) foglights are virtually undetectable, ie: turn them on/off, you can barely notice a difference. Barely ever use them, and when I do wonder why, LOL. Maybe aftermarket are better? (I have driven another vehicle recently with (OEM) fog's, much more noticeable when they go on.)
Things I hate? I find the driver's seat not very comfortable at all, and I wish it was quieter on the highway. Really that pretty much covers it. I can't imagine the parking issue people say they have, I find I can see exactly where the front bumper of my car is. Oh, and I do find that the A pillar can block my line of sight going around a corner, especially on freeway on/off ramps, sometimes if the placement is right, I can also miss stuff blocked by the rearview mirror as it is exactly in my line of sight instead of above my line of sight.
Prius foglights have typically been a "can-you-see-me?" type light moreso, especially with the low beams. Because I have the Tech Pack, I installed the foglights on my own from the PC Shop and I'm able to have them on with the parking lights only. It's a tad more noticeable but not by much. Like you, I've found other non-Toyota foglights much more useful.
Yeah but in the Gen 2, if you didn't have foglights, no one knew because there weren't any blanks. Again, the blanks do make it easier to upgrade (on the gen 2, you'd need a new lower air dam piece with the cutouts) but they do look better if you didn't opt for fogs.
