Advice thinking of trading

suburu?

 

oh, i thought you wanted something now. toyota hasn't announced all wheel drive, but some think it's a possibility.

 

I never had a problem in the snow even with regular tires, but you might want to try some blizzaks this winter if its that bad.

 

If you sell your Prius privately for $6000, add your $20,000, then you may have the budget for an AWD car at around $26000. I don't think there are many to choose from at that price point.

 

You supposedly can install remote start on a gen2. Here's an example vid:

I think it would work plenty well, as the Pri warms up fairly quickly when running in the cold. If it's really cold and icy and the car's parked outside, I usually just boot it into ready mode and put on a little defrost before I scrape the windows. I don't feel the need for a toasty car when I get in--too wasteful.

One thing that's great about the Prius is that it starts effortlessly in the cold, unless the aux battery is on its way out, keeping it from booting-up.

The Prius does really nicely on snowy roads with tires that have good snow performance. I find it to be quite velcro-like with the right tires. It does have it's limitations though. There are certainly times/areas where you'll want more ground clearance, 4wd+snow tires, chains, (or tracks/snowmobile, helicopter...).

If you are interested in AWD, I believe the Subaru Impreza (non-XV version) is the most affordable entry, with a starting MSRP of just below $18k. The current gen Impreza is also quite a bit more fuel efficient than the previous gen.

 

Not having a garage IS a downer. Makes for a lot of idling time, clearing the windshield. No way around it?

 

Interior heater and block heater?