Which trim?

i'm a 2 guy, but that's just me. i do think moonroof and or 17" wheels will have a small affect on mpg's.

 

agreed, everyone dislikes the packaging. maybe look into the aftermarket products you really want.

 

I wouldn't trade my Four with the two packages for any other combination. I think I got the pick of the litter.

 

A Four person myself as in the Lincoln commercial, "I just like to drive them". Very good feel on the road but get your wallet out for new tires.

My biggest disappointment is a lack of reliable pedestrian warning in the back when backing up.

Needs an auto stop for children and skinny people. Fat salesmen don't count.

 

I wanted the leather seats but didn't like not having a spare. I got the 3 with ATP. Love the safety features. I would have liked to have blind spot warning. I have no use for the automatic parking. The sun roof is real nice. Almost like having a convertible, I use it whenever I can.

 

Katskins.

 

I have a four and am getting phenomenal mpg on the first 1k miles. Avg 65.5 and first tank was 646 miles on 10.1 gal. So I don't think the extra weight detracts much if at all. I didn't think I'd use the moonroof, not ever having one before in my 16 previous vehicles, but am actually loving the extra light and airiness of the cabin. So glad I waited to find mine with the pcp as I really like having the added safety of the sonaras well. J

 

I'm definitely with you Krmcg. J

 

Another member of the Four club.

Do not miss my moon roof or HUD at all/ever. But I do grieve over the missing tire.

 

I tend to agree with you. I love the safety, comfort and luxury stuff. It makes the car feel rare and exclusive. Not really a luxury car, but surprising that some of the equipment list isn't on many much more expensive cars.

 

Everyone's going to strike their own balance, so there's no right or wrong to this, but it's interesting to hear why folks chose what they did. That said, one and a half small corrections here - SofTex is on the Three Touring, which also has a spare, so that's not an either/or. The half correction is that SofTex ain't leather - there is no leather interior offered on the Prius, so if that's really what you want, you must go aftermarket. SofTex is arguably better than leather for a car interior, but it's not identical and I know some people love their cowhide, so I prefer not to mislead visitors on this point.

I share Tom's annoyance regarding the restriction of BSW to Fours, and I'd add similar gripes about the rear collision warning features. Unlike the self-parking stuff, these are pure safety features, and I don't think it's reasonable to restrict them to luxury buyers. I do wish buying a Prius didn't involve playing this kind of Feature Bingo, but such is life with Toyota.

Okay, general gripes aside, let me add my account of how we made our choice.

My wife and I were in lockstep on the spare tire issue - this car was for road trips, infrequently as we make them, so the spare was an absolute requirement for us (that was our personal judgment, not an invitation to restart the whole spare tire debate). That ruled out the Four (since we also weren't interested in remodeling the trunk of our brand new car, the alternatives for adding a spare all seemed worse than just skipping the Four), so the only choice we had to make was between the Three/ATP and Three Touring, and I did ponder that for a while. The initial obvious point was that I like foglights but didn't care for the Touring's black/gray SofTex interior. After further consideration, it came down to these issues:

- We prefer fabric to SofTex. We're very easy on car interiors, prefer the feel of cloth, and live in a sunny clime where interiors can get toasty (while SofTex stays cooler to the touch than leather, it can't match fabric).
- We liked the Harvest Beige interior color, not available in the Touring.
- Test driving both, I was not impressed by the supposed handling improvements of the Touring - to me, the difference was at best subtle; neither ride nor handling seemed noticeably better or worse.
- Given that lack of meaningful benefits, the 17" wheels are a huge negative - I couldn't care less about the cosmetics, they reduce MPG, they increase turning radius, they increase tire replacement costs - for me they're just bad, bad, bad.
- The Touring rear bumper treatment was a small negative - I find the back-end too busy already, and to my eye the "special" lower trim just adds to the clutter (admittedly not much).
- The Touring's "foglights" are purely cosmetic, making a barely perceptible difference to the light field. The associated clearance lights are even more useless. The charcoal "plugs" in the face of non-Touring models aren't too bad, and I imagine there will be cosmetic fixes before too long anyway (if not already); I don't intend to change them.
- I like the heads-up display (HUD) - that's not in the Touring
- The moonroof is a wash - fun once in a while, but I have to remind myself to open it when the weather's right (again, we're in a brutally sunny climate, punctuated with strong grit-laden winds, so an open roof is usually not a great idea).

So yeah, for us that list was pretty one-sided - we bought a Three with Advanced Technology Package.

 

The only one I'd consider is a 2, to get a spare tire, and avoid the white interior trim. It also has the traditional battery chemistry, fwiw.

I'm sitting this one out, though. One concern: how the more aggressive use of the hybrid battery is going to work out, in the long run.

 

Understandable preferences, but . . .

- The Three and Three/T also have a spare tire.

- The Two has the white shifter surround, which arguably looks even weirder without the white center console. The only real fix for those offended by the porcelain fixtures is the black applique - shifter only for the Two, shifter + console for the Three/Four.

This does remind me that I didn't mention why we skipped the Two. We wanted satellite and HD radio, and we wanted the advanced safety features and DRCC offered in the ATP/Touring models. I like the upgraded interior materials in the Three as well, but that was less important.

 

If your use case or personal preference means the spare isn't a showstopper (e.g., this isn't your road trip car), and the price isn't a showstopper, then I'd say the Four has a lot going for it. We're not fans of SofTex, but it's more than tolerable, and heated seats are always a plus. More important, the full array of safety features are offered (optionally, of course) in the Four, which we found tempting. With a spare, we would almost certainly have bought it, and I don't expect we're alone on that score, hence my assessment that this was a stupid move on Toyota's part, and all to avoid quoting a different MPG figure for the Four. For reasons noted, we'd also have gone for the ATP over the Touring with the Four.