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Time to Sell

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by acdii, Feb 21, 2008.

  1. acdii

    acdii Active Member

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    Well, the time has come sooner than expected. My 10 month old son has outgrown his carrier and now uses a full size car seat. No more room for the teenager. We are looking at replacing it with a Hyundai Veracruz or Saturn Outlook, and cant afford to keep it at the same time. Wish I could for a daily driver its working OK, winter driving in it sucks, but cant beat the MPG. I will sorely miss not having large gas bills every week, but then again, car companies don't make it easy if you have 5 or 6 people in your family. The only way I could keep the Prius is if I don't put the kids into day care, but I feel that is more important than the car.

    What is the going rate on a 2007 base with 25K on it, retail, trade, private. I see KBB has some numbers, but I am not sure how accurate they are. There will be a dice for sale after I get rid of the Prius too.
     
  2. Lcruiser

    Lcruiser Junior Member

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    Location? How many kids do you have?
     
  3. Rae Vynn

    Rae Vynn Artist In Residence

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    With those choices, I'd not have the kids in day care.

    You mentioned a teenager. How long until he/she is driving? We found that once the teens hit a certain age, we rarely had them all together in the vehicle, anyway.

    Can you keep the Prius for regular trips, and pick up a used mini van or something for the occasional "everybody in the car, now!" trips? Just a thought.
     
  4. Codyroo

    Codyroo Senior Member

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    Rae Vynn and I were on the same wavelength. See if you can pick up a reliable, used minivan for the times that you need to move all those bodies and keep the Prius for normal running about.

    But it depends if it is economically feasible for you to do so. Knowing how many (and ages) of the kids would help with any advice. As far as resale value......not a clue..
     
  5. Godiva

    Godiva AmeriKan Citizen

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    That's what I was thinking. My parents owned a stationwagon when I was growing up. We weren't all in it at the same time very often.

    And if your teenager is approaching license age, you're going to be shopping for another car very soon for them very soon.
     
  6. acdii

    acdii Active Member

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    IT will be another 3 years before he can even consider getting a license. He is 13 and the other two are 2.5 and 10 months. There are times where we need to pick him up along with the other two and that is where it gets tricky and one of the reasons to dump the Prius. We don't want a third car payment, nor the added insurance, and dont have room for a 6th vehicle. As it sits we will be getting rid of both the 2001 crown vic and the prius, only thing we are keeping is my F350 Dually because that is a must have item for us. I have done a lot of research and the Veracruz appears to be the best candidate, the insurance on it is lower than the Prius, and that helps. I live in the country where a trip to the store is a 20 minute drive, and if we want to take my mother along we have to remove a car seat, which means leaving the kids with someone.

    Above all else, this winter has shown that the Prius is a fair weather car. The roads out here are treacherous when it snows, plows rarely clean them well, and this year has been really bad where stretches of road are nothing but 2" of ice. The Prius is twitchy on ice and if there is a cross wind, a real bugger to keep straight. Twice I slid when making a right hand turn at nothing more than 8 MPH, one time smacking a pile of hard snow, the second time luckily nothing was in the way. I have never had a car that did that, and I have driven a lot of cars, and 18 wheelers too. I grew up in snow and can drive quite well in it, but this car has issues in snow, one is the fact it cant go up any grade if the road is slippery, two is the fact that in the winter the battery is nearly always at full charge unless I turn off the heater. With the battery full, you lose the regen braking, which turns this car into a slide show in snow. It doesn't bother me too much, but scares the crap out of my wife and she hates driving it now. The other deciding factors are the poor heating and window icing that no mode seems to really work well on. If it is below 10* the windows are almost always in a state of frosting, this is with it in auto, a/c on, a/c off, manual, vent open, vent closed. If I take my truck, within 10 minutes it is toasty warm inside and the windows clear totally within 15 minutes, but in the Prius they don't clear even after an hour of driving. We want something that is safe to drive in snow and the Prius is not it. After 25 years of Chicago and Midwest driving, I do know how to drive in it and that is the only thing that has kept us from smashing the car or putting it into a 6' deep ditch. Pretty sad when my huge RWD car handles better in the snow than the Prius.

    I will however miss filling it up for less than $30 and going nearly all week on it. The cold weather dropped the MPG from over 50 to 40, that was a bit of a surprise considering my truck loses about .2 MPG in the winter from 15.3 to 15.1.
     
  7. Rae Vynn

    Rae Vynn Artist In Residence

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    Well, the Prius is not for everyone. It sounds like you've done some serious consideration, and for your life, it just doesn't work right now.

    Hey, just think... by the time you are ready for a mid-sized sedan that uses nearly no gas, the next gen Prius will be out, and you'll love it even more!
     
  8. priusFTW

    priusFTW Gen III JBL non Nav

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    Sorry that you feel that way. Most cars that don't have good snow tires in winter perform badly. I'm from Northern New Hampshire... White Mountain area... I swapped out my OEM tires for Nokian WR's and have had no problem at all in winter, and we get some real bad winters here.
     
  9. hybridgrl

    hybridgrl New Member

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    I agree as I have the Nokian WR's and they have been great in the winter weather.;)
     
  10. nerfer

    nerfer A young senior member

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    There really must be two kinds of Prius programming. :fencing:
    (Just had to use that new smiley)

    My Prius (with OEM tires having 20K miles on them) handles fine in the snow and slopes. It does move around sideways on thick rough ice (northern Chicago suburbs have had some really bad roads this winter), but I think any similarly sized car would do the same. Altogether, it handles winter conditions better than our other car, a 2003 Honda Accord. And the battery is almost never full, in fact it gets down to the 1/2 point on me occasionally in the winter. But I have short trips, so the heater doesn't kick in until halfway there. Still, the engine is cold, so it's running anyway, and I've also tested it's handling on longer trips ... hmm not sure. :confused:

    Well, the good news is the resale value should be good, so you won't be out much money. Maybe you can report back how the sale went.
     
  11. Woodcote

    Woodcote New Member

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    For a family that needs a vehicle that will seat 6 and still get decent fuel mileage I’d say look in to a Mazda 5. I wish they made a hybrid version… :p
     
  12. acdii

    acdii Active Member

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    The sad part is my Crown Vic Sport with performance tires handles better in the snow.
     
  13. acdii

    acdii Active Member

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    My daily drive is over an hour long at highway speeds, the engine never shuts off when it is below 20*, so I never get a chance to run pure electric like I can in the warmer weather.
     
  14. priusFTW

    priusFTW Gen III JBL non Nav

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    Forgive me if you posted this earlier, but what tires are you using in winter for your Prius?
     
  15. acdii

    acdii Active Member

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    Whatever came with the car. They pull the car along well as long as the snow isnt the type that glazes quickly.
     
  16. joerdie

    joerdie New Member

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    I am confused... until now, you have had 5 cars for two adults? I can see one for each of you and a truck but... 5 cars for two people is a lot. Even after selling two cars, (the Prius and the Crown Vic) and picking up a new one, you are still sitting on a lot of car.

    You seem to not enjoy the Prius as much as many on this forum, but I can't fathom why you wil need four cars...
     
  17. Betelgeuse

    Betelgeuse Active Member

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    Many people complain about the Prius winter driving experience, but almost all of those complaints come from people who have the tires that came with the car. It seems that once you get a decent pair of tires on the car, it performs as well or better than many FWD cars.

    Now, I should say that living in a moderate winter climate (western MA), I've had zero problems with driving this car on its original tires. To be fair, I live in a relatively developed area and they clear the roads fairly well; I'm willing to believe it would be much more severe if I were living in a more rural area. Now, it sounds like you have other issues with this car (i.e. I definitely believe that it can be hard to fit 3 kids in the back if one of them is in a full car seat), but the issues with winter driving seem to largely be due to crappy OEM tires and not something inherent with the car.

    EDIT: Oh. And back to your original question: I think that the KBB numbers are relatively accurate, if not a little low. Of course, you'll always do better if you go the way of a private party sale.
     
  18. dagrunner46

    dagrunner46 New Member

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    When we purchased our `08, we also bought a set of spare wheels mounted with Hankook snow tires. Here in Colorado, you really need snow tires if you are going to negotiate the passes to go skiing. The Prius handles the snow and ice remarkably well - not as well as our Touareg, but pretty close. The only drawback to the Prius is the low clearance. Personally, I would not think of negotiating any winter weather on summer tires, even if you have a 4x4.
     
  19. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    25,000 miles in a year??... not sure i would trade for something that will cost me an extra $200-300 a month just for gas. I KNOW i could not afford it...

    recession coming... basic transportation costs for us 2 as it is, is pushing $65 a month now...
     
  20. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    I'm going to jump on the good-in-snow bandwagon. My experience with our Prius is the polar opposite of yours: I've never driven a less-twitchy car for snow and ice driving. It can't wade through deep snow, since it sits fairly low (like most cars), but it tracks trough snow and ice like it is on rails. I have good tires, and VSC; both make a big difference.

    Tom