Test driving my first Prius today, buying soon

My wife and I just had our first kid. Our current vehicle situation is:

2014 Subaru Forester - Love this thing, haven't had any issues, does what we need it to do.
1993 Buick Lesabre with about 72,000 miles on it - Hand me down from her great-grandma. Hate this thing. No A/C, not safe enough (or cool enough, in the summer) to put the kid into, the literal worst, but mechanically reliable. We'd been hoping it'd die for the last 3 years.

Luckily, we live in a college town, and students are just now coming back. (Unfortunately, it's a blue hippie town, so prius prices are a little inflated). So the plan is to go look at a pre-owned Prius as a second car, and then unload the Lesabre as a "Get to school and work" car for $1500ish.

I'm going to test drive a prius this afternoon over lunch, but I'm having some trouble deciphering what's a good deal, what's not a good deal, the factors to look for, etc. I've read up some here and on other prius forums, but hoping to get a little more advice.

We've got a Toyota dealership right now that's only got one CPO prius in stock right now.

2013 Prius 2 with 48,000 on it, single owner lease, no commercial/fleet. Listed at 16990, which seems pretty high. I'm going to go with a target of 15,000 on that vehicle, if I try and get that particular one.

Toyota's got the 1.9% CPO offers, or I could go to my credit union and get 3.09 at 66 months. My credit score is nearly 800, two income house, so I shouldn't have much of an issue there.

My questions start happening when I have to decide on a particular vehicle.

2013 Prius 2, CPO w/48,000 miles for $16990
vs
2011 Prius 2, non-cpo with 78,495, rental/fleet vehicle, $13990
vs
2010 Prius 4, non-cpo with 88,000, rental/fleet $12990

What are the factors I should be looking at when deciding which of these to settle on?

Any words to drop, questions to ask, to act like I know what the hell I'm talking about when going through the test drive?

I understand that batteries generally start to crap the bed ~100k. We're in the midwest, so half the year is hot, half the year is cold, which I'm told is a little easier on the battery than straight heat all the time.

I would imagine that the 2013 lease is probably the best bet now, having 50k left on the battery, being a lease vs a rental/fleet, and having all the maintenance done at the dealership in town?

What else do I need to know, other than the usual negotiation tactics for other cars? (I got a great deal on the Subaru by negotiating out-the-door price only via email, and walking in with my own financing)... I'm assuming if I go with their financing, they might be more willing to go down for a deal?

 

Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can squeeze a new one right now. We're still paying on the Forester, house, student loans, and new kid, so we're looking for something with the payments under 300 a month. Thank you very much for that link. I went and found the ECM recall service performed back in 2014, and they replaced the rear tail light when it arrived at the dealer. I'll be sure and look closely at that to make sure there isn't any body damage near that light.

The description is also a little unclear as to whether this particular two has been upgraded with Bluetooth. It's listed on the dealer site as having bluetooth, which doesn't seem to actually be the case with most 2013 Twos... I'll have to poke around and double check and make sure it got the entertainment package, which might drive the cost up a bit.

 

Just got back from about 2 hours at the dealership. The 2013, I couldn't get to come down far enough for my liking, but they had a 2011 that seemed interesting.

2011 Gold Prius 2, one owner, good maintenance history, 76,000 miles. 14,000 out the door.
I dug a little further into the service history on the toyota site, and in 2015 it was brought in saying they were losing air from one of the tires. They couldn't find anything to substantiate. Found a listing where they reporting "some noise when turning right" and the comment is "
DIAGNOSIS, LABOR ~|~HAS BEEN GETTING SOME NOISE FROM THE RIGHT OF THE VEHICLE WHEN TURNING RIGHT, HAS NOT DONE IT RECENTLY. ~|~ ~|~FOUND A PIECE OF RUBBER IN THE BLOWER MOTOR THAT HAD BEEN CHEWED OFF OF THE RECIRCULATE DOOR. THIS MAY HAVE BEEN THE ISSUE WHEN TURNING RIGHT BEFORE IT WAS CHEWED ALL THE WAY OFF.
". Also a listing from 2014 where they came in and had the tired patched after finding a nail in it. I did the 'penny' test, and the tread came about halfway down lincoln's forehead.

I also found a listing online, 13,000 out the door, for a 2011 Blue Prius 2 (much preferred color), similar maintenance history, new tires at 35,000 miles, currently at 73,000.

Both are CPO, but the second one is about 70 miles away, and doesn't come with 2yrs (aka two 10,000mi) oil change/tire rotation, whereas the gold car is in town and comes with that stuff.

Are the items on the local car cause for concern? Should I abandon that and head to the 70mi-away car?

The fact that the 2011 is listed straight up at 12,000 + TTF seems odd to me, but it's also in a little bit more of an industrial town vs the college town I live in.

Right now, i think I'm leaning toward going to have the wife drive the in-town one, bringing up the issues, and then saying we'll think about it, telling the local dealer that we're going to look at the second, and unless they come hard with something (new tires?), probably going with the blue one, unless it's got something off on it's own?

 

Probably put in the neighborhood of 10,000-12,000 a year, and I'll likely keep it until it dies, which I'd imagine would be somewhere around 150k-170k

 

yeah, the main question at the moment is whether the local option, being a little more expensive with two tire-related questions on the history, but including a bit of scheduled maintenance, is the better choice than driving an hour twenty to possibly save $1,000 and get a better color.

And my wife is really not having much of an opinion on the two.

 

Hey y'all, just thought I'd update.

Ended up buying today:

2011 CPO Prius Two
Sandy Beach Color
78,000 Miles
All-weather mats
Whatever coating/undercar coating/seat coating crap they sold the original purchaser on *shrug*
2 years oil changes/tire rotations included

14,000 out the door, 13,000 financed at 1.90%