Glad I didn't buy a Gen 4

Our 2010 is shaping up to be our sunset car. I may rue that statement down the road, but all considered it's probably true. Hanging around here half my life, and letting others run the miles up, find the foibles, with both me and my wife in our 70's, about 105k kms on the odometer, and only adding about 3k per year, we may be good, till we hang up the "keys".

 

There are also several other options for hybrids within the Toyota lineup that get good mpg and offer more room and or SUV ride height (Camry, RAV4, etc).

My wife is getting close to 50 mpg in her Crown Signia Hybrid which weighs nearly 4000 lbs.

 

"Blush is off the rose" is a variant of the idiom "the bloom is off the rose," meaning something has lost its initial freshness, excitement, or appeal, becoming no longer new or attractive. Just as a rose's delicate blush or bloom fades over time, a person, situation, or product can lose its initial charm and become less desirable."

 

Mendel's point is Priuschat and Prius culture was in full bloom in the early 2000's when they they were selling 25K Prius a month at a price that would allow you to buy two Prius for what what the wealthy and privileged in this thread paid for just one "modern" Prius with "more power."

Lol... All ya'll Gen5 owners don't know of that which you speak.

 

Besides the price bumps from Toyota, I took a look at what our local dealership’s out-the-door add-ons are these days. The second through fifth lines are eye-watering:



these are Canadian dollars, IIRC US dealerships are even worse, charging sim numbers in US dollars? Lines 3 and 4 appear to be completely discretionary add-ons, ensconced in the “standard paperwork “, possibly illegal to be presented thus. Desperate times I guess.

 

That subtotal is so stupid... $45K? What sane person would pay that much for a glorified economy car when you can buy 3 different used Gen4 for that price? The whole world has been turned upside down!

 

For the US, the only real numbers are the first two. And maybe the documentation fee(if that's just the name for required licensing processing fees). For the 2026 Prius, the number would be $29,745 to start. Though I'd probably go $30,100 to get floor mats and parking assist. If the dealership wants to add a bunch of other crap to boost their profit margin, just find another dealership. Even if you have to travel a couple hundred miles or a few hundred km, it's only a single trip. You're not forced to service the car at the same dealership you buy it at.

I bought my car about 125 miles away from where I live. In the last 2.5 years, I've only been back there once - just to drive through the lot when I happened to be in that town for a completely unrelated reason. All my servicing has been done at either of my two nearby dealerships(plus one trip to TCCN in Chicago).

 

By "modern" you mean 18 years newer, and by "more power" you mean more power.

25kUSD in 2007 was not a modest price for a car in 2007. Adjusted for inflation, it's just short of 40kUSD today. Most of the last couple of decades has seen low inflation, but it hasn't been no inflation.

I too find recent inflation jarring. Many of my intuitions about what something should cost just aren't right any longer.