I am finally asking the question I have dreaded to ask those (and only those) who owned both a Gen 2 and a Gen 3 Prius. Which one do you think was a better car—Gen 2 Prius or Gen 3 Prius—and why? A very green friend of mine (Sierra Club, Democratic Party, environmental and transit activism of all sorts) had a white Gen 2 he loved, which was totaled in an accident. He replaced it with a brand-new white Gen 3, but he hated its looks and never liked it. He traded it in for a white Model 3 when it first arrived. It also looks like Gen 3 had a lot of serious engine problems. Incidentally, I always regretted not getting a red 2008 Prius but a red 2009 Corolla XLE instead in February 2008. So, what do you think?
It's no contest... Toyota made some huge blunders "improving" Prius after Gen2... If you own a Gen3 (2010-2015 in the US) then you can count on not getting very far past 200K miles before head gasket failure. Then once you spend a fortune to get that fixed the super high mpg piston rings was a failed design and burn oil before you get very far into 200K miles. What's more, their horribly designed EGR system gets clogged and needs regular cleaning and when you combine a clogged EGR with an electric engine water pump design that has a hard time regulating its speed and tends to fail (gen2 engine water pump is belt driven) you get an overheated engine / headgasket failure. As in there's endless people in the 300K mile club with Gen2, but I only know of two Gen3 Prius that made it to 300K mile club without major engine repairs. There's simply no comparison... Gen2 is ten times the car than Gen3 Prius is in terms of long term repair costs.
I had two new gen2s which had no issues but I sold them both under 150k miles. Bought the 2012 Prius v because of its increased size and better ride and still have it at 345k miles. Inverter, brake booster, hybrid battery and oil consumption all had to be dealt with one way or another. Only cleaned the egr twice - the second time replaced the egr valve and software with updated versions. The first time was due to oil burning. In 2026 I would not recommend a used gen2 (too old) or a gen3 (too many high dollar problems) to anyone. In reality gen3s are rare around here as most have died and gone to salvage yard heaven. A 22 Rav4 hybrid now shares the garage with the v and is a much better car in almost every way.
