2005 prius purchase

Hard to say if its a good idea or not. At 180k, that is an avg. of 22.5k miles per year which is higher than what is considered normal (15k/yr). Use KBB as a guide for an appropriate price and get as much information as you can about maintenance history. If it were me, I would also be considering potential battery replacement. It may still be far off, who knows, but to be conservative, I would just be prepared for that as a potential upcoming cost. Certainly there are a lot of examples of these cars putting on a lot of miles with few problems, but you just never know what you're going to get. I would buy a Toyota with 180k miles over a lot of other brands, but in my opinion that is getting into the zone where maintenance should be planned for. Best of luck.

 

Have an extra three grand sitting around. There's a good chance the HV battery is drawing its last breaths unless it's been replaced recently.

 

bad idea.

 

I almost bought a 2006 with 125,000 miles but it had thorough records and the battery had recently been replaced. What you'll quickly learn is that even on older generations of Prius, the repairs are rare but costly when they are necessary. If you have access to thorough service records and they look good, I would hesitate still because that's a lot of miles. But check out the thread of people who have exceeded 200,000 in their prius. It's unbelievable.

 

At the right price, factoring in that you may have to replace the HV battery for $ 2-3,000, go for it!

 

I purchased a 2004 with over 185,000 and ran it to 295,000 miles and a lady ran a red light and I have a new delema, but I am pleased that I walked away from a 30 mph broadside.

Get the maintenance history. Get the VIN number, google mytoyata and register the vin no. as yours and the Toyota dealer history is available. I have found here on priuschat info that a hybrid battery fix can be achieved at half or less than the $3-4 thousand the dealer would charge. I found several sources within 3 hours of me that would check and replace failing cells in the battery pack and one of them would travel to the vehicle. I think the Prius has 12 cells total and the whole pack rarely fails.

Find someone who owns a Prius and have them go with you.

And.... Any used car can have problems, statistics indicate the prius has fewer than most.

There are many other thoughts on you question, priuschat is a wonderful resource. Spend a few hours searching the maintenance and general prius 2 forums. Many knowledgable people have shared their thoughts and experiences here.

Battery pack failures seem to be few and tend to be dark priis in hotter climes and/or priis that spend time going up and down hills. That is just my own finding from mining the info here in priuschat.

Good luck