Back Seat Arm Rest?

My 1yr old and 3yr old daughters haven't complained yet! Then again they are usually strapped into their Graco's back there.

 

I have a new 2008 Prius and my leather back seat arm rest always falls down and doesn't stay upright in the seat. Anyone else have this problem?

Dave

 

Since I will never be a passenger in my own Prius and I will always be the driver it does not bother me that the armrest looks kinda funky.. It stays closed all the time anyway.

 

My 4 year old daughter uses the rear arm rest as a seat for whichever doll seems to be traveling along with us on any given day. She hasn't complained yet about the angle and neither have the dolls. More recently though, she has been attempting to fashion a tiny seat belt to accomodate her companions. That's one mod I never thought I'd have to consider.

 

Sometimes my 10yr old will use the arm rest for the same thing,, She likes to put her American Girl Dolls on it

 

It's not a problem. The armrest was designed to work this way.

Tom

 

Yep! Mine does the same thing!! We were considering having another kid just so the baby could prop the arm rest up on longer trips... but we've opted for some duct tape instead.

 

Just strange.

Or as Toyota would likely explain it, "working as designed".

 

Ha, it's funny to see how many people this bugs. I noticed that it sloped down and that it was too low to rest my arm on, but doesn't bug me because I am always driving and I rarely have any passengers to fill the back seat. I usually keep it up because if down my Chihuahua uses it as a launching pad/runway into the front seats.

 

I thought it was just ergonomic, slants down like your resting forearm.

 

x2

 

I would just get new friends.

Of course, I suppose to get new friends, you have to have friends to begin with, and I don't........sigh.......

 

Like most things that you need to know about the Prius, this topic had already been posted on the PC forums.

I noticed this on my 2009 right after I got it home. Like many others, it bugged me also. I think that I later checked it on a showroom model and saw that it had the same "design flaw". It is not as comfortable as it would be were it level.

It is one of those rare Prius "what were they thinking???" items. Most of the rest of the car is so thoughtfully laid out, that it's amusing that something like this got included.

Maybe someone in Toyota legal thought that some parents might try to use the armrest as a "booster seat" for a child, and decided that if they let it slope down instead of being level, that it would be too uncomfortable to be used as a booster? Just a wild guess on my part.

 

Thanks for reviving this thread. I knew I had a negative post about the Prius somewhere.

 

Your wife's what does this?