how handy is the hatch?

When I read the thread title, I thought someone was seriously asking whether or not the hatch was handy and that we would have to convince them.

There are reports somewhere buried in the threads of people fitting living room sets from IKEA, diswashers, and other seemingly impossible items into their Prius. And most of them conclude with some variant of "the onlookers were amazed."

Personally, I always have a drop cloth in the small container on the driver's side of the cargo area. In 2005, before the Prius was real mainstream, I was at the Home Depot picking up 8-foot 1x12s for a project. As I approached my car with the cart of wood, there was a guy loading his F150 and his wife watching him. So here comes Tony with these long pieces of wood walking up to his tiny little car. Since I had preemptively folded the seats and put down the drop cloth, I just popped the hatch and started sliding the planks into the car. The look on the woman's face went from "yeah, right" to "what the..." She left the truck and came over to see just how I was doing it. I showed the folding seats she was amazed; thought it was the coolest thing ever. We talked about hauling stuff and how easy it is to fold the seats and then put them back when you're done. When we had finished talking, her husband was just standing there by his truck waiting; I don't know how long we were talking or how long he'd been finished with his own loading.

One thing I think is funny: never once did I mention it was a hybrid nor did it come up. Just good ole functional use of space.

 

OH yeah, be very careful when sliding things over the back seat. There's some metal pieces of the seat back that when things are rubbed across them will place small slices in the carpet backing.

Also, be careful of the back bumper. When removing something, be careful to not slide it across the corner of the bumper. It will rub the paint off.

One more thing, you can fit 8-foot pieces from hatch-to-dash. But be sure to wrap the ends of the pieces with cloth. When they slide into the dash or the hatch and leave marks you will know why. This is particularly important when you have multiple layers of wood, for example, and the top layers slide relatively easily over the lower layer.

Yes, I have had the unfortunate experience.