Love my Prius more than ever!

Hey folks! Thought I'd share my experience driving a non-Prius for the first time since buying mine.

We went on vacation last week, mainly for my big sister's wedding but also to visit family and such. Since my friends and family are spread all over Wisconsin, we put over 1000 miles on this rental car. I believe I can comment on it, having driven a number of those miles.

The car was an 04 Chevy Cavalier. The first thing I noticed just looking at it is that the thing looked cheap. I estimated the purchase price to be around $12000 because it looked like the bare-bones base model. Wrong. Sticker price: nearly $19K! And for what you get, that was a REAL rip off. I was upset that we paid $250 for 8 days with this car! Made me very happy we paid the extra $5.5K on a Prius!

The dash panels simply did NOT fit together. The seams were so obvious they screamed at you. The "defroster vent" was a big eyesore in the middle of the dash and it didn't even point at the windshield! The vents did not turn off individually like in the Prius.

Now driving the car was something ELSE. I could not feel the steering respond at all. At first I asked my husband whether the car had power steering at all. The brake pedal also was pretty scary. I'd step down on it and it would stop going down. You'd hit the floor. And THEN it would start to slow down. You really could not feel any response on the pedal. It really scared me at first, especially after having the brakes set up the way they are on the Pri.

The seats were so low I felt like we were only a few inches off the road. Not to mention that we felt every jolt of every little bump in the road. I also hated the visibility.There's no need to sit so low! The engine was loud and sounded sickly. It hesitated to accelerate at all. The seats were also insanely uncomfortable. In fact, we've been back for 4 days and my lower back is still aching and I can't sleep right.

There was no trunk space, especially compared to the Prius. We barely fit our 4 bags in there! We only had 2 medium sized suitcases, a large carryon and a small briefcase and we had to really slam the trunk to close it.

All I can say, is that I was thrilled to come home to our car. We spent much more on gas in those 1020 miles than the total we've spent on our Prius, maintenance included, with a current mileage of 2500 miles.

I'm glad to be home.

 

Ha, thanks for the condolences everyone... :lol:

We got the Cav because we were trying desperately to not spend too much on vacation. As expected, that didn't work out anyway but we did just barely manage to not come home broke.

senna, I'll still take the Prius ride over a Cav any day of the week!

Now I guess we know never to go THAT route again. Maybe we'll just drive our Pri next time.

 

Ha, that was funny. I agree fully.