Prius C - the ultimate camping vehicle?

Howdy Prius geeks

While undertaking some further testing of our Prius C roofrack on our recent family holiday I got to thinking about a message for all those folks who bought a Prius V because they "need the space". My message is simply, "learn to pack!".

Just kidding. You do what you want with your stuff, me I don't have space for it all inside our car so I had to figure out how to attach it all on the outside. It turns out you can put a lot of stuff on a Prius C and it still works and even handles admirably well, returning surprisingly good fuel economy, even with a 15' canoe and 4 bikes attached! No broken coil springs, no serious problems. The kids even slept on the way home!

We were two adults, two kids, 4 bikes, 1 canoe, and all our canoeing, biking and camping gear for a week of tent camping. We were surely pushing the limits of what one should reasonably try to put in or on a Prius C but we didn't have too far to go. We managed 3.5-4.5 L/100km on back roads and 5.1 on the highway!

As someone who wants to reduce my fuel consumption to the minimum but can't yet afford an electric car I'm pretty pleased with our results. Our one week family vacation for four used a total of 21 litres of fuel. True we didn't go far and we stayed put rather than driving every day but that suits me fine. A Prius C may be cute but I'd still rather be in the canoe any day of my week off

Also I forgot to take a photo of it but for anyone who hasn't yet discovered the storage space under the trunk floor there's gotta be 50 litres of room down there. Simply toss out the foam filler pieces and cut a plywood panel to match their outline. Bingo you just gained enough storage space for half your camping gear!

The picture of the car with no racks is just because I love these slick old Thule Tracker feet and rails. It's just so great to be able to strip the car to nothing but rails and anchor points in a few seconds with no tools. The bare car photo was taken just a couple minutes after we started unloading the canoe.

There's another post on this forum with my experience mounting these rail-based racks and another contributor's too. The canoe rack brackets are my own creation but they're not complicated (see other thread) and they've now passed extensive stress-testing. The verdict: Thule bars and tracker feet are STRONG and rails attached to your roof with almost a dozen rivnuts each are VERY solid.

Happy camping