The First Week With the Prius

The first week with the Prius has been all I'd hoped it would be -- buyer's remorse, high mileage, and comfortable commuting. Heck, it even did a great job of hauling a bunch of junk to storage.

I still kinda wish I'd blown the extra $3K on fancy navigation and stereo gear, but it just seemed like a waste. since I'm planning on driving back and forth between home and work for the most part. I can buy a mapping GPS for $200 or so. And maybe I can even put together a cheap car computer...

Anyway, the car has worked wonderfully for the daily commute; I think I've averaged 45.8 mpg over the last 320 miles. The car is perfectly suited for the mix of high-speed cruising and stop-and-go commute traffic that I see nearly every day. As the Prius will apparently get better and better mileage as it gets broken in, I may be able to do pretty well on my commute. Eh, and it puts out very clean emissions.

It's also interesting to have a little four-seat hatchback after years with the Miata as my daily driver. Yesterday, I managed to put down the back seats (and fully recline the front passenger seat), and fit a whole bunch of household junk in the back for a drive down to our storage place. I shudder to think how many Miata trips it would've taken to do that.

Of course, the Miata is still out there, and now that it isn't a daily driver, I hope to be able to replace the springs and shocks (and leaky top) and actually go back to driving it hard on the mountain roads and maybe at the track. Woo hoo!