We will have wheels
Anyone have a creation code for DreamWidth lying around? I'm starting to get a bug to check it out. And for those of you using it, I'd love to hear what you think of it, particularly its LJ integration and, if you happen to use them, any RSS features.
The big news here is that we stopped dithering about the car and actually put a deposit down on a Prius. Shopping for a car, particularly a new car, is not my idea of fun stress. We had much more fun shopping for our bicycles. Niche salespeople tend to be geeks who want to fill your head with fascinating information. Car salespeople are, well, salespeople. I think the fellow we bought from at American Toyota on Alameda was the most pleasant guy we worked with, and that DID have an effect on our decision, but car salesmen CANNOT LET THERE BE SILENCE. We're out there test-driving, and sometimes we don't want to hear about random car anecdotes. Sometimes we want to feel how the car drives. Argh. SOOO EXHAUSTING.
For those of you tracking our decision, I'd say that the Insight and Prius are equivalent vehicles. It's all about what minutia you want to trade off.
The Insight:
- is less expensive overall. The Prius seems to target the luxury car market, while Insight aims to be a bargain hybrid. Which doesn't mean the Insight feels cheap. The baseline price difference is $2-3k for the same features, keeping in mind that the Insight has fewer options and less flexibility. The Insight tops out at about $24k, while you could spend over $30k on a tricked-out Prius.
- gets ~6 mpg less, depending on which source you look at. But these are both cars that get amazing gas mileage.
- has better pickup
- has a smaller interior and a lower roof, particularly in the back seat where with both brushed our head against the roof when we leaned back. (I am 5'4 and SB is 5'10, but all the height difference is in our legs, so we're the same height when we sit down.)
- has impressively fun and easy-to-follow driver-training dashboard lights to help you get the best gas mileage
- has a really crappy view out the back window when backing up.
The Prius:
- has an only slightly less crappy view out the back window when backing up
- has a larger interior
- gets better gas mileage
- has less pickup
- is far more customizable with regard to features
- is just harder to shop for and buy. The Prius is chronically understocked. You're not guaranteed that there will be one on the lot if you drop by to test drive, and our experience at Karl Malone when they DIDN'T have one was pretty awful. Much like the Wii, after a while I start to wonder -- why HAVEN'T they ramped up production to meet demand? They're selling well, but I didn't get the idea they're overwhelming the automobile market. Perhaps my perspective is colored by the fact that we had the misfortune to shop at the tail end of Cash for Clunkers.
I was leaning toward the Insight, and SB toward the Prius. We did a second test drive of the Insight a couple of weeks ago, the same day we wasted all that time at Karl Malone failing to drive a Prius. They also committed to calling us when one became available, which they didn't do. Our luck with American Toyota (recommended by messyjessy) was much better. They had a couple of Priuses held back to test drive, and we were able to make an appointment to drive one.
On the second test drive, I have to say that most of the things I didn't like about the Prius didn't seem bad at all. I even liked the weird dashboard -- it has a handy alcove to stuff my purse, thus solving one of my persistent driving annoyances. The pickup was also not as bad as I remembered from the Indianapolis test drive. I find that weird; when we test drove in Indy, the pickup seemed pretty pathetic. Test driving in Abq where there are actually hills seemed much better. However, in Indy we had four people in the car (me, SB, my brother, and his wife); in Abq we had three (me, SB, car salesman). If the Prius pickup is OK for three people or less, then I don't think it's major deciding factor.
The decision came down to two relatively minor things: interior space and customizability. SB really preferred the better head room and larger space in the Prius, and I can admit that I felt it. And we only wanted *one* fancy feature: the bluetooth phone feature that pipes your cell phone through the car audio for better handsfree talking than you can get with a headset. This feature is bundled with the navigation system on the Insight, but it is its own thing on the Prius. So basically, we had to buy the most expensive option package to get bluetooth on the Insight, while we could buy the base model Prius with a bluetooth add on. The price difference wasn't huge, but it seemed worth deciding on -- we got our one feature and more interior space for less money. And the gas mileage improvement might translate to more savings over the life of the car.
We weren't willing to compromise on ANYTHING, though. Not a single additional feature we didn't want, and certainly not color (we wanted blue). I'm amazed at how much a hardass I am when buying a new car compared to buying a used one. If we'd bought an Insight, we could have either bought it off the lot or gotten one quickly. Being that it's the understocked Prius, we put down a deposit and should have a car in six weeks. Annoying, but acceptable.
And just to amuse us, the Rapid Ride bus system has expanded such that it's almost convenient to where we live. We might actually be able to live with just one car. But I still think this is the right medium-term decision. We hope to have many happy years with the Subaru as our secondary car, especially for offroading to get to trail heads, but we'll still optimize our life for using a second car as little as possible.
The big news here is that we stopped dithering about the car and actually put a deposit down on a Prius. Shopping for a car, particularly a new car, is not my idea of fun stress. We had much more fun shopping for our bicycles. Niche salespeople tend to be geeks who want to fill your head with fascinating information. Car salespeople are, well, salespeople. I think the fellow we bought from at American Toyota on Alameda was the most pleasant guy we worked with, and that DID have an effect on our decision, but car salesmen CANNOT LET THERE BE SILENCE. We're out there test-driving, and sometimes we don't want to hear about random car anecdotes. Sometimes we want to feel how the car drives. Argh. SOOO EXHAUSTING.
For those of you tracking our decision, I'd say that the Insight and Prius are equivalent vehicles. It's all about what minutia you want to trade off.
The Insight:
- is less expensive overall. The Prius seems to target the luxury car market, while Insight aims to be a bargain hybrid. Which doesn't mean the Insight feels cheap. The baseline price difference is $2-3k for the same features, keeping in mind that the Insight has fewer options and less flexibility. The Insight tops out at about $24k, while you could spend over $30k on a tricked-out Prius.
- gets ~6 mpg less, depending on which source you look at. But these are both cars that get amazing gas mileage.
- has better pickup
- has a smaller interior and a lower roof, particularly in the back seat where with both brushed our head against the roof when we leaned back. (I am 5'4 and SB is 5'10, but all the height difference is in our legs, so we're the same height when we sit down.)
- has impressively fun and easy-to-follow driver-training dashboard lights to help you get the best gas mileage
- has a really crappy view out the back window when backing up.
The Prius:
- has an only slightly less crappy view out the back window when backing up
- has a larger interior
- gets better gas mileage
- has less pickup
- is far more customizable with regard to features
- is just harder to shop for and buy. The Prius is chronically understocked. You're not guaranteed that there will be one on the lot if you drop by to test drive, and our experience at Karl Malone when they DIDN'T have one was pretty awful. Much like the Wii, after a while I start to wonder -- why HAVEN'T they ramped up production to meet demand? They're selling well, but I didn't get the idea they're overwhelming the automobile market. Perhaps my perspective is colored by the fact that we had the misfortune to shop at the tail end of Cash for Clunkers.
I was leaning toward the Insight, and SB toward the Prius. We did a second test drive of the Insight a couple of weeks ago, the same day we wasted all that time at Karl Malone failing to drive a Prius. They also committed to calling us when one became available, which they didn't do. Our luck with American Toyota (recommended by messyjessy) was much better. They had a couple of Priuses held back to test drive, and we were able to make an appointment to drive one.
On the second test drive, I have to say that most of the things I didn't like about the Prius didn't seem bad at all. I even liked the weird dashboard -- it has a handy alcove to stuff my purse, thus solving one of my persistent driving annoyances. The pickup was also not as bad as I remembered from the Indianapolis test drive. I find that weird; when we test drove in Indy, the pickup seemed pretty pathetic. Test driving in Abq where there are actually hills seemed much better. However, in Indy we had four people in the car (me, SB, my brother, and his wife); in Abq we had three (me, SB, car salesman). If the Prius pickup is OK for three people or less, then I don't think it's major deciding factor.
The decision came down to two relatively minor things: interior space and customizability. SB really preferred the better head room and larger space in the Prius, and I can admit that I felt it. And we only wanted *one* fancy feature: the bluetooth phone feature that pipes your cell phone through the car audio for better handsfree talking than you can get with a headset. This feature is bundled with the navigation system on the Insight, but it is its own thing on the Prius. So basically, we had to buy the most expensive option package to get bluetooth on the Insight, while we could buy the base model Prius with a bluetooth add on. The price difference wasn't huge, but it seemed worth deciding on -- we got our one feature and more interior space for less money. And the gas mileage improvement might translate to more savings over the life of the car.
We weren't willing to compromise on ANYTHING, though. Not a single additional feature we didn't want, and certainly not color (we wanted blue). I'm amazed at how much a hardass I am when buying a new car compared to buying a used one. If we'd bought an Insight, we could have either bought it off the lot or gotten one quickly. Being that it's the understocked Prius, we put down a deposit and should have a car in six weeks. Annoying, but acceptable.
And just to amuse us, the Rapid Ride bus system has expanded such that it's almost convenient to where we live. We might actually be able to live with just one car. But I still think this is the right medium-term decision. We hope to have many happy years with the Subaru as our secondary car, especially for offroading to get to trail heads, but we'll still optimize our life for using a second car as little as possible.