Sorry to hear about your wife. I had a Prius for a week and couldn't stand it.

With the price of gas so low MPG doesn't really matter much to me.

 

I own an S2000 and a Prius. Prius is great, its a technological marvel. It takes about 2 weeks of driving to fully appreciate what it can do. After that its hard to justify a gas guzzler for your daily driver. 50 mpg real world driving

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmHpSyTsfm0[/media]

 

Agreed. Wife was driving a 2010 Prius and we just traded that in for a 2013 Prius V. It is a great car all around really: comfortable, plenty of amenities/luxuries and great gas mileage. It does make driving the S that much more enjoyable too.

 

I'm anti-hybrid so I'd never own one. You can get 44-48mpg freeway on a diesel without the toxic battery in the back and with a motor that will nearly run forever. On Tech that is older then us.

What drives me nuts is Honda produced the best re-world hybrid but of course never marketed it properly and it was too funky looking to get traction. 70mpg is what it actually got.

There is enough 'tech' in the Prius yet it ONLY returns 50mpg. The Honda Civic returned 55mpg in 1978. So from my perspestive it falls well short its tech. I drive about 30,000 miles/year. I'm use to 8-10$/gas. Everything is wonderfully half price in this country. Cars are cheap, insurance is low and gas is dirt cheap. A fill up is less then a nice meal out

I'd still drive the Prius over the S on a road trip because you can take more stuff with you and drive with more space. I just think the Prius is sole sucking... lol

 

IMO it depends on a few things. Everyone's circumstances are different. 1) your cash flow. 2). Weather 3) freeway traffic jams. 4) neighborhood 5) plans once there. Don't get me wrong I drive my S every chance I get but if I need to use my credit card for gas and not debit, it would be foolish. As stated earlier, cold + top up + freeway = foolish. If your freeway driving is through stop and go ex. L.A. Cali for 80 miles = foolish. If you're having to park it somewhere and it gets vandalized = foolish. If as you say its just lunch and you don't plan any thing else and you want to, take the S, otherwise its smarter and cheaper to take the Prius.

 

I was ready to drive the s2k today when at 3:30 AM I remembered that months ago I told my mother-in-law that sometime I'd bring down my late wife's sewing machine and cabinet so she could refurb them and pass them along to the next generation. By 4:30 I was cleaning the stuff up, hauling it up from the basement, and staging it in the garage to load in the truck once the sun was up. So I drove the Ridgeline rather than the Prius or S2k.

 

S2k hands down.

 

.... best laid plans as they say...

 

We do frequent trips between Atlanta, Clarksville, TN(320 miles) & Paducah, KY(add another 100 miles). What we drive depends on weather, who is going, & what we are taking along. Just the wifely unit and I or me alone, the S goes. Wife and her cat are along, the Grand Marquis makes the trip. If we need to haul more than the car will carry the F-250 goes.

One thing I have discovered is http://pure-gas.org/ In the southeast we pay about a 10% premium for uncontaminated gas and get 10-15% better gas mileage. Last week in the S I got 24MPG on the trip up there and 27.7MPG on the way back. I guess it took 250 miles to flush the ethanol out of the system.

 

I'd take the S but I find it comfortable and drive mine any time there's good weather (clear and in the 50's & 60's qualifies for me). That said, while I find the S to be a comfortable highway cruiser it really shines in the twisties. However, you need to base your decision on your preferences and priorities. Do MPG's really trump what the S has to offer?

One doesn't preclude the other. Owning different vehicles makes much more sense to me. Our other main vehicle is an RX 400h. In our case one's a (hybrid) cargo & people hauler and one's a roadster. However, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to understand why owning a sporty car and owning a reliable, fuel efficient vehicle might be something that another person would want.

Despite your assumption that there are only two personality types there's definitely a third than can appreciate both hybrids and sports cars (and even other vehicles!). The RX and other Toyota hybrid systems take a little while to learn before you can truly squeeze the most MPG's out of them but it's certainly possible to appreciate a hybrid and the S whether you understand or not. The Prius clearly isn't horrible to those that own it. There are those that find the S horrid for its lack of torque, harshness, cramped space, etc. Thankfully there are a wide variety of vehicles to fit a wide variety of niches and it's certainly possible for anyone to appreciate more than one type of vehicle.

Fair enough. I'd avoid the foot or fish sucking car as well.