The 2009 Toyota Prius often feels like the fastest car I've ever driven in this game.
How often is that? Well, that depends on how many times I have to brake for a corner in the XW30 Prius. 100km/h can often feel like 100mph when you slam the left pedal down and the brakes and tyres do nothing. Its 195/65R15 economy Comfort Medium tyres aren't even fit for a spartan, lightweight sports car that evenly distributes its workload to all four wheels, let alone a 5 door, 1,350kg (2,976lbs) monstrosity of a thing that hinges only on its front wheels. You could argue that the Prius was made for fuel efficiency first in mind, and on–track performance a distant 86th or something on the list of priorities, but for all the effort that went into its Hybrid Synergy Drive, KERS, low drag coefficient, and economy tyres that are liable to hydroplane on a dry desert road, the boffins at Toyota balls deep in rocket science have seemingly forgotten something very, very basic: it's more economical to simply not have to brake for a corner.
Instead, the Prius demands of its driver to leave all momentum, pride, joy, will to live, and any chance of wooing a partner not named Greta Thunberg around 3 million light years before a corner, because all that baggage is extra mass and that destroys fuel economy, I guess. Even after you've shed all that extra evil mass on corner entry, though, the car won't trail brake at all; you're either slowing, or you're making a feeble attempt to turn. Try to do both at once, and the fronts simply wash out wide doing a constant speed, while the unladen, sky scraping rears look to dance to some Eurobeat. Assuming your mortal body and pride both live long enough to see the day when you can finally get on the power, you'll also need to drive this modern NA Hybrid CVT technological marvel of a car like a lazy 1980s turbocharged clunker: give it much more throttle way sooner than you intend to put down any power, as the engine has to wake back up from hibernation, rev up to its oh so fanshay optimal rpm, and reengage with the CVT before you get anything more than the piddling nudge from the electric motor. This makes throttle modulation out of a corner an extreme pain, as you'll often have to stab the throttle hard just to "wake" the car up, before having to ease off immediately to prevent the car from careening off a cliff with "power" understeer. At least there's no worry of overwhelming the spiteful economy tyres with torque despite the electric motor, open diff and all. I'm not even sure if that's supposed to be a compliment or not.
Oddly, the game quotes the Prius at a max power output of 120HP (89kW) @ 5,000rpm, with a max torque of 142.1N⋅m (104.8lbf⋅ft) @ 4,500rpm. Quite frankly, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding these numbers, because the car's brochure quotes the max output for the ICE and motor at 99PS (73kW) and 82PS (60kW) respectively, which adds up to a combined output of 181PS (133kW). This confuses me as, not only is 181PS WAY more than 120HP, but said 120HP is nowhere near the numbers I got from the engine or motor. One possible explanation for this discrepancy I had, courtesy of Vic, is that the engine and motor make peak power at different speed ranges, and hence why we can't just add their peak powers up. Still, most real world reports peg the 2009 Prius to be able to do 0–100km/h sprint in around 10.4 seconds, yet, my own testing got me a mere 12.2 seconds instead, which is, again, a big difference I can't explain. It seems most likely to me that the Prius in this game is a little underpowered compared to the real thing.
What's worse, the Prius seems to have an overly inflated PP relative to its performance level as well. At 373.35PP bone stock, it's going up against the likes of the NA Roadster, AE86 Corollas, and GJ Atenza; a good mix of the light and sporty with the heavier and more luxurious cars, and all of them not only are a lot more joy to drive, but they will also at the same time unapologetically whoop the Prius' very transparent rear end by several seconds even around a sub 1:40 lap like Streets of Willow. Hell, even the 2011 Aqua, the Prius' younger, lighter sibling producing the same exact 120HP and still coming in somehow with ~20 less PP, would outrun the Prius both in the straights and corners in a hot lap scenario. Tune it? There's no forced induction options available for the internal combustion engine, electric motors are completely untouchable in this game, you can't even put a tank of Nitrous Oxide into the car's ample boot, nor can it get a conventional gearbox of any kind to give it some proper response. Of course, there are no engine swaps available for it, either, not unless PD one day goes insane and lets us swap in the TS050's hybrid V4 engine into the car. What this leaves us with is a car that, even with all the money in the world thrown at it, can't even achieve 150HP, and yet somehow has a hulking 585PP to show for it. Needless to say, it's pretty freaking useless stock or tuned. If this car had any more knockout punches levied against it, I'm liable to start calling my Prius Candy, and my Aqua Cindy or Rin.
And yet, despite all that, I don't hate the Prius. Quite the opposite, in fact—I think it's one of the coolest cars ever made, full stop.
Manufacturers often showcase wild concepts at auto shows, as "proof of concept". As a way to "gauge interest". A "look at what we can do, and if it incidentally shows how big our wangs are, then that's just a happy coincidence" kind of thing. These concept cars range from something mildly plausible like a V12 XJ220 for example, right down to a car with a wagging tail, or even a freaking suitcase with a steering wheel. I like to tell myself I'm a sane, rational person, and every time I take a look at these concept cars, the first thought that comes to my mind is, "who could possibly have a use for this?!" Yet, the Prius has a purpose. Toyota took a wild concept of a hybrid and mass produced it for a reasonable price, with ample seating, storage, and maintenance not very unlike a typical car, making it not just a game changer, but a world changer. I literally owe my day job to the pioneering Prius: I drive for my country's version of Uber, and I cannot even begin to fathom how much money having a hybrid drivetrain has saved me in petrol costs, despite not driving a Toyota. The holy trinity of LaFerrari, the 918, and the P1 might not have existed if not for the Prius. And until we can figure out an electric infrastructure and agree on it as a species, a hybrid powertrain I believe makes the most sense in a car for the here and now.
I vividly remember the moment my opinion on the Prius 180ed, actually. At my previous job as a tyre technical engineer, I had the chance to take a peek under a Prius on a hydraulic lift, and there, I saw that the XW30 had a freaking rear diffuser! In an econobox! Even my dream sports car, the FD RX-7, didn't have that! The Prius won me over because it spoke my young, fiery language. It showed me that Prii^ are engineered and built with the same laser focus as I revered in spartan sports cars, only towards a different goal. And hey, crazy people slung a V8 where its rear seats would've been, and raced this thing in perhaps the most varied and exciting racing series in the world: GT300! I mean, it's already got a body engineered for low drag, so why not build on it?
^Also, yes, apparently "Prii" is the official plural form of "Prius" now. The things COTW research end up teaching me!
Quick pop quiz time: do you know when the first generation Toyota Prius hit the market? It debuted exclusively in its home market of Japan in 1997. Now, do you know when Formula 1 adopted Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, or KERS for short? Spoiler alert: the answer is 2009, the same year the third generation of Prius was unleashed worldwide. In other words, the Prius was quicker to adopt a technology than the supposed technological showcase that is Formula 1 by more than a decade! If you grossly oversimplify that previous sentence, it could even be read as, "The Prius is faster than Formula 1". If that's not a cool thing to say about a road car, I don't know what is!
One of my favourite features in my Honda Fit and Shuttle hybrid models is the drive mode selector stalk: In a right hand drive model, you shift the stalk right for Neutral, right up for Reverse, and right down for Drive, with Park being its own button. This setup is so intuitive as someone who's learned driving in a manual, and still retain some muscle memory for it even in an automatic, because shifting the stalk sideways in both results in neutral, allowing the entire drivetrain to disconnect from the wheels when slowing for a smooth stop. I deeply despise the traditional, Inline PRND setup, because when drivers want to go from Drive to Park when sitting at a red, they'll have to move the stalk past Reverse, which causes their reverse lights to light up for an instant. Despite knowing this, seeing the car I'm stopped behind of lighting up its reverse lights just gives me a small scare every time. Not to mention, there's no feel at all when you're in Neutral or Reverse, somewhere between Park and Drive—not so with Honda's hybrid gear selector; you know EXACTLY where each mode is, and you never have to look for confirmation. It genuinely baffles me how this design hasn't been made standard across all cars, because it's just better in every regard.
Now imagine my surprise when I watched an early Prius commercial, and found out this design originated there!
In real life, the stalks of both cars spring back to the default position if you aren't holding it, to ensure that it's always in the same place when you reach for it, regardless of which drive mode you're in, and also that the first right shift is necessary to get into any mode; otherwise, it'd just be an Inline mode selector I just complained about. Unfortunately, this is where Polyphony Digital made a small mistake with the modeling of the car, as the stalk is stuck in the D position when on the move. It's truly baffling how PD can get some of the tiniest details of a car so spot on, and yet somehow they can make me question if anyone in the team ever sat in the car or drove it at all to begin with.
That aside, the Prius is, in my eyes, one of the coolest cars ever mass produced, if not ever. Its innovation can be had by the masses for a modest asking price and inspires competition in a way that puts F1 to shame. Yes, the on–track driving experience of the 2009 Prius made me want to hurl. It's completely irrelevant and useless in this game, even with 3.0L Supra money to throw at it on top of its 24,500 Credit cost. It's a Beater, no two ways about it, but it's the coolest Beater in the world, and I very seriously want the latest generation model for myself in the real world. I will even hold Greta Thunberg's hand for about 300 milliseconds if it meant that we can finally have a GT300 Prius in the game.
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