Should I bother with the '04 Prius???

I really like the look of the ’04 Prius, but I have some problems. First of all, I’m 6’6”. Is the Prius a clown car? I’m I gonna be able to fit without being uncomfortable?

This car takes 10 seconds to get from 0-60. I don’t know, but that doesn’t sound very speedy to me. Is this car a slug? I heard the old one drives like a golf-cart, but is the ’04 any more acceptable?

I’m used to driving a car that weighs more than 2 tons with a 4.0 liter Northstar V8. It’s an Oldsmobile Aurora, and I think it does 0-60 in about 7 seconds. Is this car light enough that it isn’t a slug even though it doesn’t have quite as much power?

This might put things in perspective:
I had to drive an ’04 Civic at driving school and it didn’t have nearly enough room for my legs and I thought it was seriously under-powered. I seriously had to put the pedal to the medal just to get up to highway speed!

I’ve noticed this car has a compression ratio of 13! The rule is that any car that has a compression ratio over 10 should always use high-octane gasoline. I can’t believe Toyota doesn’t advise against that. A car with a compression ratio as high as 13 just can’t run properly on low-octane gas! Has anybody done any comparisons of how much gas-mileage you can get with high-octane versus low-octane.

The truth is, I really love this car, but I’m trying to figure out if it’s even worth me test-driving. If it’s not big enough, then I shouldn’t even give it a test-drive, ya know?

For the money you're paying (and possibly saving on gasoline), you better take it for a test drive. It's not that difficult to do.

you need to go test drive it. for one, i would test drive an 05 model because someone said that the front legroom goes back farther than in the 04 model. the prius has more overall legroom than the camry and the accord and has more front legroom than the camry but not the accord. so if you can fit in a camry, you can definately fit in the prius. i think something you will like will be the headroom in the front, but probably not in the back.

the 10 secs from 0-60 has never been a problem for me, because i dont need to go from 0-60 in ten seconds. the only times i need to accelerate from a stop is in neighborhoods and 40mph road stop lights. and even then, people in front of you wont floor their cars so 10 seconds from 0-60 is really more than enough. usually people take over 20 seconds to get to 60 on the highway.

the compression ratio really is 13 but you can still use regular gasoline because the prius uses an atkinson cycle engine that has a wierd piston movement.

a test drive would be optimal to see if you CAN fit in it. otherwise, how could you really know for sure??