New Car!

For some reason a few weeks ago, I was looking into hybrid cars to get an idea of what my next vehicle would be.  I had to face reality that the rear differential would probably not last much longer in the Aztek.  My drive to work is a little over 20 miles, but the miles are adding up and I was not looking forward to the annual summer gas hike.  Living as far away from work as I do, I know I need to give up the SUVs and go with something that's better on gas. 

One night after work, I had to meet Mom in town to get the girls so that she could go to a doctors appointment.  I took advantage of the early out of work to go across town and go grocery shopping at one of my favorite grocery stores.  Dani feel asleep on the way over there, so to kill a little bit of time to let her sleep longer, I went over to the Honda dealer to take a look at the "hands down" winner of the car with the best gas mileage - a Toyota Prius.  I really wanted to see if this was something I was going to be interested in or if I needed to look at a different vehicle.  A huge plus was that getting a model off the dealer's lot was a few thousand cheaper than the price that I was quoted for "building" one off of Toyota's website!  While talking with a salesman, he just happened to mention that they just took an 2008 in on trade and that he' could bring it up for me. 

By this time Dani had woke up so we decided to take the '08 out for a test drive.  The girls really had no idea what to think about it!  After running the numbers with the sales man and finance guy, I decided to go ahead and get it... and so far, I'm very glad I did!  And I'm not sure if it was a stroke of luck or a sign that I was able to find a USED Prius, let alone that it had under 20k miles!   It is a little different to drive, but not by much. I must say that it is a zippy little thing too!

My main reason for writing about this is because you always hear and read the manufacturer's specs on gas mileage, and I have found that most times they are off!  My Sunfire averaged less than 20mpg and my Aztek (surprisingly) averaged 20-23mpg!  So I wondered, would a Prius really average 45mpg?  YES! 

Owners manual says that it has an 11.5 gallon tank so I figured that the first week I had it I should get 350 miles  (safely figuring that I'd get 35mpg on 10 gallons of gas).  This I would have been thrilled with because I was averaging 325 miles on a tank in the Aztek and filled it up every 6-7 days.  I drive the Prius for 9 days before filling it up for the first time!  The girls and I were on our way to Lake Erie to go camping or else I probably could have drove it a few more days.  I also could have probably drove further but then I started to wonder if it had a dummy gas light and not wanting to find out in the middle of no where, I went ahead and stopped for gas. 

My break down of the first tank:
428 miles, 9.4 gallons of gas (45.5mpg), and $25.51

Needles to say, I am *more* than *thrilled*!  So far, I am very happy with my decision to get this... hopefully it keeps up the wonderful performance!