I always liked the Prius's sloped front end and wondered how it would work out as a foundation for a gas hogging mid engined supercar with giant box flairs, especially the new 2024 one. Just think of how easy it would be to service the engine through the back doors.
I've autocrossed both a 1st gen and a 2nd gen prius (older family cars. The 1st gen is still around and running OK to this day but is rusting out and soon for the scrap heap I'm afraid) several times when my vintage machines were down. It would have been interesting to see someone put out a chip to allow more power to be quickly drawn out of the batteries.
The 1st gen was a decent handling little machine overall. Actually pretty fun to autocross - reasonably zippy around corners even with the weight and body roll. The 2nd gen prius, with the over-active SC and TC was a total pig; effectively unusable in Autocross, as well as extremely dangerous in daily driving. An absolutely terrible car when on anything but absolutely dry roads. It would enter *catastrophic* understeer if there was a single drop of moisture on the roads (and that's with good tires), and forget about winter altogether - it was downright dangerous, with no ability whatsoever to accelerate or turn. I ended up defeating the "stay down" equipment on the (foot activated) parking brake so I could move my left foot over and slide the rears so that I could turn in the winter. The number of times that car refused to do anything other than go straight ahead... UGH. Never buy a 2nd Gen prius. Never. Far and away the most dangerous car I ever drove, even on the very best winter tires available in my region.
I always put tires with reasonable grip on a car once the first set wears out, so both of these were on tires considerably better than the original LRR tires.
panjandrum said:I've autocrossed both a 1st gen and a 2nd gen prius
An absolutely terrible car when on anything but absolutely dry roads. It would enter *catastrophic* understeer if there was a single drop of moisture on the roads (and that's with good tires),
Far and away the most dangerous car I ever drove, even on the very best winter tires available in my region.
I always put tires with reasonable grip on a car once the first set wears out, so
Yeah but did you try the 17x9 wheel and tire package? :)
In reply to amg_rx7 (Forum Supporter) :
Obviously I had the 17x9 wheel package. No self-respecting prius own can go without those! (In reality I had reasonably grippy "summer" street tires on those cars. It's been a long time and I don't remember the specifics. Probably something Tire Rack would list in their "high performance summer" range or possibly a high-performance all-season if a summer was unavailable. A tire type I can't actually purchase anymore for most of my cars due to a lack of performance tires in many sizes. I have to race my 1976 912E on "Grand Touring All Seasons", for example, as there no longer any true performance tires made to fit it.)
Front wheel bearings are weak on gen 2 cars. 17" wheels were an option with a warning not to drive on rough roads!
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