Industry | 2010.02.16
The Prius deniers | Toby Litt
Cars and gloating go together. But glee at the plight of the tree-hugger-carrier is something else
As any random five-minute segment of Top Gear will demonstrate, car ownership is roughly 5% about getting from A to B and 95% about gloating. Gloating that your car is either nippier than the other guy\'s or more fuel-efficient. Gloating that it\'s less grossly boy-racer naff or that it turns heads faster than in The Exorcist. And so any car that seems to give its owners a particularly good reason to gloat is likely to attract an immense amount of street-hate. Which is where, very quietly and at around 51 miles per gallon, the Toyota Prius comes in.
I have to admit that, prior to test-driving one for the Guardian last year, I couldn\'t have picked one out in the car park at Waitrose. I\'d been lost in the long dark tunnel of early years childrearing. So, while I could identify a Phil&Teds buggy on the far side of the park, and could strip down a Bugaboo blindfolded in 10 seconds, I had entirely missed out on the entire subculture that has grown up around despising the pious Prius.
In fact, the vehemence is a lot more interesting than the vehicle itself. When I took it down to Brighton, the Prius seemed to me incredibly well designed, well mannered. Below 30mph it ran on battery power; speeding up beyond that discreetly brought in the petrol engine. I didn\'t hit any rough roads – beyond cobblestones at walking pace – so the issue of non-functioning brakes didn\'t arise.
Even at the highest speed I could manage, it felt chasteningly underwhelming. The maximum it\'ll do is, rumour has it, a touch over 100mph – downhill, with the wind behind you, and you going "Come on, baby, do it for me." But this really is a car that\'s about getting from A to B rather than raising your heart rate or making you think that you have at least a couple of years before you\'re really middle-aged. Even the mildest 20 Hits for the Highway compilation you might pick off the counter at a service station would sound ridiculous coming from the stereo. Classic FM, however…
The Prius has a brand image that very obviously plays off its owner\'s self-image. Why choose one unless you want to advertise to all other car-owners that you\'re some kind of tree-hugging do-gooder? This wilful buying-in to ethical consumption explains why it\'s such a great target for satire – from South Park\'s episode, Smug Alert!, to the fake " Well, at least he drives a Prius " ads.
But if you get really, really angry about tree-hugging and do-gooding, that rather suggests that you\'re something like the opposite – some kind of specialist in evil deforestation. Which, for some members of I Hate Prius Owners Facebook groups, is probably not too far from the truth. There are very few banners around which the anti-environmentalist lobby can rally. Whereas Avatar and The Road both wind up as recruitment videos for Greenpeace, even in Midwest metroplexes the live-fast-die-young-leave-a-crispy-planet-for-your-grandkids message no longer really plays.
To see the Prius recalled due to a manufacturing fault has caused an outbreak of global gloating not equalled since Silvio Berlusconi got decked . As such, it\'s fulfilled its role as a car. Everyone from SUV-drivers to Ferrari boys to those timid souls intending to buy a Prius (but not just yet) has good cause for the schadenfreude of the rear-view mirror – which is what happens when Vorsprung durch Technik is seen to have broken down by the side of the autobahn. And, by appearing so obviously fallible, the Prius\'s role as symbolic Saviour of the Planet has clearly been undermined. That position, though, is never going to be a smooth ride. It\'s a clean job, but someone\'s gotta do it.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]a-prius-recall-climate-deniers
