Gen 2 Prius V Brand New "sota" Insignia Cdti

[Carltona123]

If you ever think that maybe you'd be better off with one of the new "state of the art" diesels rather than your Prius then I can assure that, at least as far as the Vauxhall is concerned, you're far better off sticking with your Toyota.

I had a brand new one (manual trans) as a rental this weekend. Couldn't wait to give it back.

Had it to fetch my daughter from Uni - god has that girl got a lot of clothes. My 7th run of the academic year (from Solihull) I thought that I'd put some miles on someone else's car for a change - and at only £32 it seemed like a good deal. Plus I didn't want to overload the Prius or drive it over the grass at her halls of residence and get the tyres dirty. Or worse.

When my daughter saw the Vauxhall parked up she actually said, "why would someone buy one of these?"

What an un-intuitive car to drive. So hard to get the hang of it. It had loads of new gimmicky things but I felt like I was learning to drive again.

Top six dislikes;

1. It had a push-button parking brake which was a nightmare to use - I still hadn't got the hang of it by the time I handed it back.

2. The stop-start system was beyond irritating.

3. I thought the cruise control was actually dangerous to use and I can now see why it's banned in certain countries. It just doesn't work with manual transmission, IMHO. In use, I found my instinct to cancel it in a hurry was to reach for the brake AND the clutch. Very bad - tho' maybe it's just me. It didn't have a stalk control either - if it had it would have been 100 times better, and safer.

4. Used more fuel than the Prius.

5. HAVE YOU SEEN THE PRICE OF DIESEL?! Give me unleaded any day of the week.

6. 5k on the clock and it felt like the clutch was on the way out - crunchy gearchanges.

PS A friend at work bought one a couple of years ago. Has to give it a 20 mile blast once a week to sort the DPF.

Then his clutch and flywheel went. £ouch.

Viva the Prius!

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Bit harsh. They're no worse than many other similar priced cars out there. They also start at £16,500 compared to a base Prius at £22,000 so there's a big difference in what you get for your hard earned! To be fair you are comparing apples to oranges. I've just looked up the price of a 1 year old Insignia and find you can buy one for £6k. You can't find a gen3 Prius for under £7k and that's for a 5 year old car.

But you're right about the clutch. In my town at least, more modern Vauxhalls are to be avoided like the plague by taxi drivers as the dual mass flywheel was a cause of significant irritation. Clutches would also wear out pretty early too. The lifetime warranty is needed, but the hassle of being off the road for the basics still made you have to think twice about buying one.

Would I get one? Hmmm nah, but saying that £6,000 would buy you a 13 plate large family car. That has to be worthy of some consideration.

[ProudPriusOwner]

Interesting that the market price of the Prius is higher than the alternative - and that's the opinion of lots of people therefore?

[Carltona123]

Apologies if I sounded like Jeremy Clarkson - in fairness it did pull really well even with the weight of my daughter's wardrobe weighing it down, not to mention the one small plastic carrier bag containing all of her year's work (apparently it's all stored digitally nowadays.)

But does anyone ever pay anything like full price for a new Vauxhall?

£6000 for a big, late-plate diesel sounds good - that's what my friend thought (I think he paid about £9k for a two year old) - but the impromptu £1500 repair bill really spoiled their Christmas. Now he wants to get shot before anything else goes wrong.

Plus I forgot to mention how woeful the fuel economy was around town - I actually drove it back to the depot on the motorway (60 mpg at 55 mph) cos it used much less fuel and I was running low.

And yes Vauxhall's aren't the only ones that suffer (DPF) issues; a while back I was in a Zafira private hire (he was chuffed at getting 35 mpg around town) and he told me he'd had the DPF taken out cos he was getting so fed up of it!

Then last week I was in Birmingham and saw a sign outside a garage ADVERTISING DPF removal!

Is that legal?!

[Grumpy Cabbie]

No, well not if you want to use it on the road.

Yes 35 mpg around town as a taxi is good. The general economy rule for a Mondeo sized taxi was as follows;

Petrol automatic 23-25 mpg

Diesel automatic 25-27 mpg

Petrol manual 28-30 mpg

Diesel manual 31-34 mpg

My Prius average over 12 months and 34,000 miles of taxi use was 49.9 mpg UK.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Then last week I was in Birmingham and saw a sign outside a garage ADVERTISING DPF removal!

Is that legal?!

It isn't illegal to remove a dpf, but from February 2014 MOT testers are required to check for a diesel particulate filter as part of the MOT inspection of the exhaust system. A vehicle will automatically fail the MOT test if the filter that had been fitted as standard, is no longer present.

[Raistlin]

Mod Edit

Topic cleaned up...

Derogatory remarks deleted