On the market for a 3rd gen Prius - wish list

No on the rebuild....even if it's free

 

That's almost as much as I paid over a year ago for my '13 PiP with fewer miles!

Then again, that one looks very very clean.

For $8-9K, you'll probably be north of 100K miles and not likely to be newer than a 2012.

 

Looks pretty nice, if you can keep it clean and don't mind a screaming hot car in the summer. Price looks fair if it's in good shape mechanically and the traction battery is in good shape.

 

if you're keeping it long term, is oil burning/headgasket a concern?

 

wasn't there some major hurricanes going through Florida this year? Cars from auctions are usually cars that can't go to a regular dealership

 

i don't know if it is because the 10's and 11's have racked up more miles, or because toyota corrected the problems. have you read anything?

 

If those 2 things are a must then you'll have to get a 2010 or 2011 trim 4 or 5, 2012-15 trim 4&5 will have vinyl seats with JBL sound system.

Coming from an audiophile background, you can only take full advantage of the JBL sound system audio quality with HD radio and audio playback that's in a lossless format. Any audio sample rate below 16-bit or 320 kbps playing through the audio system, the JBL sound system will sound like exactly like the non-jbl system like the trim 2 package. There's no more standards for HD radio broadcast radio stations to upkeep anymore so songs skip back and forth. I laugh at people spending crap loads of money on sound system to see them only using 128kbps audio tracks, hilarious.

 

I hunted down the ideal gen 3 Prius for 6 months so I somewhat know how wearing oneself out feels like. I noticed that package 4 and 5 were listed about couple of grand higher than base model. Is the 2013 in excellent condition 4 or 5 trim? Most likely the battery will last as long as the car's life if it's in normal condition.

Honestly and personally I don't recommend the prius gen 3 to anyone anymore knowing from what I know now. I recommend the Mazda 3 for people who do majority of highway driving with 40 mpg highway, 20s for city driving. Hopefully the Ford Cmax hybrid people can chime in.

 

This is not the case. The EGR circuit is unchanged thru the entire generation, aside from an intake manifold update which did little or nothing as far as correcting the issue goes. Regardless of year, once you're at 100k miles, the feeling around the forum is it's time to restore the EGR circuit to like new flow rate. Personally, I feel this is too long to let it go but many go far beyond without issue. Likely driving conditions and amount of oil burned have an impact but it's not clear (to me, anyway) just how. There have been reports here of both head gasket failure and rods thrown thru the block right up thru 2014 that I'm aware of... Anyone planning to go well into 6-digit mileage with a turd gen should have a plan here, be it DIY or a truly competent and caring mechanic. Not trying to be alarmist, just trying to assure you don't end up in a bad place. I have no doubt the turd gen engine can live a gen 2-like lifetime with an EGR maintenance plan, and the oil level checked often and kept topped up.

 

would a diesel work for you?

 

i don't know anything about them, but they are supposed to get good highway mileage. i suppose you would have to adjust for the higher per gallon price. reliability of the engine is supposed to be good, but dubs have a bad overall rep.