Recent post by Facebook Prius Prime owner (not me): "Poor Optimus is a write off. It served us well and protected us in the accident. A large van skidded on ice and hit us fully on the passenger side where I was sitting. I dislocated all my fingers on one hand and am going through rehab but after seeing this it would have been so much worse in a lesser car. So many airbags in this car. We will replace it with another Prime once all the insurance gets sorted and we can find a dealer with one. Go hug your car and thank those engineers for their safety devices."
Wow, nice testimonial. Glad you didn't get hurt too bad and hope things work out with the insurance company.
Fun fact: That second, wider lower brace in the rear door is the 1997 safety standard. Cars prior to 1997 only had one rear door brace. Oddly enough, there isn't one for the front door.
Ain't none in my spouse's daily driver 1989 Integra (I bought it for her new), that is one reason I want her to say her goodbye to it and get something new. I'll pay for it all. She almost died when I was driving my very similar 1986 Accord and an oncoming pickup truck on the right ignored its red light. Had I not skidded to a stop two-thirds of the way across the intersection, leaving just enough room for it to fishtail across our nose, her side of the car would have looked far far worse than that Prime. That is a primary reason I replaced that otherwise still reliable and economical '86 with a 2010 Prius. (Later upgraded to a 2012).
Glad the driver was able to walk away a live! crumple zones, factor of safety, elastic/plastic deformation. That's why we go to school
This was a big reason I got the Prime... safer than the car that preceded it. Thanks for sharing the photo.
Pretty much every newer car is safer than the cars the preceded it. Much more computing power to model crash response, better materials, better electronics to fire the airbags, etc.
Of course, though I meant it in the spirit of me moving from car A to B. The SUV I let go for it is still on sale as a new model, and the Prius represented a significant upgrade for me in that regard.
I think it is interesting how that truck scraped off the fender, both door skins, the cover of the charge port and the body skin above it. Makes me wonder if those parts are welded or just glued on. Also looks like the car could probably be driven away from the accident. I wonder what is the value of a totaled Prime like that. I can see many thousands of dollars of good parts there to fix other damaged Primes. (Maybe I should have been in the junkyard business).
Having come of age during the era of cheap gas and muscle cars as a hobbyist gearhead, I occasionally sourced parts from the yards. I have no idea what the going rate is now but it was 50% of new part list back in the day. If you were fortunate enough to have an in with a dealer or professional mechanic, the "mechanics discount" for a an OEM part from the dealer was 40%.
