I went on a vacation to New Zealand recently, and thought I'd share a photo of my rental car with y'all. Yeah, OK, it's a 2nd gen and this is the 3rd gen forums... But I don't venture over to that side of the pond ever, so it's here. Anyway, we rented a Prius for 2 weeks because we were driving basically the perimeter of New Zealand's south island, and gas (errr, petrol) there is about twice as expensive as gas in California, which itself is expensive by American standards. It was nice having a car that was vaguely familiar as I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Well, familiar except that the turn signal and wiper stalks are switched (which was OK for the first day, since it was raining anyway) - and I also noticed that the intermittent wiper speed control seems to be hooked up backwards down there. One of the hardest things to get used to was looking at the rear view mirror to the left, actually. Anyway, we went hiking on our second day, and came back to find our car surrounded by sheep, hence the picture. A friend of mine was also traveling more or less with us, and also rented a Prius. He doesn't visit Priuschat much any more though, having moved on to <cough> greener pastures with his Nissan Leaf. Anyway, I'm back, and after ignoring Priuschat for a while so I could get productive things done, I thought I'd drop back in and see what I missed. It's nice to see that no matter how long one is gone, you can still come back to some old favorite threads like those on EMF, unintended acceleration, and how awful the navigation system is.
Now it's "Baa, baa, baa..." instead of "Hum, hum, hum...". Welcome back. My brother-in-law was in New Zealand for a few months with the filming of "The Last Samurai". (He was the cannon master.) He had a blast (sorry).
...oh that's so cool we lived in NZ for 5-months and the sheep came right up to our backyard. When we were there the Prius was not yet a gleem in Toyota's eyes, so we drove a Holden. They did have a lot of nat gas conversion cars back then due to ample supplies.
Heh. Weird. They're still renting out Gen 2 Priuses? Most rental car companies in the US don't rent out cars that old. You're braver than I to drive on the wrong side of the road. The only time I've driven a car w/the steering wheel on the wrong side was a JDM Toyota Soarer (aka Lexus SC here) on a small closed test track at the Toyota Megaweb, not the open road. And yeah, the stalk positions being reversed is weird. Heh re: the sheep. As for Leaf, you and/or your friend might be interested in SF Bay Area '13 Leaf viewing 1/12/13 | PriusChat. Re: the favorite old threads, I guess thing were pretty uneventful here at PC vs. MyNissanLeaf. There was a town hall w/execs on Phoenix the other day regarding battery degradation issues. They also got a sneak peak at the '13 Leaf (not shipping yet) and the '13 Leaf specs, trims and options were announced.
