We’re all intimately familiar with the Camry dent, where absent-minded Camry drivers dent up one of their plastic bumper covers and don’t give enough of a shit about their car to have it fixed. But behold, another Toyota has usurped the not giving a shit crown!
As far as I know, the Prius C is the cheapest brand-new hybrid car on sale in America. It’s basically a hybrid Yaris. It’s the perfect combination of (relatively) cheap, reliable, and fuel-efficient, for people who hate cars, and hate driving, but live somewhere like the suburban parts of Madison where I live and work, so they need to own and drive a car. But they want to devote as little mental and physical energy possible to the concept of owning, driving, fueling and maintaining a car, so they buy a Prius C.
I’m making all of these hypothetical over-generalizations about Prius C owners because I keep seeing beat to shit Prius Cs being driven extremely poorly around my particular corner of Madison. They have dents not only in the plastic bumper covers, but in multiple different sheetmetal panels. Dents that don’t look particularly new or like they’re going to be fixed anytime soon. And the drivers of these dented up Prius Cs seem to be woefully unequipped to handle even basic driving tasks like staying in lanes or making turns.
Therefore, I am now officially declaring the Prius C the official car for people who hate cars but need one anyway.
Runner up in the sweepstakes of the new car people destroy most quickly is the Mitsubishi Mirage, which ends up similarly destroyed as the Prius C, but probably for different reasons.
