My Quest for a New Car: Journal Entry #2

Okay last time we talked about my car shopping experience and the Honda Civic Hybrid. Since we decided that it was cheaper to buy a non-hybrid Civic over a hybrid (read my last post), we took our shopping adventure over to Toyota to peruse the Prius lineup.

So this car is for my husband. His Saturn started costing us more than my monthly purse and shoe allowance, and well, that’s just absurd. So we decided he needed to get a new car sooner than we originally thought. So okay, we looked at the Civic Hybrid… a great car for saving the environment, however it’s a bit of a misnomer on exactly how much you are saving on gas.

At any rate, the Prius. This car makes more financial sense (and saves squirrels and trees!). Much like the Civic Hybrid breakdown I did for you, here it for the Prius:

Base MSRP (in our zip code): roughly $ 22,175.
Dealership mark up: $0
Annual fuel cost: $993 (assumed fuel price is $3.05 for regular and $3.24 for premium)
Federal Tax Refund: $3,150
So a quick recap – that’s a total of $23,168 (minus the refund it comes to $20,018)
With five years of gas it comes to $23,990, assuming gas prices don’t change (I’m still  laughing).

Remember the Civic Hybrid totaled $28,715 after five years of gas. So hmmm, would I rather spend 23,990 or 28,715? Seems like an obvious answer. But my husband pointed out that the Prius is ugly and Civic is well, less ugly. I don’t fully agree with that. I like the futuristic goofy style of the Prius. He really doesn’t want to drive that around, however he agrees the numbers don’t lie.

For a complete switch, we are going to look at the Mazda3 soon… it’s not a hybrid but there is a big “bang for your buck” feature with that car. Plus, I LOVE the “Zoom Zoom” commercials.