(Words: Bryan McTaggart) – The Toyota Prius is the gearhead’s anthesis. It’s an over-rated doorstop of a car best suited to people who are just biding their time until Google’s wheeled egg cuts “driving” out of the equation entirely, or to enviro folk who use the car as an opportunity to be an irritating, pretentious ass about what you drive to make you feel bad. But maybe, just maybe, the MPG rating was just too attractive to resist, and the Sierra club annoys the hell out of you. How can you use one to piss off the envirofreaks as well?
The guys at Car Throttle found a guy who gave it a shot. Take a late-model doorstop Prius, slam it to the earth, put on a bodykit, spoilers, and canards, add quad titanium exhaust tips (FOR WHAT?!), camber out the wheels on some rubber band tires, and paint the whole thing metallic turd brown. I think I even see some kind of roll bar or roll cage setup in there. Hmm. Yeah, that should do it nicely. LED headlights and graphics round out the package.
What do you think? Me, I’m digging for Finnegan or Freiburger’s number. I hope they are still friends with the dudes that own the tank.
From Dictionary.com:
“hyperbole
hy·per·bo·le [hahy-pur-buh-lee]
1. obvious and intentional exaggeration.
2. an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”
The car is 4-wheeled hyperbole.
I get the impression this was built with the sole purpose of pissing me off. I frikkin HATE big wheels / rubber band tyres almost as much as I hate stupid cambered wheels that serve absolutely no purpose other than to wear expensive yet useless tyres out prematurely. Those levels of hatred are only eclipsed by how much I hate Priuses. Add a stupid ricey body kit and the aforementioned tailpipes and yeh, pure hatred on wheels. WHY o WHY did they bother?
Where are Freiburger and Finnegan and their tank?
Autobot or Decepticon?
The Prius is real popular with the VIP scene. I have no clue why.
I think the award for “most modified Prius ever” should go to the guys who put an LS motor on one and made it rear wheel drive. This one appears to be mostly stock.
Priuses seem to go out of their way with their styling and user interface to not look like a car. If I were customizing on, I’d carry on with that theme and steal cues from stereo equipment or Alienware computers or something, instead of trying to make it look like a race car. It’s a cruiser, and mods should reflect that.
Either that, or I’d want to put a soot belching diesel or coal burning steam engine in it to really annoy guys like the Prius owner around my town whose license plate reads “UWSTGAS”.
Perhaps Jerry H’s spirited defense of FWD from the Goodguys twin-engine Yugo thread is appropriate here:
“. . . .lots of people have little option but to soup up what they can, which can still be fast and fun. And isn’t that what Hot Rodding is supposed to be about?”
So, is that restyled Prius a 21st Century custom . . . sort of a ’50 Mercury for the “Selfie Generation?”
Is it like those first embryonic steps at making sluggish VW Beetles (the “anti-car” célèbre of the late 1950s and 1960s) into rods and customs?
(BTW, a stock Prius, as emblematically arrogant, condescending, and distasteful as it is, would run circles around a stock 25 h.p. VW Type 1 . . . .)
Is it any more excessive than some of the custom styling fads of our parents and grandparents?
On the other hand, putting a “LESS” in a Brown Prius would be strangely appropriate . . . a turd in a turd, so to speak . . . . 🙂
This is proof positive that Prius owners don’t have a clue. Just do me a favor, “GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY”!
I’m not a fan of cambered wheels, but other than that, what’s the difference? It’s a car, and the guy took the time to do something different with it. That sounds like the definition of “hot rodding” to me…
I have SEE-SICKNESS to the maximum.
My head.
My stomach.
ChEvY CiTaTiOn/////////…………….0)))))))))
Tuner + Prius = TURNIP
dorky wheel placement,body kits and non-functioning tailpipes are NOT hot-rodding,gary—-styling,perhaps,but not hot-rodding……
Japanese “rollcages” are scary enough, that one seriously looks like it’s made of exhaust tube.