The Toyota Prius is the world's first and most popular hybrid vehicle despite looking like a hybrid vehicle. Of course, when you drive a hybrid, you want all of your friends to know. That's an easy task if your car is the Prius. Perhaps the only car that's better at making ugly hip, was the Honda Insight with it's futuristic rear wheel skirts.
The blessing in disguise here is that despite it being such an ugly car, it's the most easily recognized hybrid on the market. So why would Toyota want to change that?
The 2010 Prius does a pretty good job at both pushing for a more pleasing design, and keeping it recognizable to it's core market. They have chiseled the edges at the front and back and sculpted a nice aggresive line from front to back. The wheels fill the wheel wells better than before, and help the proportions dramatically. The A piller dives into the headlights, and the C piller wraps around the taillight nicely, making the car look shorter in height by flattening the appearance of the roofline. The cockpit is really futuristic looking. It still looks like a concept car inside. If Han Solo was sitting in a Prius, it would have been way more convincing than all of those blinking lights in the Millenium Falcon.
The Prius has grown out of it's awkward teenage years. The subtle tweaks to the Prius this year have transformed the Prius into a great looking hatch that happens to get close to 50mpg.
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