More new car

The morning after shots...

It strongly resembles its sibling the Prius.  But, it is longer.  Measuring with the naked eye, the Prius V looks as long as my downstairs neighbor's Jeep Cherokee.  The Prius V's cargo space rivals and sometimes beats the cargo space of SUVs that appear much larger.

We don't need as much cargo space as we used to.  But, we do like having the option to lug yet another bookshelf home from Ikea.  The first thing Sag said when he stepped into the car was, "it's so big!"  The interior feels very roomy and airy.  Fingers crossed that this, plus the lower center of gravity you don't get with an SUV, will help prevent his bouts of car sickness (ginger chews as soon as we get in the car seem to be helping, too).

This looks so futuristic.  I love it.

These cobalt blue accents can be found in and around the car.  Lovely color.  I wonder if the red car has blue accents, too.  The other car was red, which I thought I would like.  It's called Barcelona Red, for heaven's sake.  But, the color was flat, with no richness.  I never thought I'd like silver as much as I do on this car.  Our exterior is Classic Silver Metallic.  The interior is Misty Gray.

The steering wheel.  It's kind of nice to be seeing the Toyota symbol again.  Our first car was a Toyota Tercel and we loved it.  We drove it into the ground and bought the Subaru Legacy wagon just before Gem was born, in 2000.  I was remarking to Cap yesterday, during our four hours at the dealership, that I didn't remember anything about the day we bought the Subaru.  He gently reminded me that I was not there, as I was big as a house and not doing much (I was on bed rest towards the end).  His sister was his co-pilot that day.

The shift lever is bright cobalt blue.  And on the dashboard.  Our car is an automatic transmission but the shifting mechanism works differently from either car we've had before (you move it to certain positions to shift, but then return the lever to its resting position).  To turn the car on you push that big button that says "POWER".  Standing next to the car with the keyless remote in your pocket will un/lock the doors!  Cool...and kind of creepy.

*Sigh*  The lovely leather seats.  I didn't get my one luxury wishlist item, heated seats, but I am very happy about these seats.  Go ahead, you can stroke, I'll give you a moment. 

Gem, our child who holds onto things, has been reluctant to let go of his booster seat.  Laws are confusing, citing, variously, age, height and weight requirements.  Regardless, in the last year or so it has become apparent that he was too tall in the seat so we've been leaning on him to bid it adieu.

A couple of weeks ago, he decided that when we got our new car he would not move his booster seat into it.  (I've been tossing it into the back of the Subaru for short trips to start getting him used to riding "bareback".)  Yesterday he rode in the new car without his booster.  He is sad though and even claimed he didn't remember saying he wouldn't use it in the Prius.  He has asked for a reward as consolation.  (He doesn't know what he wants...I think he just wanted the comfort, and acknowledgement, that he was doing something of scary and different.  Change is bad, don't you know?)

Baby got boxy back :-)  The more crap cargo to easily pile in.  The hatchback door on our Subaru has been rusted shut for...over a year, I think.  A prohibitively expensive repair.  (It is the handle that is rusted shut, not the door itself...but we'd have to replace the whole door or something costly like that.)  I was so excited to open this door and take a picture of the cargo area...and I couldn't!  I tried and tried and could not figure it out, cracking up the whole time.  I got as far as page 104 (out of 564!) in the owner's manual last night...I will have to study it more today.

Cap was particularly motivated to buy a hybrid.  I am glad it worked out that we could.  I am really looking forward to experiencing the fuel economy!  (And as the manual suggested, we won't be hauling those giant water cooler bottles...water spillage onto the electric battery = bad.  The manual provides lots of laughs, you can totally tell it was translated from a Japanese document.)

Much fuss has been made (amongst certain circles) about the fact that Toyota named their Prius wagon "V".  The original line of Prii, like the wagon, has three trim levels that are designated 2,3 and "mysteriously", 5.  This means that if you want to speak of the wagon in the third trim level, you would say the Prius V 5.  Confusing...in an English speaking non-Japanese culture.

In Japan, the letter V is culturally significant.  This piece explains it well with loads of photos to back it up.  I bet that's why they chose to name the wagon "V".  There's a robust energy ("genki" in Japanese) implied in "V" in Japanese and the wagon = the Prius + some extra genki.

Not only would most Japanese not "see" the Roman numeral five when seeing the "V" (they'd see V = peace = good!), but the number four is considered bad luck in Japan.  I wonder if that is why the trim levels skip it.  (I can't explain why they didn't go with 1,2,3...possibly because 1 so often indicates "the best", which could be confusing when the 3 trim level is the "best" in this case.) 

There are two pronunciations for the number four: "yon" and "shi".  "Shi" is also how the word "death" is pronounced.  Makes sense that they would want to avoid any association with death when branding the trim level of a car.

End of Japanese lesson for the day, class dismissed!

Pretty, pretty azaleas this morning.  Peace and love.