"Busy week, Obe?" rang out as I walked through the door. It's Vic, sitting there with an Alienware branded phone in hand.
"Busy doesn't even begin to describe it." I answer, throwing my hoodie over a nearby chair.
"No luck with the mower?"
"Yeah. No mower yet." I say, heading towards the breakroom.
"At least you'll be touching grass today. Heads up!" he replies, followed by the jingle of a keychain being thrown in my direction. I catch it in one hand and take a look. Toyota keys.
"Prius?"
"Prius."
I let out a deep sigh, but before I can open my mouth back up, Vic cuts me off.
"No, you can't put Yard in it with a plasma cutter."
At least Vic and I've got a pair of 250 GTOs waiting back at the Horizon Festival branch.
... Whoever chose the Prius, I hope you find pebbles in your shoe for the rest of your life. Or lose half of your horsepower in your Copen. 
In all seriousness, it's great that the mundane and ordinary cars get their time in the limelight. As much of a joke as the Prius is in the GT games, it is a car that's been fairly successful in the real world. The first few were produced in 1997, and went on sale in 2001. Since then, the Prius and its associated variants have all sold a collective total of 6.1 million units, making up 61% of all of Toyota's hybrid sales since 1997.
Questionable visual designs aside, it's an effective compact hatchback with a hybrid system boasting an effective MPG of 58 city and 52 highway (as of the 2022 model) and riding on the coattails of Toyota's reputation for bulletproof engineering.
And the 5th generation model ain't too shabby looking.
But this isn't about the current Prius. We're looking at the one featured in GT7, the initial run of the third gen from 2009.
Doing the SPD thing of teasing my next car choice. Soon. Soon...
The 2009 Toyota Prius G is a super accessible car, being that it can be found in the Brand Central for a relatively humble 24,500 credits. You can also sometimes find it in the Used Car Dealership, so if you're patient, you can nab it for cheaper.
It comes with eight colors, four of which are a white to silver gradient, while the other four are two blues, a red and a black paint. I personally like the White Pearl, Dark Blue Mica and Black paints as they're really simple, inoffensive colors that work pretty well for the car.
What that 24k gets you is a 1.8 liter inline four (though it's officially a 1.5, i wonder if there were different versions?) producing 120 HP @ 5,000 RPM and 104.8 ft-lbs @ 4,500 rpm. The car comes in at a very modest 2,976 lbs (1350 kg) which is pretty light for a hatchback in this category. Some more recent hatchbacks such as the new Mazda3 come in a little heavier despite being a bit smaller in stature than the Prius.
The Prius' combustion engine is mated to a CVT transmission with only one drive gear. This was in the early era of modern CVTs where they did not have simulated gears, so you're stuck with the buzzing at peak power when going open throttle.
Performance wise, the Prius is nothing to write home about. The gearbox/CVT is geared at 1.000 gear ratio and 3.267 final drive, leaving it with a max gear speed of 201 kph @ 5500 RPM according to the adjustment chart in the tuning menu. The power curve is relatively straightforward too, with a linear increase in HP to peak, then a linear drop in power past peak. The torque curve starts very high (eyeballing it, I'd say around 90 ft-lbs?) and climbs to its peak, where it hovers until the engine asphyxiates after 5,000 RPM.
The car is relatively softly sprung, with 1.4 front and 1.55 rear springs, though I find it very interesting that the rear damper expansion is five points below the front damper expansion (35/30).
Differential wise, it looks to be a wide-open diff. Surprisingly, though, the Prius is capable of 0.9 Gs on the Comfort Medium tyres, up to 0.96 Gs at 150 MPH (as if it'd ever hit that speed). Other hatchbacks I've encountered tend to hover closer to 0.85 on equivalent tires both IRL and in-game, so this stands out to me right away.
At 373.35 PP, there is a lot of room to work with this car, but we'll get to that later. The first thing to do, logically, is to immediately take this consumer car to a track and thrash it mercilessly.
That is what Toyota would've wanted, right?
... right?
My money's on the Prius.
Remember how I mentioned this was an early CVT without the simulated gears?
It turns out that this CVT felt unnatural to people, due to how smoothly the car was accelerating, so Toyota changed that in later CVTs. My 2019 Corolla had nine simulated gears and one physical gear. Cheeky designers.
Anyways, this lack of ratios means your experience with the car is going to be a very on/off one. What do I mean by that?
On the throttle? All of the revs. Off the throttle? No revs.
Revving the car on a dead stop with the brakes on will cap it out at roughly 2750 RPM. Wide open throttle will see the engine rev up smoothly to 4800 RPM while it accelerates, and then hover at 5100 RPM past 65 MPH
Lifting off the throttle at any point will net you an immense amount of understeer as the CVT promptly decides that the user has given up spirited driving and attempts to grab the most fuel efficient ratio possible. You have to keep your foot in at least 75% to keep the engine at a high enough RPM for rotation mid-corner.
Ironically, the Prius is quick to oversteer if you left-foot brake, so it sort of encourages aggressive pedalwork (braking on full throttle for example) to get the most out of the car at stock form. It almost reminds me of the Copen with how much front grip it has available to it on WOT.
On Grand Valley Short, my test track for the occassion, I could not get the car past 90 MPH and I suspect not many places have straights long enough for the Prius to get its full speed out. ...Not that it has much speed to begin with.
The hybrid system definitely helps it accelerate and stay at speed, and the burn rate is pretty decent. Around GVS, I was seeing about 22% charge burn every two laps, so you could get up to 10 laps of full hybrid power. But on a slightly longer event like SRC's 15 minute races at Goodwood or Watkins Glen, it would definitely run out of juice and cripple the car immensely.
The fastest I was able to get around GVS (on controller) was a 1:39.096, and it was a tiny bit frustrating. As a comparison point, my cup Copen manages a 1:38.380 on a wheel. This is not a knock against the Prius, but just an observation.
But this did teach me something - every car has very specific requirements on how to drive it and a lot of them overlap due to similarities between themselves and peers. The Prius doesn't have many peers like it, so the specific driving style it demands is much harder to get the hang of due to lack of experience.
Not only that, but the car rewards the time invested into learning the specific driving style it needs to be successful. Long story short: Your inputs absolutely matter with this car, and mastering the precision of your inputs is how you maximize speed in the Prius.
But this is Gran Turismo, and you can do whatever you want to your car.
A full workover of the car, including aero and engine tuning, puts it right at 501 PP on Sports Hard tyres. It packs 149 HP and weighs 2489 lbs with weight reduction stage 2. It could be reduced further to 2321 lbs, but I'm keeping some mass on it to get more power out of the combustion engine.
Now the question is: How does it do when cranked to 10?
At Tsukuba for week 1, I ran a stock FC RX-7 on wheel as part of my testing and it ran a 1:08.834. This is roughly 460 PP vs the cranked Prius' 500 PP.
So how did the Prius do on a controller?
1:08.645.
Mind you, I am terrible on a controller these days. I severely handicapped myself on this one by 1) using the new-to-me DualSense controller that I am still not used to and 2) doing all of this over PS Remote Play.
And I still beat my best effort in a legendary sports car that should be outpowering the Prius in every single aspect.
This isn't the only time I've taken a Prius through some absurd stuff - back in my controller days on GT6, I won a very closely contested 375 PP race in a Prius despite my opponent being in a superior Fiat 500 Abarth. It's one of my fondest memories of my GT6 days.
In stock form, it's a Prius. It's not much, but it's an honest car that puts in honest work for everyday people. That all gets turned on its head when you build it up for low HP, low PP racing. Some upgrades later and you've suddenly got a lightweight, single-gear car with hybrid assistance (read: lots of instant torque) designed to stay at peak power and torque under open throttle. You're gonna struggle to keep up with it on circuits designed for lots of acceleration zones/corner exits. It can be hard to get the hang of, but when you do finally click with the Prius, people are going to think twice about laughing at you at the next 400/500 pp race.
Stock form is Neutral, upgraded is a Sleeper.
I miss the GT300 Prius. 
