Why isn’t Toyota bringing the sleek new Prius to Australia?
OPINION: Imagine my surprise at seeing the new-generation Toyota Prius when it was revealed this week.
The world’s biggest car company fretted over how to reinvent its hybrid icon in an era defined by full-electric vehicles, settling on giving it some newfound panache.
It looks great – sleek, stylish and entirely unlike what we’ve come to expect from Toyota’s longstanding eco leader. A new lease on life, as it were.
The old model was all creases and weird proportions, while multiple earlier generations were perhaps less awkward but also more boring, which is worse.
And yet it’s this latest version, which has me all starry-eyed, that will be the first Prius Toyota won’t sell in Australia.
In making this decision, it took the wrong lesson from the old model’s failure to resonate, and pulled the pin at precisely the wrong time.
It’s true that Prius sales plummeted of late, … Read more



