I ran by the regional Toyota dealers to see how their Prius supply situation was coming along. Found that the Asheville, NC Toyota dealer had enough people on their waiting list to go through 2009 at their current delivery rate. At the Greenville, SC dealership they were subtly discouraging any inquiries about the Prius (they'd rather sell me a Corolla now then a Prius a year or two from now). At the Greenwood, SC dealer, they said they had only gotten in three '04 Prius and no '05's yet, but they would put me on a waiting list.

Because the Prius is still essentually unavailable in my region, I went and test drove the Scion Xa, one of the most similar vehicles to my 92 Civic hatch currently being sold. In comparing the two vehicles, the Xa has the same footprint, a little more headroom, roughly equivalent cornering and braking, but was much slower accelerating (they only had the automatic in stock) than my Civic hatch. The xa is only 200 lbs. heavier than my Civic, but its highway EPA mileage was 38 versis 48 for my '92 hatch. Why is the mileage so different between two essentually similar cars? I would have expected technology to have improved in the 12 years since my car was made, but here we have a similar sized, slower accelerating vehicle that gets 20% worse EPA mileage. And on-line reported real world mileage ranges from 29 to 42 for the Xa versis 41 to 55 for the '92-'95 Civic hatch, so the difference is not just a result of changes in EPA testing procedures through the years.