Toyota is boasting a 50 mpg combined highway/city mileage, which makes it the most fuel efficient vehicle to date, without a power plug. This low end Prius will have a starting MSRP below $19,000, making it about half the price of the upper end hybrids that are available on the market. Obviously, the target audience is the younger, price sensitive consumer who wants good mileage to save money.

The list of standard features is impressive for such a low price. Some of the standard features include automatic climate control, tilt-telescopic steering wheel with audio, climate, Multi-Information Display and Bluetooth® hands-free controls, and remote keyless entry with illuminated entry. Some of these are not standard on the original Prius models, although I would guess that they will be in the new versions.

The available exterior colors include three new colors:  Habanero, Moonglow, and Summer Rain Metallic. Not sure what those colors look like. Those new colors are added to the regular list of colors, Blue Streak Metallic, Absolutely Red, Black Sand Pearl, Magnetic Gray Metallic, Classic Silver Metallic, and Super White.

This 6 ton monster SUV sports a V-10 that can run on bio-fuel (or regular gas) and is not only bullet proof (body, windows and even tires), but is under vehicle grenade proof and even has a detector for magnetically attached bombs under the SUV. Yes, the SUV will alert you if somebody attaches a bomb under the vehicle. WTF? There are 2 night vision capable cameras in front, and 2 in the back. Some options include a hidden security safe, real black box (like in airplanes), and yes, an entertainment system.

If you have to ask how much something like this costs, you probably can’t afford it. With a $25k down pain-ment, you can get your custom Knight XV started before you have to pay the base sticker price of $490k. Each one is custom built and can take from 3 to 8 months to complete. You can visit your vehicle being built in Canada, or they can email you pictures. For that price, they should have a live person come to your house with a video.

The Knight XV: Perfect for the upcoming drug lord, Hip-Hop mega baller rain-man, or Middle Eastern royal families. Or just a super rich paranoid guy.

Toyota has now released official pictures of the Prius C, and it looks exactly the same as the leaked Japanese brochure. The press release is touting 50 MPG city, and is almost 20 inches shorter than the original Prius. It’s slightly larger than the Toyota Yaris.

The informational panel is located in the center above the dashboard, the same as in the Prius V that I just took a look at. There are some similarities but the interior is not the same as the V.

From the picture, it looks a lot like a smaller version of the Matrix. Since I like the look of the Matrix, I don’t mind the look of this version of the Prius. But of course, a lot can change from the Japanese version.

Prius V

The “V” comes in 3 models: Two ($26k), Three ($27k) and Five ($30k). At the upper end, you can get Panoramic View Moonroof with power sliding sunshades, full-on navigation with “Entune”, Safety Connect, Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, Pre-Collision system, and Advanced Parking Guidance System.

The Moonroof is basically a sunroof that doesn’t open. Entune is a system where you can download apps to your iPhone, then upload them from your phone to your Nav system. The apps aren’t ready yet apparently so they didn’t have it running in the demo car.  Safety Connect is a rip-off of On-Star, which you get for free for 1 year, then you have to pay per year. Dynamic Radar Cruise Control will automatically slow you down if there’s a car ahead. Pre-Collision tries to reduce the damage to your front end when you crash by stopping earlier.

The Advanced Parking Guidance System is their auto parallel parking computer. There’s a rear camera that shows on the Nav screen including color coded areas for parking. You touch where you want to park and the car does the rest. I assume the car knows if the space is too small to fit in. I noticed that it does know areas where you cannot park and a mesh graphic covers that area so you cannot touch that area for parking. If I had more time, I would have tested it with a small dog blocking the parking space to see if it knows the difference. I think we’re about 10 years away from the car driving itself. That would make my commute time productive and texting would be allowed again.

One other thing I noticed was what looked like a cigarette lighter plug in the back hatch area (behind the rear seats). I’m not sure that’s what it was but that could come in handy for plugging in electrical powered stuff in the back area. You can never have too many power outlets in my book. And yes, there is a USB outlet under the Nav system.

For people who didn’t want to get the hybrid SUV because it was too big, but still wanted more space than the original Prius, this is the perfect solution. For me, it’s too big and defeats the purpose of getting good mileage from a hybrid.

Using google, I found Discount Tire Centers, which apparently has stores all over Southern California.

Discount Tire Website

Their nice website allowed me to pick my tires based on my car, and even make an appointment at their nearest location, which was just down the street from me. Their prices were very competitive too. Nice.

So on the day of my appointment, I arrive at the Discount Tire Center at 1992 S. Sepulveda in West LA, park and go inside. There was nobody behind the counter. Strange. After just a minute, a guy comes out with a customer and they start discussing his options. While this is going on, calls are coming in and this lone employee must answer the calls while trying to help this live customer. I could tell this was going to take a while.

Fast forward to my turn. I show him my appointment print-out and he starts typing into the computer keyboard. I can already tell there’s going to be a problem. He tells me he doesn’t have any record of my appointment but he’ll check to see if he has the tires I need. He then literally calls 2 places on 2 phones simultaneously. One on each ear. Talk about multi-tasking. Unfortunately, this amazing phone trick yields zero tires.

Actually, what’s amazing is what happens next. He tells me that the online appointment system is run by another company and I need to call a guy at that company. With that, he wipes his hands of me and the sales pitch is over. The strange part was not that he wanted me to call some other guy, but that he didn’t try to sell me something. This was a perfect opportunity for him to upsell me to some expensive tires that he has in stock. But no upselling. In fact, no selling at all. It was just bye-bye.  Weird.

So I called the number he gave me and indeed it was the voice mail of the guy that he says the number was for. I explained my situation and left my number for him to call me. It’s been months and I’m still waiting for a call.

At this point, it was apparent that this company didn’t know online from hole in the wall so I was no longer thinking that I was actually going to get tires from this company, but I didn’t want my credit card being charged and wanted to cancel my order.

After getting back home, I went back to their website and found their corporate phone number. Amazingly, I got a live person there without any waiting. I explained my situation and she explained to me that the online service simply emails the local store and it’s up to them to take care of the appointment and ordering of the tires. So apparently, either the local store didn’t get the email or more likely, they don’t know how to read their email.

She was very nice to me on the phone and explained to me not to worry about the credit card because it doesn’t get charged until all the services are completed. She also told me that she would look into the apparent disconnect between their online system and their store.

That’s all nice, but it’s too late for me.

In hindsight, I should have double checked my appointment before going there and I probably could have avoided the problems I had. I still may not have been able to get my tires, but at least I wouldn’t have gone there and wasted my time. I guess the official looking print-out I got from their online website gave me a false sense of entitlement.

By I digress.

On to the next website I go looking for tires. The next one I found was tirerack.com. This one is different in that it just sells the tires to you and ships it to a tire installer near your house. As you can see from the website below, my car can have 2 different sized tires depending on the options I got on my car.

Tire Rack Website

Unfortunately, being the moron that I am, instead of double checking the tire size simply by going to the garage and looking at my tires, I decided that I knew my tire size from memory. You already know where this is going. I went ahead and ordered the tires and had it sent to a Firestone Auto Care center near me. Because Tire Rack is an online company, there is no sales tax so even with the UPS shipping, the cost was basically the same as Discount Tire. Nice.

Unlike Discount Tire Centers, Tire Rack emails me automatically when my tire shipment has arrived at Firestone with their phone number and instructions on what to do next. So far so good. I call Firestone and they tell me the tires have arrived and I schedule an appointment to come in a few days later.

When I arrive at Firestone, unlike at Discount Tire Center, there are 2 people behind the counter, not to mention other people sitting in a waiting area for their cars. This looks much more promising so far. The guy behind the counter goes to the computer and my appointment is actually there. He asks for my key so he can get my odometer reading.

Unfortunately, when he comes back, he gives me the bad news. I’ve ordered the wrong sized tires. He tells me I can send the tires back to Tire Rack and have them ship the right sized ones, or he has the right size in stock but it will cost a little more. Yes! This is the upselling that I was expecting at Discount Tire Center but didn’t get.

At this point in the game, I was happy that he was upselling me and quickly told him to write me up and install those more expensive suckers right on my car.

While waiting for the installation, I called Tire Rack and they said I can either take the tires to UPS, or have UPS pick them up at Firestone, which would cost more. Completely defeated at this point, I told them to have UPS pick it up and I’d be happy to pay extra to end this nightmare purchase.

Finally, after about 2 weeks of online play and false starts, I had my new tires installed at a cost higher than initially expected, not to mention the extra UPS cost I incurred. The guy at Firestone told me there were other things wrong with my car but I ignored him and drove away quickly before he did any more upselling on me.

At this point, you’re thinking this epic fail is over. No it’s not. After a month, I noticed my credit card wasn’t credited with the return of the tires so I called Tirerack and learned that Firestone had sent them the wrong tires. That’s right.

The customer service lady was kind enough to tell me that she would contact Firestone and work this out with them for me. However, she also told me that this could take a while to work out because they will probably dispute the claim. And she wasn’t kidding. In this case, a while may mean forever. It’s been months and I’ve pretty much given up on it.

So in the end, not only did I waste weeks, got frustrated and spent a long time on customer service calls, I ended up spending hundreds of dollars more than if I had just had my dealer put the tires on. What an epic fail this turned out to be.

So what the moral of this story? There are more than one lesson to be learned here.

First, when making an appointment online, do not trust that the system works properly. Double check the appointment by talking to a live person.

Second, don’t be a moron. Double check before ordering online to make sure you are ordering the right thing. Just because the website tells you what to order, doesn’t mean that’s what you should get.

And lastly, sometimes in trying to save a few bucks by ordering online, it may end up costing you more money.

I’m going to take tires off my list of things to order online.

The word is that a new low end “C” model will be coming out in 2012. This model will be smaller and lower cost than the current model. The concept looks more sporty than the current generation and will compete with the Honda CR-Z.

Prius C Concept

I’m not sure if I should wait for this model, not knowing for sure if it will even come out in 2012. Waiting for new car models is a lot like waiting to buy the latest smart phone or other high tech gadget, because a new one will be announced as soon as you buy it.

Nissan GT-R

Checkout this Nissan GT-R I saw parked in Westwood. In case you’re interested, the MSRP start at around $84k. This one I saw had a flat black paint job which made it look like Batman’s GT-R. Me likey. Motor Trend gave this car their “Car of the Year” award in 2009 and says this baby can go to 195mph and reach 0-60 in about 3.2 seconds. Nice if you have to go after those pesky bad guys.

Hyundai Equus

According to Autoblog.com, the new 2011 Hyundai Equus will come with a free iPad (16g, WiFi) with the owner’s manual pre-loaded. Apparently, the manual is an app (not just an iBook) and will allow the owner to schedule maintenance on the car and make contact with your dealer.

There will also be video in this app to show the owner how to use the car. Maybe there will be a video showing what will happen to your car if you use the iPad while driving.

Hyundai will update the owners manual app via iTunes so that owners can keep up-to-date on anything new with their car (like recalls). That’s assuming Apple accepts this app to be in the App Catalog.

Manuals are becoming scarce, especially for gadgets, and are going more to online versions. If Hyundai is the future of what’s to come, Apple will have to have a special app section just for interactive manuals. This is good for trees and people who are running out of space for all their manuals. I think I still have my manual for my Atari 2600 somewhere.

The day is coming when printers and the Postal Service are gone.