The Toyota Prius has long been somewhat of a joke to performance car enthusiasts. It is of course a hybrid, and therefore tragically slow anywhere north of highway speeds. Rather unfortunately for the Prius, its skinny, fuel efficient tires and heavy hybrid powertrain have meant that it was never particularly inspiring from a handling perspective either.
However, Toyota seems to be making an effort to change that last bit. What better place than SEMA for the Japanese automaker to reveal a performance build of the car that can supposedly hit 0.99 G on a skid pad.
Built by Gordon Ting of Beyond Marketing, the Prius G has seen a huge selection of performance upgrades to help improve the handling of the car, although no specifics are given. What we do know is that a lot of the handling comes from the stiffer chassis that is a part of every brand new Prius. From the pictures, it seems to have received some very sticky and much wider tires, some form of roll cage, as well as vast aerodynamic improvements to help produce downforce rather than reduce drag.
Allegedly taking design inspiration from an actual Prius race car, the GT300 version to be specific, this Prius G certainly looks like it should be able to handle quite well. In fact, given additional time to tweak the car further, the development team is certain that the Prius G could pull over 1 G on the skid pad, putting it in a territory of grip that rivals a Nissan GTR.
With this car, Toyota is hoping to alter the line of thinking that hybrids can’t be good to drive as well, although I’m sure Acura, BMW, Ferrari, McLaren, and Porsche (to name a few) would contest that rhetoric. Regardless, we should be excited to know that this level of performance is possible from, of all things, a Prius, as it could mean that we average consumers get to drive some spectacular machines that are also easy on the planet.
Of course be sure to stay tuned on TFLcar.com as well as TFLtruck.com for all the SEMA news you could possibly need!
While we certainly won’t be given the opportunity to thrash the Prius G anytime soon, we have had plenty of time to develop our opinions about the current Prius, to find out everything you ever wanted to know, be sure to watch the video below:
