Is the Prius a hard sell now?

January 13, 2009 – 5:29 pm – No Comment

Now that gas prices are under $2.00 a gallon, are people still buying the Prius? According to the AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson, no.

From CNBC.com:

“I was turning down Priuses in March and Japan was sending them to other countries. I was taking Cadillac Escalades in trade on Priuses by July and now, today I can’t give away a Prius,” Jackson said.

“Sales are down 50 percent all because the price of gasoline is on a roller coaster. I mean when are we going to have energy policy and a gas tax that puts a floor under the price of gasoline so that we can cease whipsawing the American consumer back and forth on this issue of fuel efficiency which for industries for lead times of two, three, four years, it’s an impossible situation.”

There is still a part of me that wants a Prius only because I know one day that gas prices will rise again, but also because I had a chance to actually see the inside of one and I really liked the features it had. A lot of the reason people aren’t buying cars right now is because 1) the cars they have are fine and 2) financing is hard to come by.

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