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Photography: Kunal Khadse

The Toyota Prius has landed on Indian shores waving the eco-friendly flag. It may be the first word in hybrid cars internationally, but does it really have a place in the Indian automotive scenario? Sopan Sharma hugs trees for a day

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I love our planet and like most of us, hate the climbing heat from our carbon emitting lifestyles. Unfortunately, I love being at the wheel much more, and an afternoon at the garage is preferred over an evening in the park. New propaganda flaming petrol-heads has seen the light in the last few years however, and while IC engines have grown progressively cleaner there is just one real way of showing that you are true-blue-green - the sort that uses only paper bags and has a compost heap in his backyard. It is called a hybrid vehicle, and the best seller of the lot has just made its debut in India.

Some may say that Toyota has lost its sporty edge of late, but whatever it has lost in terms of making erstwhile scorchers like the Supra and the Celica, it has made up for by making increasingly user-friendly, refined and reliable cars. If it had not, it wouldn't be the world's biggest car maker with such fierce consistency. Logical then, that when the world had just begun to see eco-friendly back in 1997, Toyota had already cooked up the solution, sold it and taken home the profits. It was called the Prius, and was the world's first mass-produced hybrid car, since it made use of both petrol and electricity to push itself around. And now it is coming to India with the third avatar of its green crusader - the Prius.

Design Dissection

Like most Toyota products, the design approach is on the conservative side, which is welcome for a change on a 'car of the future' like the Prius where it is just too easy to go ultra-radical and create a design inspired from a spaceship. The approach has worked well for Toyota consistently in the past - the non-threatening and civil countenance only widening the appeal of its products. The Prius is no different.

Despite its no-nonsense design, the Prius comes across as a remarkably elegant and more importantly, one of the most identifiable designs on the street. The tall bumper and the absence of a large grille thanks to lower cooling requirements make for a very tidy front. The short and sweetly creased hood stays far from being ungainly, and flows smoothly into the swooping silhouette of the roofline. At the rear, the sweet beak spoiler sets the car apart from almost any other hatchback in the market, and the large tail lamp cluster spreads very well to complete the view.

Apart from being aesthetically non-controversial, the design of the Prius has a lot of technology riding behind itself. The exterior is a fantastic study in the art of aerodynamics - reduced drag principles applied here not for performance but for green gains. Directing airflow away from frontal surfaces is a big pro, and smart touches like the hidden diffuser at the rear guide the wind around the car in a most unobtrusive manner. Thanks to all the smartly contoured nooks and crannies, the car returns with a class busting drag co-efficient as low as 0.25. To do that without making the car look like a scalpel is certainly no mean feat, and the fact that it still remains easy and pleasant on the eye means high marks for the design.