Toyota Prius updates

There will be three individual Prius models before the middle of the year as Brand T goes all-out on hybrids, but the bedrock car is only getting a facelift.

The Toyota Prius V and Prius C are new and take the car in new directions, as well as forcing people adjust to a plural Prius future.

Toyota USA even ran a competition to pick the plural of Prius - Prii and Priuses were two of the choices - but that will not influence Australia.

"We're going with Prius. One Prius or 20 Prius," says Toyota Australia spokesman, Mike Breen. "In America they wanted people to start thinking about a bigger Prius family. They wanted them to get their heads around more than one Prius."

The family expansion means more for families and less for younger singles. "We've got Prius V, with a third row of seats, and the Prius C, which is a Yaris-sized hybrid," says Breen. 

He believes the explosion on the Prius front is just a coincidence, not a strategy to combat the growing success of frugal diesel cars in Australia.

"It's just the period that it takes to develop the cars. It's just coincidence that they are all arriving at a similar time."

The changes to the existing Prius - only 822 were sold last year, compared with 1611 in 2010 - are intended to give the car a freshen and more potential in showrooms. "We'll have it here, on sale, around early March," says Breen.

The body structure is stiffer, but the biggest chances people will notice are a bolder nose with LED running lamps and a bigger grille opening to make the car a little less bland. Inside, there are new seats, new upholstery and soft-touch plastics in places where the car was previously hard and brittle.

The body change is claimed to allow a firming of the suspension and changes to the steering column to give better road feel.