Blessed by the Potato

Well, Toyota has just announced that it’s lowering the price of the 2008 Prius by $1900. If you’re planning on getting one, do it now: except for the cars that are already on dealer lots or in transit from Japan, there will be no more 2008’s. And the federal EcoAuto rebate is only good for 2008 model year cars — so this price drop is really a $100 price increase for next year, except for those lucky few that can grab one of the last 2008’s. And I have to say, it almost makes me want to just run out and buy one right now. After all, saving an extra $2000 is pretty decent, and while it would be nice to get all the value out of the Accord, it’s really not worth $2000. Of course, from that financial standpoint, it makes sense to buy right now… but it would be a stretch to our current budgets to have it now (and the timing is bad, as I just invested the down-payment I had saved up in this shitty stock market). Hopefully after I graduate, it will be easier to afford when I have a real job, even if it is $2000 more (and even if I spend probably an extra $2800 on gas and repairs for the Accord in the meantime).

Besides which, it might be downright irresponsible to buy the Prius now and send money off to pay for the car and insurance rather than have it go into savings, because if I ran into another Year X situation (or Year XX, or Year XXX) where my funding ran out but my degree wasn’t finished, well, that would seriously suck… even if the numbers do look like I could afford it now (barely).

On another thought, I find it rather surprising that Toyota has, reportedly, already transitioned to the 2009 model year at the plant. There’s all kinds of benefits to letting the government continue to subsidize their cars to the tune of $2000 each, so why not keep producing 2008s right up until December 31? AFAIK, there’s no real reason why they can’t keep calling the ones that come to Canada 2008s even if they call them 2009s in the US and other countries — it is just a carry-over model year anyway.