2011 Detroit Auto Show, Toyota Prius Concept C

After the all-new MPV Toyota Pries V, the new Pries Concept C (C = compact? No: city), the Japan automaker Toyota brings to the stage at the Detroit Motor Show 2011, the draft of a new hatchback, whose Pries tout court seems to have little in common, at least stylistically, and it will become a new compact car, tentatively included in the C segment, able to enlarge the catchments area of hybrid technology from Toyota. An entry-level car, which at the same time launched a new pencil, much more complex and personal than the current generation Toyota Pries.

Angular, sometimes rigid, full of angles, eccentric shaft: the new Toyota Pries Concept C inherits the hard lines of the latest chapter of the giant Japanese aesthetic. Although, in the front, you can breathe a similarity, not too hidden, with the new European Car of the Year 2011, the same label Nissan Leaf, and in the back, it smells a flavor similar to Honda CR- Z, the average hatchback (segment C) with the truncated tail of the manufacturer compatriot.

But these are still personal judgments. Minimalist cabin apart and not similarities, the new Pries Concept C is very dense, sometimes almost heavy: when it comes, that is when it becomes a car to market (a C-segment hatchback, two volumes, it was said), it may lose some of extravagance forerunner of this prototype.

It will be marketed, it seems, around the middle of next year: during 2012, therefore, the family of hybrid Toyota will expand downwards, with a car suitable for everyday family needs. But what is hidden today under the hood of this new Pries Concept C? The car maker did not clarify the details of the geometry of the ecological concept car, even if we suppose that behind the body, conceals the same architecture as the Toyota Pries, or something like that: the technology that the management of the Japanese manufacturer wanted to call Hybrid Synergy Drive.