Buying A Cheap Toyota PRIUS TAXI to Go Racing
The antithesis of speed, a battered LA taxi cab Prius helped restore my love of driving fast…ish.
When it comes to a list of popular track day cars, the Toyota Prius is, surprisingly, not in the top ten. It’s actually not even in the top 1,000 choices. Prii (the plural form of Prius) are slow, boring appliances designed for fuel economy and to numb the pain of never-ending commuting. There has never been a car more loathed and reviled by car aficionados across the globe than the Prius. After all, it’s the antithesis of speed, the antithesis of fun, it’s pure dread on four low rolling resistance tires, right?
That is why it sounded like a perfect idea to buy one (a very cheap one, at that) and go racing with it. But which one to get? The Los Angeles market is flooded with every generation of Prius at every conceivable price point, but the DBFR budget is a tight one.
Originally, the plan was to buy a 2004-2009 “XW20” Prius, which has long been ubiquitous and known for being largely unkillable, an important consideration for the intended use. However, the later 2010-2015 “XW30” models have also depreciated to the point of consideration.
A few weeks of careful market research (read: obsessing over cheap Prius options on Facebook Marketplace) eventually led to a particularly juicy ad. A 2013 model, being sold by a taxi service going out of business. Being bright yellow, it would be eye-catching (a crucial facet of the clickbait economy), and the idea of a track day taxi immediately sprung to mind. Fortunately, it was close by and after a very brief test drive and some hard negotiation (I walked, twice, in 30 minutes), the Track Taxi was mine.
Despite having a mere 165,000 miles on the odometer, a figure often described as “barely broken-in” by Toyota enthusiasts, a variety of unusual noises of course awaited as soon as the cash and title were exchanged and the drive home began.
With the Prius back in the DBFR garage parked on jack stands, it was time to get to work. Every single fluid and filter was replaced, with some high-end products courtesy of Motul and the rest with over the counter Toyota parts from the local dealership. Don’t forget a fresh set of spark plugs, either.
The only curiosity came from an oil filter housing apparently impacted to oblivion, but a cursory Google search revealed this to be a common issue. The solution: grab the front subframe with both hands, line up your trusty breaker bar and kick as hard as possible with both feet. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.
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Unfortunately, the Prius’ brakes were a bit less simple. Servicing them, for the most part, is similar to other vehicles, but finding performance brake pads for a Prius was a process riddled with anxiety. After calling every single performance brake pad manufacturer, the only two options came from Winmax and Project Mu. Both options were special order from Japan, ETA: 3-4 months.
Eventually, I hopped on eBay Motors on a whim and ended up finding a front and rear set of Hawk HPS brake pads. Not the most sporting or high-performance option by a long shot, but it was the Prius’ only hope at this point. The rear pads went in just fine, the fronts… didn’t. While the pad shape was correct, the backing plates were much too large to fit inside the Prius brake calipers, so the mystery brand brake pads that came with the car went back in, which could spell disaster on the race track. All options were exhausted.
With the Prius freshly serviced, and a cursory drive around the block completed, there was only half a day left until the track day. Just in time.
The next morning, rising an hour before the sun, it was race day, and things were off to a poor start. The Prius only made it down the driveway before it began shaking violently and misfiring. The check engine light flashed unrelentingly. The car also smelled terribly of fuel.
Dejected, I debated getting back into bed. This was a lot to cope with at 5:00 AM after a week of non-stop wrenching and issue sorting. After realizing that sleep was no longer an option due to the noxious fumes lingering in my nose, it was time to wrench again.
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With the hood propped up I found my Prius’ engine bathing in fuel. Fuel is supposed to go in the cylinders, not in the engine bay. Interestingly, one of the fuel rail bolts had backed out and caused the injectors for cylinder 1 and 2 to pop out under pressure. I racked my brain, but couldn’t remember ever touching the fuel rail in any of my repairs. Regardless, after reseating the injectors in the engine, cranking the fuel rail bolts down and clearing the check engine light with a scan tool, the Prius seemed back up to the task. It was onward to the race track.
The drive up was uneventful, with the Prius swallowing up the freeway miles to Willow Springs International Raceway, though, fears of mechanical failure were tap dancing at the back of my brain.
Willow Springs, located just outside the Mojave Desert and 90 minutes North of Los Angeles, is a mecca for performance driving — road racing, drag racing, dirt oval, karting, drifting — but the seasonal weather can be highly unforgiving, and on arrival winds had flared up, as had the rain, and with temperatures just above freezing, there was snow on the horizon. However, track days carry on until the weather becomes too aggressive to continue, so let’s carry on.
All was well until the driver’s meeting revealed an interesting turn of events. The event organizers without warning had decided to change the track configuration, swapping out the usual skidpad section, which leads up to the front straight, for the seldom used (if ever) dog leg. This would obviously impact lap times and testing for us and many others there. Driver protest fell on deaf ears. “You will all set a new personal best today, because none of you has likely ever run this configuration before.” Great.
The more pressing matter was still whether or not my beleaguered Toyota Prius, which looked very out of place in the paddock, would even survive the event. Would the engine blow up? Would the hybrid system give out? Can the cooling system handle hard driving for long stretches? Can the teeny tiny little brakes even hold together and not melt? Confidence was not high.
The first session on track was… windy, with the in-car microphones not able to escape the dreary weather. As far as the Prius was concerned, it went about as well as one would expect. The steering proved to be unbelievably slow, with certain sections of the track requiring enormous steering inputs. With it’s very original and very worn out suspension, responsiveness would be more quickly spelled out loud before being felt in any capacity. And, my God, the acceleration, which was already leisurely around town, proved to be even more meager as the hybrid battery quickly ran out of juice, and the Prius and I relied solely on the very tired 1.8-liter gas engine.
On the upside, the brakes proved to be fantastic. Because the Prius was so unbelievably slow and it can engine brake aggressively to charge up the battery, braking zones were tiny, requiring minimal effort to slow the Track Taxi down.
Similarly, engine coolant temperatures remained rock solid at 200°F, and there were no sounds of impending engine explosion, or at least presumably, as it was hard to hear the engine, at all, over the wind noise.
The only hiccup came in the form of undefeatable traction and stability control system that refused to engage is anything resembling fun. This required some investigation. There is no button to disable these systems in the Prius’ cabin and, for the first time since buying this car, Google searches weren’t turning up any clever tricks.
For the next few hours, whenever it was the Prius’ shot for glory, it went hard, often being foot flat to the floor for huge stretches as tire pressures were adjusted and little tricks were found as to how to drive a hybrid on track effectively.
All the while, my left arm may as well have been glued to the side of the driver door as I pointed by every single car on track to get past me. Because the Prius is so unbelievably slow it created an issue where I became a rolling chicane, causing multi-car traffic jams behind me, and this would compromise my laps because I had to help facilitate letting every single other car on track pass, and then, often, lap me several times every session.
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The safety systems weren’t helping either. Some drivers at these events often have fast cars and no idea what to do with them in anything that isn’t a straight line. Even on its rock hard 600 treadwear Firestone Fuel Fighter tires, the Prius could actually catch up to a few cars in the corners, though, eventually, the safety systems would cut the power completely, assuming the Prius was at risk of crashing. A particularly hard full lock up of the brakes as the stability control went into a panic while diving into the heavily banked bowl corner was the last straw.
A quick search through the Prius’ fuse box revealed an ABS main fuse. After plucking that out, the dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree with error lights on, but that meant that everything was now turned off.
Right away, lap times dropped two seconds. Not having ABS proved to be a bit tricky with the rock hard tires on a very bumpy track, but, ultimately, on the final lap of the final session of the day, I set the Prius’ fastest lap. Coming in with a blazing top speed of 76.7 mph (most cars crack about 100) on the back straight, the Prius zigged and zagged, and, with great care to not lock up the brakes, the lap was tidy and ultimately uneventful, but it’s usually those ones that prove to be the fastest.
My lap time of a 1:50.4 is hilariously slow. That’s more than 20 seconds slower than Project Civic Si, which is an eternity. But the Prius did it all without complaint. It survived the entire day and drove home under its own power, which is a victory.
Fun fact: driving to the track, doing the track day and driving home, the Prius averaged over 29 mpg, overall, which is amazing. That means it could do all of that on a single tank of fuel, which is even more amazing.
Car enthusiasts hear about track days and racing and often say “I’ll do that one day…” and then rattle of excuses. Usually it’s when they buy a faster car, or buy the right modifications, or whatever excuse they want to come up with. It’s all a bunch of bullshit.
If you genuinely have an interest in getting out there and going racing, doing a track day, drifting, or whatever, most modern cars are totally capable of handling a few hard laps just fine. As long as they could pass a basic safety inspection, and they have basic maintenance performed on them, that’s usually enough to go out and have fun, which is what this is all about.
This cheap, beat up Toyota Prius taxi proved to be the most fun I’ve had on the race track in years. It’s so slow I couldn’t help but laugh, and then whenever I remembered I was driving a Prius taxi cab on a race track it made me laugh harder.
The Track Taxi is rough around the edges and very slow, but it’s so much fun and brings so much joy that the journey can’t stop here. It’s time to really begin working on it, modifying it go faster. Can a Prius be modified? Do companies even make modifications for a Prius? It’s time to find out.
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