Race Livery and Front Splitter (Kinda) Installed on My Toyota Prius
Follow These Easy Steps and Any XW30 Will Look This Good
It’s a car enthusiasts’ rite of passage to buy cheap body parts off eBay Motors and try to make them fit – Doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 60 – we’ve all been there.
In an effort to add some style to the Track Taxi build, I sourced an inexpensive, but quite large front splitter for my third gen Prius and got to work with the drill and self-tappers.
Toyota Prius Track Taxi gets front splitter installed
With a nice car, this can be a point of anxiety, after all those holes in the bumper are drilled in permanently. Fortunately, this isn’t a nice car, it’s a salvage title taxi turned budget track toy, so after some eyeball measurements and persuasion with a heat gun and a jack, the front lip was installed and actually fit pretty well.
As someone rarely capable of doing anything right the first time, it was a modern day miracle. Though, the next phase of this round of aesthetic upgrades proved to the real miracle in terms of maintaining patience when the vinyl wrap comes out.
Prius front splitter installed
The theme of the car is track taxi, and being a former yellow cab, the base color is already doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. But, to really send the message home, I hired my good friends at Weebspeed to print some custom vinyl for the build.
Even with the XW30 Prius’ relatively upright, straight door panels and a tape masure, things went a little sideways with my new to me door vinyl seeming to appreciate the curvature of the Earth more than me. Fortunately, being just a degree or two crooked doesn’t matter when the whole car is a hodgepodge of budget backyard engineering. Wabi sabi – acceptance of imperfections and the impermanent, right?
Livery and ‘aero’ completed, coilover suspension installed and an aggressive wheel and tire package all led to one… good looking…Prius? I guess it’s true: wheels, and suspension can make anything look good.
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Fortunately for me, the Track Taxi also drives pretty good. A blast through the LA canyon roads revealed tremendous grip from the Bridgestone tires, and while my experiences with Godspeed suspension have been poor – and these Mono SS are far from great – the Prius rode well enough to not skid off the pavement, and was certainly better than the very worn out original dampers.
Toyota Prius Track Taxi at Angeles Crest
Combining the tired hybrid powertrain’s limited acceleration capabilities with the prodigious tire grip on tap resulted in a completely unique driving experience. Like a Miata or any other low power car, the only way the Prius manages the outhill is 100% flat out. Fully engaged and trying its best, the gas engine is firing on all four cylinders the entire time, screaming away as the CVT tries to arouse what limited power it has.
It’s funny. Hilarious, in fact. This cheap, battered taxi that spent years mulling through LAX’s worst, most nauseating traffic was now running hard through the canyons, and taking it in stride. It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but the Track Taxi was proving to be one of the more joyous driving experiences I have ever had on my local, well worn and well-traveled roads.
The Track Taxi was ready. It’s time to return to Willow Springs and set some hot laps.
