We got a little link love, from Autoblog yesterday and the day before from Wired, so we figured we'd return the favor. To get your weekend going, we feature a Prius that's either a treat or a travesty--you be the judge.
As the opening credit on the video says, it's "a Swedish Toyota Prius that happened to get in the way of Classe, Elvis and Kenny."
It continues: "Something is wrong with them." [ahem] Perhaps.
Customized Prius on the road
In brief, Classe turned this four-door Prius into a two-door, with doors that step out and then pivot parallel to the body sides at that. They're not that easy to open, as the video shows.
He radically modified the body with various aero add-ons, and fitted it with air suspension to raise it for travel while lowering it to the ground on its 20-inch rims while parked. The interior has racing shell seats and a host of other mods.
Owners of standard Priuses won't recognize a thing on the dashboard, which has several speakers the size of pie plates as its main elements (the electronics gear is in the rear loadspace). Oh, and did we mention the half-dozen video screens and the touchscreen monitor for the WiFi-enabled PC mounted on the tunnel?
The standard Prius shifter-ette is there, though, in its standard gate. Phew. One touch we particularly liked: The gigantic central exhaust pipe is finished off with a chrome Toyota-logo grille.
Classe covered the whole affair in a striking metallic orange paint job, inside and out, with flames and various other graphic embellishments.
In good Prius form, the video shows the car rolling slowly out of Classe's Garage in all-electric mode. There's also some interesting Swedish town footage, complete with at least one Honda in the background we've never seen in the States.
And the Hybrid Synergy Drive powertrain? Entirely stock, unaltered, just the way it came from the Tsutsumi factory. We suspect the Swedish emissions-test authories appreciated that. Maybe even demanded it. Either way, we appreciate knowing that not every single Prius stays stock. Different strokes ...
[SOURCE: StreetXtreme (video) via Wired via Autoblog.]
