Celebrities be
warned - there's a brand new Toyota Prius to spark off a whole new
holier-than-thou war among yourselves.

The good news
for the hair-shirt brigade is that it's even more environmentally friendly than
before. CO2 is now 89g/km and the combined fuel figure is 72.4mpg. Impressive
stuff for a genuine five-seater.

The trouble is
that, as before, the practical everyday running doesn't quite match up to the
theory. On a long-ish motorway stint, we only managed 55.7mpg, which is nowhere near that target figure.

Toyota has
replaced the old 1.5-litre petrol engine with a 1.8-litre motor to try and make
it better at these longer and faster journeys, but a modern diesel is still far
better. Where this Prius is better though is from a refinement point of view.
Tyre noise is a problem, but the buzziness you got in the old one has been
virtually eliminated. It'll keep up with motorway traffic fine as well.

There's still an
electric-only mode, which is OK-ish for town work but still allows the petrol
engine to cut in too early, but there are now two new driving modes. Most
people will leave it in Eco-mode for most of the time because that's why you
buy a Prius after all, but the power mode sharpens up the throttle to make
overtaking a bit easier. It also boosts power to give you the full 134bhp -
hardly dramatic stuff but it does accelerate from 0-62mph in 10.4 seconds.

But none of this is really
important in the Prius. It's what it stands for, what it allows people to think
of you. And for that, it still scores highly.

Piers Ward