There’s no denying it; the Prius is an ugly car. Just look at it – it looks like a double-chinned angry guppy that wants to eat your face. The current model is pretty much the strangest-looking car on the market, but that could all change soon enough as reports are coming in that Toyota is planning a mid-cycle redesign that will focus on the front and rear ends. Praise Jesus!

Goodbye Ugly Guppy; Hello Modern Prius

The aforementioned report comes from Japanese outlet CarSensor, which claims that the facelifted Prius will end up looking better than it does now, but it won't look too similar to the Prius Prime or the plug-in hybrid model. This is, of course, to maintain a certain position in the market but with sales dropping as quickly as they are, Toyota needs to do something quick. To put things into perspective, sales of the Prius have dropped by almost half since 2012, to just over 108,000 examples. That’s seriously bad news for Toyota when you consider the fact that the Prius just entered its fourth generation back in 2015.

With that said, the front end will take on reshaped headlights and fog lights. The fascia should have a much cleaner, less visually obtrusive look. The rear end will most certainly ditch those weird ass taillights for something more modern and acceptable on today’s market. On that note, the same report suggests there will be a boost in fuel economy thanks to some powertrain tweaks, so it does have that going for it, anyway.

Final Thoughts

It’s about damn time Toyota does something about the look of the Prius. The design isn’t even old, but it’s just downright ugly…and weird. Why Toyota even decided to go with this look for the fourth-gen model is beyond logic and reason, but here we are. It’s true that a lot of market analysts are suggesting the styling plays a big role in the slumping sales so perhaps a healthy facelift will do the model some good. We’ll just have to see what happens but should this facelift turn out to be just as big a failure as the initial look of the fourth-gen, expect a fifth-gen model to debut shortly after the turn of the decade – Toyota needs its resident green car to keep up with emissions standards and slumping sales won’t do it any good.

References

Read our full review on the 2018 Toyota Prius.

Read more Toyota news.