Toyota has figures out that Prius owners don’t drive on highways and don’t live where it gets cold – or at least some of them don’t.
   
So omitting cruise control and a heated rear window are among the means by which Toyota is cutting the price of the base Prius by over a thousand bucks for the next model year.
   
Actually, the whole thing is a shell game.
   
You know what a shell game is.  You have three shells and put the pea under one.  Move the shells around rapidly and you’ll lose track of the one hiding the shell.
   
Same with Toyota.
   
They’re actually raising the price of the Prius.
   
It’s an old Detroit trick.
   
Create a new base car that has so little equipment that not even taxi companies would dream of buying one, advertise that as the base price, and then raise the price of everything else.
   
That’s what Toyota is doing.
   
The price of the car equipped as is the current Prius is going up, by at least $150.00, more in higher level models.
   
It’s not a huge increase, and if Toyota just told the truth, they’d probably get credit for candor.
   
But they didn’t.
   
Should you go looking for one of those base Prius’s on a dealer lot this fall, one with no rear window defogger and no cruise control, whadda figure the odds of your finding one?
   
Shall we say, slim and none?