Word: toyotas
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...expect our movie stars to drive sleek, high-end automobiles. So why have Cameron Diaz's Porsche and Mercedes been gathering dust in her garage for the past four months? Because these days the stylish actress tools around Tinseltown in a $20,000 Toyota Prius--a hybrid car that swings both ways, alternately guzzling climate-heating gasoline and sipping environmentally friendly electricity. What the car lacks in class it makes up in fuel savings and reduced emissions. "I love my Prius," says Diaz, 29, who reports that the batteries on her luxury cars have both died from neglect. "The Prius...
...rolling into dealerships nationwide last week. Next year Ford, which has produced a string of electric cars, is expected to be the first U.S. manufacturer to introduce a hybrid vehicle. I took the politically correct version of the six-cylinder Escape for an exclusive spin earlier this month. Meanwhile, Toyota, General Motors and Chrysler have all promised a new crop of hybrid vehicles by 2004. J.D. Power & Associates, which tracks consumer tastes for the auto industry, expects that by 2006, American consumers will be buying half a million hybrids a year...
Hybrids are surprisingly fun to drive. The electric motor on the Toyota Prius can keep the car cruising at speeds up to 42 m.p.h. without any help, although it needs power from the gas engine to accelerate to that speed. A panel on the dashboard displays average fuel efficiency, calculated on the fly, and tells you when the electric motor is being used to charge the batteries or to assist the gas engine. "You find yourself playing games to see how efficiently you can make your trip," says Eileen Hart, 42, a San Francisco marketing consultant who recently bought...
...killing zone. Both sides knew as much. Established in 1953 to provide temporary shelter for refugees still homeless after the 1948 war, the camp has 14,000 residents crammed inside a 2 1/2-sq.-mi. maze of attached cinder-block houses on streets barely wide enough for a Toyota, much less a tank. It is home to a fiercely nationalist tradition and some of the Palestinians' most successful terrorists. When the tanks came two weeks ago, Jenin's fighters were surrounded and outgunned but not outfought. In a radio broadcast, Hamas vowed to fight to the death. With the Israeli army...
Automakers have also learned that a convertible need not handle like a Porsche to turn a profit. Consider Toyota's Solara convertible, based on an aging Camry platform. Says analyst Michael Bruynesteyn of Prudential Securities: "It's basically a chop," meaning that Toyota grafted a soft top onto the Solara with minimal changes to the rest of the car. Toyota sold 7,600 units when it introduced the vehicle in 2000, charging about $5,000 more than for the comparable hardtop. The convertible shares a platform with seven other vehicles, so if interest in the ragtop wanes, the automaker...