The Toyota Prius has won accolades since its introduction - Car of the Year in Japan, for instance.  The first production hybrid, it combines the practicality of a four-door sedan with the cleanliness of an electric.  

The Prius has two power sources: a 1.5-liter 16V inline 4 and a 30 kilowatt (40 bhp) electric motor powered by a nickel-metal hydride battery pack.  At low speeds, only the electric motor works to propel the car.  Imagine you're showing off your new Prius and driving slowly around Starbucks to attract attention. You probably won't get much because when the car is in electric mode it is eerily silent.

Okay, so the cruising bit didn't work.  You pull out and drive on the main road.  The 1.5 now kicks to life and takes over.  It can rev up to 4000 rpm to keep the engine working at its most efficient.  Some of the power is also used to charge up the Ni-MH batteries in the car's trunk.  

Now 57 bhp from a 1.5 liter engine doesn't sound like much, particularly when asked to propel a car as heavy as a Galant.   But when you ask for more power, say accelerating onto a highway, the electric motor draws on the energy stored in the batteries, and joins in for a healthy dose of acceleration.  

You won't need to turn any knob marked "gasoline-electric"; the whole thing is computer controlled.  You might imagine that with a gasoline engine turning on and off all the time, and the electric motor kicking in, you'll be subject to vibrations and jerking movements.  Not to worry-what's amazing is that you will hardly be aware of which power source is working, or if both are.  Operation is utterly transparent, and it's just like you're driving a normal 1.5-liter.  A 1.5-liter with a range of 1300 km. between full tanks (50 liters), that is. 

One look at the Prius and you can bet that it didn't win Car of the Year on account of its looks.  The Prius looks, to put it kindly, quite odd.  Its worst view has to be head-on, from which it resembles a badly-drawn cartoon insect.  The conventional sides and rear make it invisible in a crowd of similarly-styled sedans.

The interior, though, is expansive and efficient.  The selector for the continuously-variable automatic transmission sprouts from behind the lights-stalk.  The rest of the driver-navigator area is empty space, which adds to the roomy feeling.  A large display on the center console is quite amusing as it offers up a graphical display of which power source is working to propel the car.  Digital speedometer, warning lights and of course fuel economy meter are housed in a central pod above the display screen.  

So: a safe, efficient, reasonably powerful four-door family sedan.  The ideal hybrid?  Honda chose a different path for its contender.