When I think about vehicles that are good for off-roading, the Toyota Prius is not the first vehicle that comes to mind. In fact, in the grand scheme of vehicles that exist in the world, it’s probably closer to the bottom of that list.
Don’t get me wrong, the Prius is a wonderful car. It brought hybridization into the mainstream and delivers amazing fuel economy for those who just want a practical, reliable, cheap-running vehicle that gets them from A to B. But an off-roader, it is not. With normal-car ground clearance, no four-wheel drive, low rolling resistance tires, and average suspension travel, it has absolutely zero attributes that would make it useful when the going gets tough.
Despite the Prius’s inherent lack of off-roading capabilities, it’s become relatively popular in the off-roading and overlanding community. There are Facebook Groups with thousands of members dedicated to off-roading Prii (the official term for the plural of Prius), with people around the country installing lifted suspension, all-terrain tires, light bars, roof racks, and all sorts of other overlanding mods.
At the center of the Prius off-roading universe is Eric, the founder of Prius Offroad. As the name suggests, it’s a business that’s entirely dedicated to offering off-road-minded products for the Prius, specifically generations two through five. In addition to selling Prius-specific lift kits, he also makes roof racks, skidplates, light mounts, trailer hitches, and everything else you’d need to take your Prius off the pavement. And he does it all by himself.
A Rolling Billboard For A Business That Didn’t Exist
Prior to starting Prius Offroad, Eric wasn’t a Prius guy. Before buying his first Prius, he owned an Audi S6 and a Cummins-powered Dodge truck sitting on 40-inch off-road tires. Then, life happened, and his priorities shifted.
While working in the restaurant industry in Pismo Beach, California, Eric and his wife got a divorce. She and their son, who was six months old at the time, moved up to Chico, California, nearly 400 miles north. Being a loving dad who wanted to spend time with his kid, Eric wanted to drive up there every weekend to visit.
“It was like, ‘Well, I’m not taking either of these up to Chico, driving a thousand miles every weekend,'” Eric told me over the phone. “I also had to be able to sleep in it, too, because I didn’t want to pay for a hotel for the two nights I was up there.”
All of a sudden, the Prius became a pretty attractive choice.
“I started looking around and went, ‘Gosh, you know, I hate to admit it, but a Prius kind of makes sense,'” Eric said. “I get great fuel economy, and they drive well, and I can fold the seats down, and in the summers, I can have air conditioning running all night, and I can survive that.”
But as time went on, Eric found that he liked driving his third-generation Prius more than either of his other cars, simply because of how good it was at being a car.
“The more I drove it, the more my Audi and my Dodge just sat,” Eric told me. ”I just like the way it drives. It’s easy not to have to worry about getting in at a parking space or [getting] door dings; it’s super reliable. And I feel like I’m saving all this money. It really changed my whole perspective on drivability [around] the nation as a whole.”
In addition to visiting his son, Eric also took his Prius on long road trips across the western side of the country to go base jumping, a passion he’s held for the past decade. This is where he first ran into the concept of needing a Prius that could do a bit of off-roading.
“It’d be like, ‘I’ve got three days without my son. I’m going to go take advantage of that and go drive 2,000 miles of highway, and then I need 15 miles of off-road to get to the trailhead,” he told me.
Instead of giving up and buying something like a RAV4 hybrid, Eric used his skills from building pre-runners for the Baja 1000—a job he did prior to the restaurant business—to make a Prius that could handle some dirt.
“I just applied that knowledge and built myself a little lift kit,” he said.
The kit was flashy enough to command some incredible attention from Prius owners through Eric’s commute up the spine of California each week—so much so that he began collecting contact information from people begging to build them off-road Prii of their own.
“I was driving up to Chico every weekend, and people would stop me at gas stations or corners or leave notes on my car in the parking lot like, ‘This is so cool. Can you build me one?'” Eric told me. “I kind of thought people were making fun of me at first.”
Eric recounts one specific time where someone brought up a similar issue with their Prius that he faced with the base jumping trailheads.
“Like, you’re joking, right? This is ridiculous. ‘No, it’s awesome. We have a Prius too. We love it, but we leave it at home a lot of the time when we’re going to go on off-road stuff, or we’re going to go camping because it just doesn’t have ground clearance,” he said.
“I was focused on just spending time with my son and making up for lost time, and I just said, ‘I’m not really interested in making any kits right now, but I’ll take your name and number, and at some point in time, I do, I’ll let you know.’ Well, then, by six months in, I had, I think, 40 different phone numbers. I think I was doing 2,000 miles a weekend. And so I was out and about a lot. And people flagged me down on the freeway—it was wild.”
After a year and a half of commuting, Eric finally decided to move up to Chico to be closer to his son. But when he was alone, he wanted to stay busy, so he approached Scott Franklin of the Slag Factory, a welding shop just south of Chico, for a job as a welder. It was here, in his off-hours, that he began developing the idea for proper, off-the-shelf Prius lift kits.
“I worked for [Franklin] essentially like three days a week when I didn’t have my son,” Eric told me. “Then at night, I would go down there and just start tinkering. “So I told him, ‘I think I want to do this business and start building Prius lift kits.’ And instead of going, ‘That’s so stupid,’ He went, ‘That’s genius. Nobody’s doing that. Do it.’ So, he helped me with my first [set of parts.] He was very influential in getting me off the ground and super supportive, and really helped me hit the ground running.”
The Golden Height
Eric makes lift kits for generation two, three, four, and five Prius vehicles, as well as the Prius V, the Prius C, and for 2009-2026 Corollas. If you’ve ever shopped for lift kits on trucks before, you’ll be familiar with how these work. Basically, the kit consists of four spacers for the suspension—one for each corner. They’re installed at the top of each coilover, acting as an extension for the top hat, sitting between the coilover body and the frame. On some kits, you can opt to substitute the rear spacers for heavy-duty springs to improve rear-end control and eliminate sag if you often load up the rear end with gear. Here’s a video of the spacers being installed:
Eric’s lift kits raise overall height by 1.5 inches. That height wasn’t just chosen by random, or because it looked good; Eric picked that height after endless testing, determining that it fit the Prius’s suspension geometry best.
“I hit the drawing board with a few lift designs, and I started with a three-inch lift, and I was like, ‘That looks ridiculous.’ And it’s putting way too much strain on all the suspension components,” he told me. “So I stepped that number to two inches, and then I was like, ‘I don’t really feel super comfortable with my son in the car with that. It’s still a little overstressed compared to what I would want it to be at.’ [I] really found that sweet spot at like an inch and a half. My theory is, if I wouldn’t put my son in the car with it, why would I sell it to customers to put their children in it?”
Eric tells me that people routinely ask him for taller lift kits, but he turns them away. “I can, but I won’t. You’re welcome to yourself, but I have to be able to look myself in the mirror each day and be happy with the person that I am, and I wouldn’t feel good just taking money to put other people’s lives at risk.”
You’d think that with something as fuel-efficient and well-designed as the Prius, changing the ride height in any way, even slightly, would have poor effects on aerodynamics and therefore, fuel economy. But the exact opposite has happened, according to reports from customers and Eric’s own testing.
“I’ve actually seen a ton of hypermilers come in … hypermiling is pretty big in the Prius industry,” he told me. “I don’t personally do it—I’d rather spend an extra $5 and get to where I’m going faster, because time is money for me and I don’t have the patience for that. But people say, ‘I’ve been hypermiling for the past 150,000 miles, and I put the lift on, and it actually increased my fuel economy by 0.5 miles per gallon.'”
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“When I heard it the first time, I was like, yeah, something’s wrong there, [incorrect] calculations, [or] just the placebo effect. And then more and more people kept saying it and saying it,” he added. “The only thing I can think of with that is that instead of losing that momentum and inertia that you have, slowing down for bumps and stuff, you’re just going through them in town.”
“I would have thought it would have affected something to do with the aerodynamics of the car. There had to have been a reason that Toyota had designed them as low as they did. And I know that they were really hyper-focused on the coefficient drag. But I’ve seen zero reduction and often a slight increase in fuel economy with the lift alone. That being said, as soon as you put tires on oversized tires, or even just go away from a low rolling resistance tire, you’re going to lose fuel economy.”
Tires As A Balancing Act
Tires made to improve fuel economy and tires made to go off-roading are on totally different spectrums, with rubber formulated for two entirely different applications. Depending on the use case for your Prius, Eric recommends starting with the lift kit and keeping everything stock, including the tires, and only upgrading in compound and size if you need to. Otherwise, your fuel economy will take a massive hit.
“Unfortunately, all-terrain tires come at the cost of high rolling resistance and weight,” he told me. “And so far, what I’ve seen, the Prius is very susceptible to rolling mass. For every pound you increase tire weight, you essentially lose a mile per gallon. [That’s] the rough ratio that I’ve come to. So, going from a low rolling resistance tire to an all-terrain tire, you’re going to gain almost 10 pounds [per corner]. You’re going to lose 10 miles per gallon, [and] when you have a 10-gallon tank, that really takes a huge hit to your overall range.”
Like Eric, most of his buyers are people who are just trying to get through those last few miles where the going gets tough, whether that’s to arrive at a trailhead, get to a camping spot, or simply explore places where there isn’t enough clearance for a normal Prius to get to.
“I’d say 5% of [customers] are hardcore off-roading, and I love it. I’m here for it. I fully support it,” he told me. “But the biggest thing for me is the people that are like, “Gosh, I want to get outside and enjoy what’s in my backyard, but I need something that can get me to the trailhead, and my Prius isn’t cutting it, and I can’t really afford to buy an SUV, nor is it economical for me. I’m all about making do with what you’ve got.
“If you can take your car that you already have and it’s paid off and you enjoy it, and you can modify it just enough to still do everything, it’d be more versatile, make it happen. And so the majority of my people are outdoor enthusiasts [who] just want to go camping, want to go hiking, want to go biking, and use their Prius as an SUV.”
A Full-Time Job, Plus More
Since the launch of Prius Offroad, the company has enveloped Eric’s time to the point where he’s working 17-hour days when his son isn’t around.
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” he told me. “[When] my son’s in school, and the days I don’t have him, I will work from five o’clock in the morning until midnight, pretty much. [In] summertime, when I do have him, I have to adjust. I pride myself a lot on the father that I am because I didn’t have the best upbringing. So I like to dedicate the time that I have to the point that he looks to me and goes, ‘Dad, you even have a job?’ I look at [that as] such a blessing … I work a lot more than I should, I probably put in 80 hours a week, but I genuinely love it.”
What does the future of Prius Offroad look like? The company is, by far and away, the biggest name in the Prius off-roading segment (if not the only name). But as far as aftermarket off-roading firms, it’s still an incredibly small niche. So if nothing changes, Eric is happy with that.
“I’d love to say I have this huge grand scheme of growth and what I plan on doing and all these new products, but honestly, I’m content where I’m at,” Eric told me. “I love providing this product and providing the service and providing the knowledge through all the trial and errors.”
Of course, if the opportunity comes around, Eric is always open to moving on to follow his other dreams. But only under very specific circumstances.
“I have another company too, called Sticky Whips, and I have two other products that I’ve been working on and have patents in the process for,” he continued. “And I have no shortage of ideas and companies that I want to start up, but until I am able to either find somebody to run this company like it’s their child or sell the company, I don’t have the ability to do that. So realistically, I’d love to operate it until someone with the passion that I have comes along and says, ‘I want to take this on myself and take it over.’
“I’d love to sell at that point in time, but until I find the right buyer at the right price, and it makes sense for me, I’m going to be running it until the day I die.”
Top graphic image: Prius Offroad
im about to lift my 2014 prius with this kit but sadly it’s on backorder refreshing daily for more stock. not planning on increasing tire size yet. i’m mostly just tired of scraping and bottoming out here on the poor Alabama roads. also going to install koni special active shocks and a TRD sway bar. this should counter act some of the negative effects of the increased ride hight and reduce under-steer slightly.
I mean, unless you are going up serious hills, or driving through sand/mud/deeper snow, pure traction is rarely a trip-ending issue off-roading. A little lift, some larger tires, and a skid pan for the rocks will get most cars to most places that people want to go unless they are specifically choosing difficult routes for the challenge of it.
I have zero interest in off-roading my Prius, but I do find it pretty stiffly sprung and a little more suspension travel (especially if it doesn’t meaningfully affect fuel economy) would be welcome.