Taxi! It’s the reductive cry of many when a Prius hums into view, Toyota’s pioneering hybrid hatchback having become the ubiquitous Uber for a generation of ride-hailing devotees.

Yet as the petrol-electric model celebrates its quarter century on sale in the UK, does the incredibly efficient and relentlessly reliable Prius deserve to be seen – and appreciated – as more than just a default choice for hard-nosed mini-cabbers?

The obvious answer is yes, of course it does. In fact, the Prius is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and occasionally divisive cars to have hit the roads in the past 25 years.

When it landed on these shores in 2000, diehard petrolheads quickly named it the ‘Pious’ – a swipe at early adopting owners who were evangelical about its tech and fuel-savings.

Yet it was also an unlikely Hollywood pin-up, with eco-friendly A-listers such as Leonardo DiCaprio choosing the Prius to scoot between studios.

Either way, over five generations, it has become as familiar a sight on our roads as white lines and temporary traffic lights: more than six million have been sold to date, making it the world’s most popular hybrid.

Those sheer numbers mean Toyota’s engineering brilliance is often overlooked, so it seems an ideal time to get one of the first examples together with the latest version and perhaps reappraise this dual-fuel pioneer.

As is the case today, environmental concerns were very much in the headlines when the Prius first appeared in its native Japan back in 1997, with the result that manufacturers were keen to develop cars that minimised their impact on the world’s resources.

The European approach was to remain faithful to internal combustion engines, installing them in lightweight, low-drag bodies, and the Audi A2 is perhaps the most obvious example.

In Japan, however, petrol-electric hybrids were the order of the day. At roughly the same time the covers were pulled off the Prius, Honda launched its innovative Insight coupé.

Like the A2, it featured a low-calorie construction and wind-cheating bodywork, while under its snub snout was a clever powertrain that was the progenitor of today’s mild hybrids. It was styled like a concept car and built with the same obsessive attention to detail as the firm’s first-generation NSX supercar.

But whatever the Honda’s virtues, it was a sales flop – just like the Audi. Toyota’s approach was slightly different, but in many ways it was in fact more daring.

A traditional four-door saloon template made the Prius look like a far more mundane machine, but that sober suit hid a much more sophisticated drivetrain that remains largely the same today as it was all those years ago.

Essentially, it has two electric motors: the MG1 is a starter-generator similar to those in today’s mild hybrids, while the MG2 is the traction motor, which also acts as a generator.

Both of these then have to work harmoniously with the car’s petrol engine, which can be connected to the road wheels at higher speeds or when maximum performance is required, but normally it feeds electricity into the battery.

Making all of these mechanical machinations possible is the ‘power splitter’. Often referred to as a continuously variable transmission (CVT), it actually uses a planetary gearset rather than the usual belts and pulleys.

Packed together with the two motors and bolted onto the engine, it uses computers to decide where best to send power depending on the prevailing conditions, allowing it to operate as either a series or a parallel hybrid. Clever, eh?

Approach the Mk1 today and you would never guess at the complexity lurking within. Even in-period, it was a fairly nondescript presence: its tried-and-tested three-box template was at odds with family-friendly contemporaries such as the audaciously angular ‘New Edge’ exterior of the first-generation Ford Focus.

Only when you climb aboard does the Prius start to reveal its status as a cutting-edge practitioner of the petrol-electric art. The squidgy seats trimmed in kitsch crushed velour are pure Tokyo taxi, plus there’s the expected expanse of hard grey plastic.

But set high in the centre of the dashboard is a full LCD digital instrument cluster, while the centre console houses an actual touchscreen. In many respects the OG hybrid car feels bang up to date to drive, which is largely due to the fact that any current hybrid Toyota is running essentially the same powertrain.

Pull the chunky, dashboard-mounted gear selector into drive and squeeze the throttle, and the Toyota pulls away in silent EV mode.

Push the accelerator a little harder and the engine fires into life, while pinning it into the carpet for maximum forward motion results in revs being held somewhere around peak torque as the power splitter feeds the generator’s demand for maximum electricity (it’s this behaviour that hoodwinked many to assume the Prius had a conventional CVT transmission).

With a combined 98bhp on tap, progress is leisurely. The ICE has to be worked hard, but the uninterrupted, EV-style delivery and the option of enhanced regenerative braking with the B mode gives this Prius surprisingly contemporary vibes. It’s refined, too, with the 1.5-litre motor’s efforts being suppressed enough not to grate even when pressing on.

According to the trip computer it’s also returning an easy 50mpg-plus, despite being driven fairly briskly. Although, like many hybrids, the inconsistent transition from regenerative to friction braking makes it almost impossible to slow smoothly in a hurry.

However, it’s the chassis that really dates the car. Its slow-witted steering, skinny-tyred deficit of grip and loose body control prove to be a reminder of a time when, sports cars aside, Toyotas were faithful and functional but rarely fun.

Still, the upshot is a nicely absorbent – if floaty – ride that seems pretty well suited to today’s scarred road surfaces. Yet it’s easy to see why the Prius succeeded. Despite its astonishingly complicated powertrain, it’s easy to drive, comfortable, spacious and, crucially, extremely reliable and cost-effective to run.

So it was no surprise when second- and third-generation models arrived over the coming years. The looks became more arresting and there was the addition of more power-dense lithium-ion batteries and even a plug-in option, but the basic recipe remained the same.

When the Mk4 Prius arrived in 2016 it was built on the brand’s TNGA architecture, which also meant a decent dose of driver engagement. Even so, when that car’s production run came to an end in 2022, Toyota UK decided against bringing its replacement to our shores.

With its C-HR crossover and collection of Corollas, the manufacturer reckoned it had all its hybrid bases covered, that there was no room on the price lists for a Prius. Then late last year Toyota relented, reinstating the plug-in version in showrooms.

Compared with its dumpy ancestor, the sleek new car is a real feast for the eyes. Snapper Jack Harrison suggests that our test car’s sunny hue and teardrop profile give it the look of a lemon, but to this tester it’s a visual treat.

Stick some flush wheel covers on and it could have passed as a futuristic automotive background model in Blade Runner 2049. This attention to detail extends to its engineering.

The latest hybrid system works in much the same way as ever, but it has been honed and refined for enhanced power and efficiency. Moreover, despite greater safety, a stiffer shell and a larger lithium ion battery that gives a claimed EV range of 53 miles, the Toyota tips the scales at as little as 1545kg, making it a flyweight in a world full of two-tonne-plus EVs and SUVs.

And this is all before you consider the way it drives. With 220bhp available, it accelerates with the eagerness of a hot hatch, and the relationship between throttle, motor, engine and power delivery is now carefully honed to deliver a more natural feel with almost none of the elastic-feeling CVT lag.

There’s also a rare fluidity to the chassis, which allows the car to scythe quickly and accurately through corners yet ride the lumps and bumps with impressive deftness, even on our example’s larger 19in rims.

Better still, the brakes are now brilliant, offering a firm pedal and a progressive action. This is a genuinely satisfying car to steer, one that might just tempt you to abandon the well-worn groove of your commute and seek a more interesting alternative back home.

If you love cars for their innovative design and engineering as much as you do for the way they go down the road, then you’ll have plenty of time for the Prius. And as with the older models, once you’ve tuned into the hybrid’s way of doing things there’s a peculiar satisfaction in getting the best out of it.

Moreover, in the clarity of its thinking and unwillingness to follow the herd, it captures the spirit of Citroën at the height of its hydropneumatic pomp, or Saab at its single-minded best. After 25 years and millions of sales, the Prius doesn’t need to justify its existence: like it or loathe it, the Toyota is a bonafide success.

Who knows what the next quarter century holds for the Prius? But whatever happens we should pay it our dues and recognise this hybrid trailblazer as one of the most influential cars yet produced. What we do know, though, is that if you’re a minicab driver, you’ve never had it so good.

Having pared as much steel, aluminium, plastic, rubber, fabric and glass from this car as they felt they could get away with, Toyota’s weight-shaving engineers reckoned that any driver of this sylphic machine should try just as hard to minimize the load.

To ensure that their mission was honoured, said engineers provided this car with laughably little storage space, unless you were prepared to travel one-up and use the passenger seat and its footwell to stuff in more stuff.

Toyota’s third generation MR2, which appeared in time for the new century’s dawn in 1999, had no boot, and so little room under the bonnet that the desperate could stuff only shoes or a washbag into the spare wheel to supplement the glovebox and a pair of small cubbies behind the front seats. A dirty weekend in this car would be just that. Toyota’s weight-saving aims trimmed the MR2’s heft to 960kg and usefully reduced its size compared to the previous model, besides providing a neatly folding hood. It wasn’t as light as a Lotus Elise which could weigh as much as 210kg less, but it was a lot more affordable, slightly more civilized and almost as much fun.

The simplification mission extended to this tiny Toyota’s specification, which provided the choice of one engine – a 136bhp 1.8 litre – and initially one five-speed gearbox. Later there would be an automatic, and later still the addition of a sixth speed for both transmissions. That added weight, and so did extra stiffening to the body’s nose and tail – not that it was a wobbler in the first place – and an increase in wheel diameter from 15in to 16in, but the revised 2002 MR2 was still a light car for light travellers.

The lightness made the 138bhp a lot stronger than it sounds, revvy romps to 62mph possible in 7.9sec, which was swift enough to be exciting on sinuous twisties. And very exciting on the test route of the European launch, held in the hills of a Mediterranean island whose name has shamefully slipped your reporter’s memory. It wasn’t hard to discover the MR2’s fine chassis balance on these roads, which seemed to have been sheened with graphite, diesel, sand or some other slippery substance that had you wondering at the Toyota’s roadholding, if not its controllability.

Later drives on roads closer to home soon confirmed that it was the surface, not the Toyota, that lacked grip. It was a car that was all about the driving, though in this case to the exclusion of almost everything other than rain, which was very effectively repelled by its neatly folding roof.

The result was a car that captured more of the character of the legendary 1985 MR2, and with the added bonus of a fully removable roof, if not a boot to add civility to any long-distance adventuring. Such inconveniences limited sales less than you might expect, the last of the line MR2 more common than you might expect. 

This, and its no more than functional beauty, have allowed prices to plunge well below £3000 for hard-worked examples – like earlier MR2s, these machines are good for big six-figure distances, unless their engines suffer from disintegrating catalyst ingestion – despite their high entertainment quotient.

It takes a certain confidence to label a product ‘IQ’. You’ll want your buyers swiftly deducing that this is a better kind of thing, an intelligently designed thing that’s superior to others like it. Because if it isn’t, there’ll be plenty of scope for chippy little jokes.

Toyota’s IQ certainly looked different enough to shine a light on the future. It was smaller, taller and shorter than most cars, a little like a Smart ForTwo, but wider besides.

The unusual silhouette was all about packaging, Toyota keen to cram as much air into the IQ’s envelope as feasible. It was actually shorter than a classic Mini at 2985mm to the British car’s 3053mm, but almost a foot wider. A more relevant target for Toyota, though, was to have the IQ occupy the same length as a tiny Japanese kei car, even if it was wider and getting on for two feet longer than the original Smart ForTwo.

There were many more targets too. The IQ was to seat four – not necessarily in the most palatial comfort – pirouette more tightly than a London taxi, properly take a hit in crashes and cut a confident path along motorways. Cramming the solutions to these challenges into a self-propelling box less than three metres long was why it took Toyota five years to develop this car rather than the three it typically needed to realise a conventional supermini.

Novelties included a transmission case positioning the differential ahead of the engine rather than behind it, cutting the IQ’s front overhang appealingly short as well as allowing the front passenger seat to be mounted slightly ahead of the driver’s, to release (slightly) more room in the rear.

Also new were an airbag curtaining rear seat occupants’ heads owing to the equally short overhang at the rear, horizontally mounted rear dampers (an old Peugeot trick that yields more cabin space), a central take-off point for the steering column relative to its rack, a slender under-floor fuel tank, a miniaturised heating and air conditioner and – less radical this – slimmer seats.

There was further boldness in the IQ’s price, which was significantly higher than for most cheap city cars and for plenty of superminis too, buyers compensated not only with the tiny Toyota’s convenience, but an interior sculpted and furnished with considerable panache, especially compared to the plainer-than-porridge cabins of the rest of the company’s range.

The IQ was light enough that a 67bhp 1.0-litre four-pot was adequate for the task, though not light enough to be lighter than a Fiat 500, or to be fast. Blunting its performance still more effectively than a little too much heft, however, was gearing clearly intended to score the IQ fantasy official fuel figures that were nothing like what the labouring engine actually delivered. So the zipping enthusiasm possessed by the best city cars wasn’t quite there.

But what this Toyota proved unexpectedly good at was cruising. Despite the stunted footprint an IQ toed motorway lines with the doggedness of an Arctic explorer, crosswinds and truck draughts simply washing by. Once you attained a decent cruise, the high gearing and plush cabin made long trips a breeze. You didn’t have to slow for corners as much as its stubby wheelbase suggested either, the IQ’s width providing stability, its quick, accurate steering allowing you to make the most of its grip. Good in the country and great on a motorway, the IQ should have been brilliant in the city.

Only it wasn’t, quite. The extra width made it harder to find gaps to dart through, the tall gearing made it hard to muster said darting, and this assumed that you’d actually seen a gap to dart for, the Toyota’s fat pillars doing a good job of semi-blinding you. Its usefulness for urban errands was further undermined by a boot barely capable of swallowing a vacuum-wrapped plaice stored on its side. Those planning to carry people rather than fish in the rear would find that one could sit comfortably, two like sardines, and neither would enjoy much of a view past the IQ’s extravagantly swirly side pillars.

So not quite your ideal city car, this snub-nosed midget. Yet despite its flaws the IQ is charming, original and in the right circumstances, useful too. That it hasn’t been directly replaced tells you something, though, and should ensure that the IQ becomes a lot more collectible than most Toyotas. And still more so as an Aston Martin Cygnet, but that’s another story.