According to Motor Trend, Prius Figure 8 test faster than a bunch of performance cars
 

How have the rest of you found the TGNA vehicles to drive?

Motor Trend's Figure 8 test seems to think that the Prius puts up better numbers than a host of performance cars:

https://www.motortrend.com/news/15-n...-figure-eight/

https://www.motortrend.com/news/16-o...-figure-eight/

Quite a bit of that isn't terribly surprising, given that a lot of those vehicles definitely aren't designed for snappy handling. Others were so close you could just write it off as driver error or a difference in testing conditions. And being electric driven, I would expect it to have decent low RPM grunt whereas most gas powered vehicles would be out of the power band and bog.

A good chunk of these cars are Grand Tourers and SUVs, so no surprise here. They are more about comfort, luxury and a bit of straight-line and less about cornering.

And some are just family cars. I have driven the new Mazda 6 GT. Yep, definitely not made for handling. And the stock tires suck.

... which is another variable. For instance, RX-8 comes with pretty shitty OEM tires that even got called out by Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gears back in 04. Put on some RE-71R and there will be a pretty big improvement. I doubt a Prius will benefit as much from them, and most Prius drivers won't bother with those tires anyway.

The only one that really got me is the new Fiata, but the difference is so small(0.1s) that it could just be driver error.

That new Toyota platform is pretty damn amazing. I tried the new es350 and it handled way better than expected. I'd figure it would be like my wife's 2010 but it's way more composed and stable through turns.

Comparing a Prius with a bunch of GT (heavy) and SUV (heavierrr) cars on handling...

Prius is faster around a handling course than a 124 Spider (Miata). Wut.