I'd say only go with the Prius if you feel like voting with dollars.

From what I can tell, the biggest difference will be that the nose doesn't stick out as far as you're used to.

That gas mileage is worse than my '91 Aerostar's -- also a minivan and likely a damn sight heavier.

Personally, I'd say you should look at a car other than the Prius or the Mazda5.

Do you have a suggestion, or perhaps a car I missed? This is the result of widdling a much longer list down.

A couple that bounce to mind that you may have already considered. Ford Focus or the Volkswagon Golf?

Oh hell -- those don't qualify for cargo space, do they?

Have you looked at the Matrix?
(I don't know its stats, just that several friends have one and like it, for carrying both people and cargo.)

FWIW, when jadia and I were looking at cars last year, we found that the Matrix (and the Fit, and the Scions) was really annoyingly noisy on highway driving. A fine city car, but not something I'd want to drive to Pittsburgh.

As far as I can tell the Matrix isn't any better than the mazda3 (the orginal car that took me in the direction of mazda in the first place,) except with better gas milage but is more expensive and doesn't have an aux in.

I bet you already thought of this, but the numbers you are using don't say anything about cargo space. The prius has a lot less than the other cars, due to the gigantic battery in the trunk. My personal opinion is if you want to haul stuff, you can't get the prius.

I also don't think you'll notice 5", but I don't know. This is where test driving makes a big difference. Do a parellel parking exercise on your test drive. (That's the only place I find the length to actually matter.) It's not just the length for parallel parking - it's also the turning radius.

the prius actually has pretty good cargo space by the numbers. The problem is the numbers are all in cubic feet which is almost useless because I don't pile things to my ceiling and if I'm transporting alot of stuff, it's almost always big, non-rearangable things.

I can't seem to find a nice little diagram about dimensions.

But since you mentioned it, my SW2 has 25/58 cubic feet (seats up, seats down), the prius has 14.4/44? (I can't find the number now, but I know I've seen it) and the mazda5 has 44/70.9 but something stupidly small with all three rows of seats.

Bah, take all those numbers with a grain of salt. I can't acutally figure out a "standard" way of messuring anything. One review claimed that the mazda only had 44 with both back rows folded, but mazda says otherwise.

My first reaction to the prius was also, that you can't possibly haul stuff in it. Then I remembered that Hobbit has pictures of how much stuff he's managed to get into his. Of course, you'll still want to measure if you have specific drums you're worried about hauling.

I found that page while reasearching cars, then couldn't find it again when I was looking for it. I failed to notice it was by an acquaintance.

It feels to me that you've reached the point where you really need to just go and see these cars in person. You may need to do more research after that, but just go and see how big the space feels to you. Or you can just measure stuff yourself when you are there. If you've already done that please just disregard the comment,but it doesn't sound like you have.

You have to go and crawl around the cars to really know if it matters. When we were looking at cars, we ruled some our because abce is tall and the ceiling might have been tall in the middle, but started sloping in the wrong place, so he felt like he was about to be squashed when he was sitting in the seat. It might be worth taking a tape measure to stuff you want to moe regularly. Also remember to check out how easy it is to access various storage spaces, back seats you might use as storage space, etc. in terms of being able to get things in and out. Also. sometimes, when you're getting groceries, for example, more smaller spaces may be good so they don't slosh around. If you're moving drums or lumber or furniture, on the other hand, one large space is probably much more useful. How flexible/configurable is the space in each vehicle?

All of those are design decisions that just won't show up on a chart. Some of them might be in the text of reviews, such as Consumer Reports does. Still, I would recommend crawling around the cars. If you're in the same city as a car show, definitely go check it out. I know there is one in November-ish in Boston, but maybe there's another one as well I haven't bothered with? Or just go to a dealer and check it out.