Yahoo News How Hollywood Turned the Humble Prius Into an “It” Car — and Helped Launch a Green Revolution
If the Toyota Prius, the world’s first modern hybrid car, had landed with a thud, we’d be living in a different world. Carmakers would have thought twice before launching rival models. And we’d have less reason for hope in the battle against rising temperatures. That it instead proved a hit is thanks in no small part to Hollywood — and Deborah Levin.
In 2000, when Levin took over as CEO of the Environmental Media Association (EMA), she was uncertain. “I had never done nonprofits. I didn’t know anything about the environment. I knew nothing. I sort of fell into this because I was incredibly inspired by the mission,” Levin tells The Hollywood Reporter. The organization, founded in 1989, was known for its advocacy of green initiatives and environmentally themed entertainment, leveraging Hollywood’s social influence to change industry and consumer behavior. Levin needed a transformative new campaign.
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At an event in 2001, she met Ed LaRocque, who worked for Toyota, marketing its recently released alternative fuel vehicle, the Prius. He explained the novel concept of the hybrid: The car’s battery stored and discharged energy to an electric motor, supplementing the output of an onboard gas engine. He told Levin about the car’s startling fuel efficiency — 48 mpg, more than twice that of an average vehicle. Then he showed her the vehicle: a stubby, notch-backed, windswept lump. A plan emerged at once.
“I thought, ‘This car is so specific looking, it doesn’t look like anything else. And you don’t have to do anything to reap the benefits, you’re just buying gas half the amount of time. And everyone who sees you in it will know that you care about the environment,’” Levin says. “I said to him, ‘I think I can get Hollywood to love this car.’”
LaRocque and Levin set up ride-and-drive events, where industry notables would have a chance to get behind the wheel of the Prius. The reception was surprisingly positive. Many celebrities, already compelled by environmental issues and reeling from America’s oil-based military entanglements in the Middle East, saw the car as a practical means by which to make an impact. Moreover, the vehicle’s unique shape meant that drivers would earn instant badge value for being seen in one. And if you weren’t driving one, everyone would know that, as well.
“My mission was, we can make the car so cool that if you didn’t buy it, you didn’t care about the environment,” Levin says, laughing about using “Jewish guilt” to wield influence. Early adopters included Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Ed Begley Jr. Other notables followed, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Cameron Diaz, Larry David, George Clooney, Blythe Danner, Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“I got everyone from Entourage cars,” Levin says. “And it was important to get younger celebrities, too. Lance Bass helped a lot, and Nicole Richie.” Levin wasn’t concerned about their environmental bona fides. “I didn’t care if they did it just to be cool,” she says. “Because as they were doing it, they were modeling better behaviors.”
Levin encouraged the stars to drive their Priuses around — on errands, to meetings, to the set and, eventually, to awards shows. She called contacts in the entertainment press to ensure their activities were documented, along with their Toyotas. “We worked with the paparazzi, making sure that they would shoot, like, Cameron Diaz bringing her canvas bag out of a market and getting into a Prius.”
These celebrities did not receive their cars gratis. “I did not give any cars away. So everybody did purchase the car,” Levin says. Since most states require new car sales to be handled by a franchise dealership, she needed a partner. She found an avid ally in Mike Sullivan, a second-generation retailer who owns Toyota of Hollywood and Toyota of Santa Monica, along with a dozen other outlets, all under his LACarGUY banner.
Sullivan was happy to find any way to move Priuses. “We were all looking for a home for this car, as it was peculiar looking,” he says. “Debbie approached me and said, ‘There’s a bunch of very legitimate environmentalists, people who separate their trash and turn out their lights, but they want to learn what they can do to do better.’” Sullivan not only saw a market, he saw a means to better automakers’ reputations. “How can we take what was really a very dirty industry at the time, and make it better?” he says.
The car became a must-have accessory in Hollywood, almost a fetish object. “All these people were calling me to get the car because they knew about our campaigns.” But its limited national appeal meant that supply from the factory was scarce. Wait-lists developed. “Those were my lists!” Levin says.
To meet demand, Sullivan turned to dealers across America, each of whom had a small allotment of Priuses. These colleagues were happy to get this dead stock off their lots. “I was buying them all over the country, from dealerships, at window sticker, bringing them in by the truckload, and reselling them in my two stores,” Sullivan says. He’d soon tripled monthly sales at his Toyota outlets, and 60 percent of the cars sold were Priuses. “So in about a year, I became the largest hybrid dealer in the world,” he says.
The Prius’ must-have status spread throughout the industry, for producers, directors, even agents. “At CAA, all the black BMWs were replaced by black Priuses,” Levin says. Soon after, demand began to increase nationwide. “We were able to let that translate to middle America,” Sullivan says. “It was just the star power at work.”
Levin concurs. “Mary Nickerson, who was in alternative fuel marketing for Toyota, was quoted in Forbes saying that EMA provided Toyota a 20 percent sales spike in the launching of the Prius, because Hollywood was such an important market for them. But also because that was what influenced a global market for this car,” she says. Sales figures demonstrate this correlation. In 2000, just over 5,500 Priuses were sold in the US. By 2005, after years of EMA’s campaign, this number was over 100,000. By 2007, it was approaching 200,000.
Without the success of the Prius — and without Hollywood getting onboard, it may not have happened. Further forays into electrification may not have occurred. The Prius thus acted as a kind of gateway drug. “We’ve kind of changed to where hybrids are normal. Every car in the Toyota lineup is now available as a hybrid, and some are only hybrid. Our trucks are hybrids, our big Sequoia SUV is hybrid,” Sullivan says.
“The Prius opened the door to the masses, for electrification in general,” he adds. “This road to electrification started in 2000. And a quirky little car embraced by Hollywood and groups like EMA was at the start of the parade.”
This story first appeared in the June 2024 Sustainability issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to see the rest of the issue.
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