More Alaska new-car buyers are choosing to go easy on the gas.

Two years ago this summer, Fairbanks composer John Luther Adams decided to buy a Toyota Prius, the popular gas-electric hatchback sedan that manages to get about 50 miles per gallon on the highway. Except it wasn't that popular back then. At least not in Fairbanks. When he visited the local Toyota dealer in 2004, Adams says, he was told it didn't carry Priuses. The salesman's tone suggested it shouldn't. "He said, 'Oh, you know, it's not for Alaskan winters,' " Adams recalls.