Scan a roster of Toyota Prius buyers and you’ll find performers, policymakers and entrepreneurs. After being bowled over by the boldface names — Apple’s Steve Wozniak, Google’s Sergey Brin, earth-conscious artistes from Natalie Portman to Bill Maher — I wonder this: Can’t these people afford a nicer car? Shouldn’t someone as cool as Mark Ruffalo (who cleverly called his Toyota “the Priss”) drive something that’s faster and sleeker than a garden gnome?

The answer, of course, is that famous Prius owners just like driving a 50-mpg hybrid even if they could commute via yacht and helipad. And even for many middle-class converts, the Prius’ $26,000 median price is hardly a burden: Toyota figures the average Prius household pulls in nearly $83,000 a year, which is rather high for an economy car.

Those figures help to illuminate Toyota’s logic behind the 2011 Lexus CT200h. Is this deluxe hybrid hatchback a better car than the Prius? You bet. Is it really worth an extra $7,000 or $8,000? For a bargain hunter, no. But for a certain well-heeled, light-footed buyer, the Lexus should be a painless stretch.

The CT200h won’t quite match the Prius’ mileage, but at a robust 44 mpg in my own combined city and highway driving, it’s close enough. And despite its pokey Prius-based hybrid system, the Lexus gives people good reasons to move up. The CT is quieter, more luxurious, and feels more solidly put together. And the Lexus’ distinctive design, inside and out, may attract two types of customers: bored Prius owners who want something new, and people who crave high mileage but wouldn’t be caught dead in a Prius, for either its econobox vibe or its granola image.

On the outside

The CT200h is the latest offshoot of Toyota’s MC platform, the versatile foundation for an army of models including the Prius, the Corolla and Camry sedans, the Scion tC coupe, the Sienna minivan and various crossovers.

To make the body more rigid, Lexus bolts on a pair of “lateral performance dampers,” an industry first designed with Yamaha. Instead of a conventional solid link between suspension components — such as a strut-tower brace that spans the left and right shock absorbers — Lexus connects them with a hydraulic mount that limits body roll in turns and also quells vibrations over bumps. As in the Lexus HS250h hybrid sedan, the CT200h adopts a double-wishbone rear suspension, a slicker design than the Prius’ torsion-beam arrangement.

But unlike the homely HS, whose sales have fallen short of expectations, the CT200h is a striking, daringly styled hatchback — a description not often associated with the conservative styling studios of Toyota or Lexus.

The Lexus projects confidence from any angle, from its wind-carved prow to its teardrop roof and the jaunty epaulets of its rear fenders. It also looks appropriately expensive, something that’s not easy for a compact car to pull off. The CT’s rich appearance easily matches the BMW 1 Series or the Audi A3.

On the inside

The dapper interior plays to another Lexus strength, beginning with a banked central control panel that’s clean, eye-catching and ergonomically correct. Lexus’ distinctive Remote Touch control setup, with its gently sloping wrist rest and fingertip-operated joystick, is an intuitive winner. Excellent audio and navigation systems smoothly defend the car’s price premium, but their on-screen graphics reminded me of AOL — a bit stodgy and artless, especially compared with the sophisticated displays in an Audi or a Mercedes-Benz.

The optional leather seats could benefit from a better class of cow, one reminder that this car starts at $29,995. My nearly loaded test car was $36,725.

Lexus says the CT’s multilink rear suspension leaves more room for cargo, but you wouldn’t know it from the stingy space and high load floor. The nickel-metal-hydride battery pack (1.4 kilowatt hours) has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is below the cargo deck. The Lexus could not accommodate even two medium-size roller bags unless the rear seat was folded.

Under the h

ood

The CT200h adopts the Prius’ powertrain: a 1.8-liter, 98-horsepower 4-cylinder engine with an electric motor that raises total output to 134 horsepower. Acceleration is on par with the Prius, with 0-60 mph acceleration in an unhurried 9.8 seconds. But Lexus paid special attention to quelling noise and vibration.

An oversize silver knob switches the Lexus’ throttle response and steering effort among Eco, Normal and Sport modes. There’s also an EV button, which can let the car cruise roughly a mile on electricity alone. But EV operation worked only below 25 mph before the engine automatically fired back up, so it’s useful only in crawling traffic.

But if the Lexus won’t outrun other luxury compacts, it easily outsips them, even the Audi A3 TDI diesel. That Audi usually settles in around 33-34 mpg in combined real-world city and highway driving. The Lexus is rated 43 mpg city, 40 highway, but I did better, averaging 44 over several days of driving.

The difference, should you care, is that those German diesels are decidedly more fun in motion.

My 44-mpg average included trips on clogged freeways and Manhattan streets. Those snarls, increasingly common, quickly wreck the mileage of any car powered strictly by gasoline. But the Lexus returned 47 mpg on one such jaunt, taking advantage of its engine’s start-stop function and its ability to move silently from traffic lights on battery power. The government figures the Lexus will burn just $1,374 a year in gasoline, nearly $400 less than the diesel A3 hatchback and about $700 less than a tiny Mini Cooper.

While the car’s mileage and low emissions are faultless, Lexus’ other pitch is that the handling is sporty. But honestly, any number of more affordable small cars, like the new Ford Focus, Mini Cooper and Volkswagen Golf, feel livelier.

The Lexus does feel more connected to the road than a Prius, but that is faint praise. Using Princess-and-the-Pea math, I’d venture that there are 17 mattresses between you and any road sensation, down from 20 in the Toyota. Turning the silver knob to Sport mode raises the steering effort but does nothing for cornering response, so it’s an entirely artificial effect.

In Sport mode, the driver’s hybrid readout, which helps coach you toward better mileage, is replaced with a tachometer, and the throttle response is quickened. But there’s so little torque available that the Lexus just oozes through turns, with solid control but no sense of playfulness.

If this were any other luxury car, I’d proclaim such a powertrain a deal killer. But the typical buyer of a Lexus hybrid probably wouldn’t floor the gas pedal if a T. Rex were in the rear-view mirror. Keep your foot leashed below half-throttle, and the Lexus feels like an entirely different car, whispering as serenely as a big luxury sedan.

Who is it for?

One question remains: Who is the buyer, and how many are out there? The small-luxury class has grown to include the Volvo C30, in addition to the Audi A3 and BMW 1 Series, but these cars have mostly struggled to carve out a niche. Finding a culprit doesn’t require an advanced degree. All are well over $30,000, and many Americans find that price-to-size ratio out of whack.

Yet the Lexus, I suspect, doesn’t need to impress people interested in conventional small cars. Lexus hopes to sell 1,000 of the luxury hybrids a month, which would equal the sales of the Audi, BMW and Volvo combined.

Some previous Lexus hybrids, like the LS600hL and GS450h sedans, promised to revolutionize hybrids by offering the three-way benefits of luxury, performance and stingy mileage, but succeeded only on the luxury front. The LS, priced up to $120,000, became one of the epic sales failures of recent years.

The CT200h’s claims to sportiness also turn out to be marketing hoopla. Yet this Lexus is a much more legitimate hybrid proposition, because it nails two of the three attributes, with genuine luxury and high mileage.

Roll your eyes when you see the Lexus pinballing through city streets in the TV commercial. But nod your head when you hear that the CT200h is stylish, deluxe and can top 40 mpg even in rush-hour traffic.