JUAN CAPDET TIPS BACK IN HIS cushy black chair and, looking out the plate glass window, basks in the sunlight that bounces off the brand-new cars at Santa Monica Toyota. His office is reminiscent of a movie star's bungalow, but instead of a pool out front, he has a car lot. "Before I was a car dealer, I was on my country's Olympic team," he says. A pistol shooter, he used to order equipment for Spain's rifle team, then he started selling it. Now he recognizes that his gifts in fact lie in sales, specifically in sales of the Toyota Prius.

More Priuses are sold at Santa Monica Toyota than at any other dealership in the country, and Capdet is the top salesman of the model. Toyota manufactures 40,000 of the car each year. Unlike the electric vehicles of a few years back, the Prius is a hybrid; the gas engine kicks in to supplement the electricity, so no charging is necessary.

Toyota doesn't advertise the car, which costs about $20,000, but the well-known behind-the-wheel activists who drive it (Calista Flockhart, David Duchovny, Cameron Diaz, Pierce Brosnan--the list is long) provide a deluge of Hollywood endorsements that no advertiser could afford. "All my business is referrals, by appointment only," Capdet says. "For example, Jackson Browne referred Carole King, who referred Barry and Cynthia Mann. Do you know the Manns? They are the songwriters behind great hits. Have you heard of 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' and 'Sometimes When We Touch'?" When Capdet delivered the Prius to the Manns, they gave him a CD. He pulls it out and offers to play it.

To maintain his ranking as the number one Prius salesman, Capdet keeps on hand a shiny energy consumption chart and a secret stash of the coveted Prius brochures. Capdet is a value-added kind of guy For example, after he sold four Priuses to Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David, he coached him for an hour to prepare David for his role as a car dealer on the show. Another celebrity complained that he was getting bad mileage, so Capdet gave him a private driving lesson. It turned out that the star had his defroster on, which activates the air-conditioning and uses up energy. "He said, 'Oh, I thought it was amazing that it was so hot outside and my car was so cool,'" Capdet recalls.

Now that movie stars drive Priuses, the waiting list for the car at Santa Monica Toyota is about 20 people long at any given time. The number two Prius salesman, Frank Benitez, says that some Hollywood types buy over the phone, without seeing the car, and then pay cash (Rob Reiner). Many buy three cars at a time (Leonardo DiCaprio). Many don't buy the car at all; their production company does. One celebrity said, "I'll take the car," and he did: no money, no signature, just the name of his business manager, who then tried to get the Prius for free. When Benitez called to complain to the celebrity, who at this point had been driving the car for weeks, the celebrity said, "Don't worry, he's just trying to be tough so that it looks like he actually does something for me." Benitez puts up with a lot from these stars, and not just because he is a patient salesman. He is also an actor, and the Prius buyers get him roles. This is not uncommon; the new sales guy at the corner desk had a small part on General Hospital.

Michael Norris, the dealership's general manager, says there are those celebrities who buy the Prius, park it in front of their house, and sneak out the alley in their Lincoln Navigator. At this year's Academy Awards, there was even a swapping station a few blocks from the red carpet where stars could ditch their gas-guzzling limos for a hybrid. "But some people are really serious about the Prius," he says. "Lindsay Wagner bought one here even though she's the spokesperson for Ford. And Olivia Newton-John's only car is a Prius. God, she looks awesome, just like she looked in Grease but a little older."

The comedian Bill Maher is, perhaps, the most passionate of the Prius pushers. "Driving a hybrid is about terrorism and the environment, our number one and two issues," he said the other day. "This is about self-preservation."

Despite all these celebrities driving around in the Prius, the car hasn't generated nearly as much enthusiasm from the general public, especially the young people. So the true arrival of the Prius to Hollywood "It" car status depends on the whims of the notoriously picky 18-to-34 crowd. A college kid taking a look at the hybrid one recent afternoon dismissively said, "It's really admirable that people with six cars make one a Prius." Even with snarky customers like these, Santa Monica Toyota is stalking dealers across the country for extra Priuses. A load of ten is on its way from Boston. (Don't get excited. They're spoken for.)

Toyota plans to start marketing the Prius on MTV, and Honda has come out with a Civic hybrid that promises to meet the cuteness expectations of the younger crowd. Meanwhile, the Prius might be the best equalizer since Botox went mainstream: If everyone can afford the car that gives that Mercedes-quality image, then we won't be able to differentiate people by their cars any better than we are able to differentiate them by their forehead wrinkles; and if everyone bought a hybrid, we could no longer define ourselves by our cars, and the whole city would be up for grabs.