Fun and Practical

Update: I've now had the car nearly a year and have driven it 8,000 miles. Still love it. The only thing I didn't mention before is that I wish I could turn off the "weight detector" in the front passenger seat. If you put an item that weighs more than around 10 pounds on the seat, then the seat belt alarm will go off while you're driving.

I should perhaps preface my review by saying that I'm not all that knowledgeable about cars and haven't driven very many late model vehicles, so I don't have a lot to compare it to.

I'll also mention that I'm definitely not part of the target market for this car. I'm a 37-year-old mom - not a young hipster! The car's styling appealed to me, but the real appealing aspects of the car for me are the interior space, the manufacturer, and the price. Scion uses a mono-spec and fixed price set up for these vehicles, which was also very appealing to me. The price is the same at any dealer and there is no negotiating. There are no options for the vehicle other than the automatic transmission. Scion also offers an alarm, stereo upgrade, navigation system, and various other items that are primarily cosmetic, like floor mats, interior lighting, door sills, alloy wheels, etc. The xB comes in six colors - black, blackberry, silver, white, dark blue, and a light teal. Three choices are available for the wheel covers. When I purchased the vehicle, I found that the dealer wanted me in and out as quickly as possible and did not let me know about the wheel cover choices and stereo upgrade - but then before I took the vehicle they had me sign a checklist from Toyota saying that they had discussed these options. The dealer had also installed a third party alarm on the vehicle and didn't make it clear to me that it was from a third party - it was also $200 more than the Scion alarm. A friend of mine had the same exact experience when purchasing a new xB from another dealer - so this is worth looking out for when you shop for the car.

I've owned my xB for about two months now and have driven it about 1,800 miles. I'm still in love with the car. I have the blackberry crush color, which seems more brown to me than any actual berry color, with a manual transmission. I find the car lots of fun to drive - no problems with acceleration or passing. Sometimes I find myself oversteering it a little bit - but that's probably just because the car I last drove was a VW van without power steering. The brakes are very responsive. The engine is pretty quiet (although the transmission is a little whiny in first and second gears) and there's not a lot of road noise. There is some - but it's still quieter than I would expect from such a cheap car. The xB definitely lacks that tinny, econobox feel that one often finds in small, inexpensive cars (including the first generation xB).

The suspension is pretty bumpy and sometimes feels a bit like a boat, though I don't mind it too much. I've noticed that I can feel a tilt to the car whenever I'm on a road that's not completely flat (by this I mean tilted on an angle). In some cases, there are streets I've driven on for 15 years in lots of different cars and I'd never noticed that they weren't flat until now.

The manual transmission seems just fine, although it took me longer to adjust to this transmission and be able to shift it smoothly than any other manual I've driven. I'm not sure what made it more difficult. I love the position of the gear shifter in this car. I've read reviews - particularly of the automatic - that said it's easy for the driver to accidentally knock the shifter out of position while operating the radio, but this has never happened to me. I've never come close to hitting it by accident - but I do mostly use the steering wheel controls for the stereo rather than the ones on the head unit.

The estimated MPG for the car is 22/28 - I believe that it's the same for both transmissions. I've been getting 24-26/mpg and I do at least 80% city driving - that's the number that I get from the car's computer. When I have done my own math, I get about 1-2 more MPG. I don't know enough about how the computer works in terms of determining its accuracy, but it does seem to underestimate the amount of fuel in the tank. There is a setting that displays the number of miles you can drive with your remaining fuel, and a couple of times it's gone down to only 3 or 4 miles, but then it only takes ten gallons to fill the tank, which has a 14 gallon capacity.

The car has a gigantic blind spot due to the huge back pillars, and this is a source of some frustration for me. It's gotten easier with time - and has mostly involved changing my former habit of looking first in the mirror, then out the window before changing lanes. In this car, I look out the window first, then look in the mirror to check the blind spot created by the pillars. But in a few situations, it really is impossible to get an adequate view to merge or change lanes because of the pillar.

The interior of the car feels very spacious. I'm a fairly large person and sometimes have a fairly large person in the passenger seat next to me and we both feel like we have plenty of space. I've never sat in the rear seats, but I have a child who sits there, and there seems to be plenty of legroom, even when the front seats are back as far as they go. I sometimes ride in a Honda CR-V, and the Xb has much more space in the back seat. In the CR-V, I have to slide the front seat most of the way forward so that my six-year-old daughter can have enough room behind me. I can't imagine what it would be like for adults in that back seat!

Speaking of the seats, they're quite ugly and cheap looking, but surprising comfortable - very firm without being too stiff. The seat height adjuster on the driver's side is a nice touch. The driver's seat has a folding armrest, but it is too short, too high, and too narrow. It has a very cheap look and feel to it.

I like the styling of the car's interior, but it does look a little cheap in some places. The plastic door handles, for example, seem very flimsy and I get the feeling that they won't last as long as the engine will. The textured plastic surfaces also seem to have a tendency to scratch easily - I've noticed this around the ignition. The scratches are white, so they look awful. I smoke in the car, and stray ashes that get on the dashboard get embedded into the textured pattern and can't be wiped away without water. The seats also have textured fabric, and every tiny little crumb that gets on them seems to be noticeable and, again, they get caught in the fabric and need to be vacuumed out. If I try to brush them onto the floor with my hand, they simply don't move.

It seems to me that the front seat of the car could have more storage. There is a cute storage bin near the driver's window that can hold a cell phone or other small items. The center console offers two drink holders plus a spot for an ipod or other small item, along with an enclosed bin that is fairly small. It could hold a pile of CDs, perhaps. There is also a sort of storage tray above the glove box. The front doors have small map holders and large drink holders that will hold a liter bottle. There's a good sized flat storage area underneath the rear seats, and a covered divided tray for storage in the back cargo area. The rear seat also has four drink holders, including one in each door plus two that fold out from the back of the center console. The enormous back pillars also have storage spaces, but you can only utilize them if you're willing to pay $129 for nets.

Oddly, the hatchback door doesn't unlock with the key (ie - there's no keyhole in it), and it doesn't have a latch up front. You have to use the remote on the key to unlock it. The door opens with a button rather than any kind of handle. It's cool - but it seems like it might not be so durable.

I've read lots of negative feedback about the instrument cluster, but I like it. I think it's attractive (though I'm not crazy about the orange lighting) and easy to read. The fuel and temp gauges are quite a ways out of the driver's line of sight, but the speedometer and tach are easy to see. It was easy to get used to the position of the gauges and I think the good thing about having them there is that I don't have to worry about the steering wheel blocking my view of them, which has been an issue for me in many other cars. The gauges are well lit and the lighting is always turned on. The digital speedometer numbers turn white in direct sunlight and are still very easy to read. The nighttime interior lighting is both attractive and practical - with good lighting in helpful spots like the edges of the cd tray and "pointer" on the heat/ac controls, making everything easy to manage in the dark.

The car includes a multi-function display which shows the time, outdoor temperature, current MPG, average MPG, hours driven, and miles remaining before you'll need to fill up. I wish it also had a compass.

My biggest complaint about the car - if you can believe this - relates to the windshield wipers. They don't have a variable intermittent setting - just low, high, and intermittent (about every three seconds). In many places, this might not be a big deal, but I live in Seattle, where it drizzles for 330 days each year. Sometimes I need a wipe every ten seconds or every one second or every five seconds, so I find that along with my manual shifting, I'm doing quite a bit of manual wiping, as well (ie - hitting the "mist" setting). The additional wiper settings would have been far more useful to me than the pathetic excuse for a rear window wiper on the back of the car. Another weather related issue is the visors - they're terrible and provide no coverage at all to the side windows.

I really like the heater settings on the car - in addition to the standard upper/lower/defrost/defrost & lower vent combinations, there are "in between" settings. So if you set the control on the dot in between the upper and lower vents, the fan will blow through the lower vents while the upper vents are still open and blowing a little bit of hot air. Also, the upper vents turn in a complete circle, so you can point them where ever you like, and they close completely as well.

The car's standard features include cruise control (the control is in an easy-to-manage location just below the wiper control), AC, driver and passenger air bags, side curtain air bags, ABS, vehicle stability control (which can be turned off), a tire pressure monitoring system, power doors/windows, remote entry, a Pioneer CD/radio that plays mp3 and wma files, an iPod input and cable (and the ability to control the ipod through the head unit) and an generic aux input, steering wheel controls for the stereo, and tilt steering (although it has a very limited range). Another nice feature - the front passenger seat has a sensor that detects whether the weight of the passenger is adequate for use of the airbag and turns the airbag off if the passenger is underweight. There is a dashboard light that tells you whether the passenger airbag is on or off. So in a pinch, you can put a child in the front seat.

I find the sound quality of the stereo to be above average - maybe not outstanding, but pretty good. It has three presets that are supposed to be uniquely adapted to the acoustic properties of each Scion vehicle - so you can choose an xB, tC, or xD setting. I don't know how accurate it is - as I prefer the xD setting. There are also three equalizer settings - "natural," "hear," and "feel." And then there is the "Automatic Sound Levelizer," (ASL) which increases and decreases the volume as the vehicle speed (and thus the ambient noise level) changes. This feature can be set to low, medium, or high sensitivity levels. It's a pretty silly feature and the effect is very unnatural. The effect is more pronounced with regular audio CDs than mp3 discs.

Another minor annoyance has been that the car rides pretty low. I have a steep hill leading into my garage, and sometimes the car bottoms out - even when I drive it in at an angle. If you have a similar situation, I'd advise taking a test drive into your driveway!

The car gathers a lot of attention - more than I had anticipated. I find strangers peering in the windows when the car is parked and have even gotten questions about the car by other drivers while waiting at stop lights. It's a little weird!

<b>Update</b>: I've now owned this car for just about 2 years and still love it. Seattle's recent heat wave showed that the AC in this car is a little weak. It was adequate, but I had to keep it on high when the temp was over 90 and the air was cool, but not ice cold. Works out fine in Seattle, but I would probably not be too happy with it if I lived in a hot climate.

I've found that both the interior and exterior are scratch-prone. There is an excessive amount of scratching of the paint under the exterior door handles. I don't have long nails and I don't drive the car all that much - there's really no excuse for the cheap paint job. If I were to buy the car again, I would get a light color that wouldn't show the scratches so much.