Rockin’ Like a Soccer Mom: My Weekend with the Scion xB

It’s hard to give a true review of a car when you only have it for a weekend—a lot of judgment is purely speculative—but it’s enough time to get a feeling  for the good, the bad,the ugly and to project  your hopes and dreams onto the vehicle.  In this case, the xB resonated with me as a car you’d dig if you had a couple of kids and a weekend full of time spent with them in an enclosed space (or if you had a band and a bunch of equipment, but I’ve never met anyone in a band with enough cash to buy a dependable car, so there’s that).  After recruiting my husband and some of our close friends to stand in for teenagers, we headed out to the LA County Fair in Pomona to test my theories.

Pulling through the alley to turn onto Venice Blvd, I gave the 2013 Scion xB a little mental kick.  It’s a big car, more bread truck than SUV and it’s much wider than my daily driver, a Mazda 3 hatchback, with an acceleration to braking ratio that was testing my patience.  The gas pedal on the automatic is a wee bit touchy, particularly for someone used to a manual tranny and I hadn’t quite adjusted to the hiccup between glide and go. That same hiccup had caused some snide comments from the peanut gallery in the roomy backseat. The fact that I didn’t actually own the bright red toaster was the only thing that kept me from pulling the classic “Some Kind of Wonderful” move of slamming on the brakes and making a bunch of heads bounce off the seats in front of them.  (I don’t advocate this approach to backseat driving, I’m just saying it’s a classic for a reason).

Once we got onto the freeway, the Scion shook off it’s uncertainty and settled into a breezy forward pace that really gave me a sense of why you’d buy a car that seems stuck half way between the bulk of the Benz G-Class or Nissan Pathfinder and a traditional hatchback.  The 2.4L engine has some serious zip, with 158 HP @ 6000 RPM and 162 lb-ft of torque. With a 40 mile drive in front of us in ball-meltingly hot weather, I was thrilled to book it down the highway in full a/c’d glory.  The adjustable steering wheel is a little small for the car, but the volume and channel controls on it made up for that fact.

The roominess of the car proved to be the expected selling point – four adults fit comfortably, with all of our various stuff for the LA County Fair in the back (sunscreen, water, more sunscreen, hats, sweaters, a change of shoes, a couple of purses, everyone’s various drinks from 7-11, the cat litter I picked up on the way).  Later, to really test the load-bearing capability (and to recreate the experience of my actual car), we added in a collection of random items with the seats folded flat (a guitar, a person, a set of golf clubs, another person, the sword I balance on my head when I belly dance, a few backpacks – all things I’ve transported in my own car). I can say for certain that I’d rather move crap in the xB than in either of our current vehicles.

We measured the amount of room in the back with the tools we had at hand.

Of premium importance to me in a car are: a) speed  b) stopping  c)sound system d) suspension and e)style.  The Scion does have speed, and has a decent suspension – which we tested thoroughly on Southern California’s adventures in highway maintenance and drunk-bumps.  It also does well in the stopping department – the ABS certainly thinks for you the way it was designed to (I grow more confident with ABS each time I experiment with it, but damn if it doesn’t still freak me out). Its ventilated front disc brakes and solid rear discs are dependable and steady, slowing down the xB with a spryness  in unpredictable weekend traffic when it seems like no one sees the flash of brake light in front of them until the last possible minute.

I figured out the sound system before I went anywhere (unlike the rest of the staff, I decided to read the manual to hook up the Bluetooth) and it worked perfectly, allowing me to stream music, podcasts, audio books, etc through the snazzy Pioneer system.  To be frank, a rockin’ sound system, decent gas mileage, and a comfortable cradle for my backside are far more important in the urban jungle than maneuverability and pick-up. Although, the xB exemplifies plenty of both  – the latter slightly more than the former.

By the time we got to the Fair, the xB had provided an oasis of cool calm, centering us before we hit the blistering pavement and the throngs of teenagers lacking a strong sense of their personal space vs my person space.  It proved an equal sanctuary when we returned – sunburned and cranky with sour stomachs from the fried foods, and fried nerves.  Heading back out into the dark Pomona night, I discovered my first true issue with the xB – the centered dash.  It’s weirdly distracting to have all of your information in the middle of the dashboard instead of in front of the steering wheel. Whether one might get used to this or not, I can’t say. But it made the somewhat limited visibility created by the large front area behind the wheel and the small front windshield area more prominent.  I really didn’t want to get too close to any other cars – my blind spots seemed blinder and the room I was taking up on the road somehow lesser.  I was just as broad as before, but lower, less prominent in a sea of fast, angry drivers trying to get back to the city.  I blame some of this on exhaustion, but some is the not quite SUVness of the xB.  Without the agility of a smaller car or the heft of a bigger one, the Scion got lost in the throngs of traffic.

Which brings us to style.  The xB is definitely its own vehicle – engaging and toastery, it’s not an offensive shape, but neither is the latest model a particularly innovative design. The original xB made you stop and stare and think – huh, what is that?  These days, it’s hard to tell the difference between the xB, and its direct competition:  the Nissan Cube and the Kia Soul.  The whole line has always been marketed as vehicles designed for customization, and I’m sure that may appeal to some– the roomy interior and good acoustics suggest it’d be fun to amp up the stereo and play around with pleather – but on a practical level, that’s not what I see the car being used for.  I see it as a great daily driver to haul kids and bikes and surf boards and that arm chair from around the corner that I couldn’t resist buying some Saturday morning. It’s a car I’d give to the kids to keep them safe, while denying them post-10 p.m. driving privileges. It’s cool enough for school, but not so cool they’ll be dragging it down Lincoln. Fast and reliable, but safe and a little staid.

Ultimately, I found that when I gave the car back to the rest of the team on Monday I missed the upright seating, the excitable acceleration, and the sheer friendly satisfaction of the xB.  It’s a happy, boxy, loveable car that’s great for a city like LA which requires a lot of commitment to the road from its residents.  But for me, it also offered a lot of the unsettling aspects of driving an SUV without the aggressive, taller stance that justifies that kind of vehicle.  It actually reminded me a lot of my own driving experience as a teenager.

I spent my adolescent driverhood switching between my mom’s low to the ground ’84 Oldsmobile Firenze, a small sedan that still probably outweighed the xB, and my dad’s Isuzu Trooper – a square, heady monstrosity of a vehicle that thrilled me with its size, and was always in danger of tipping one way or another with a big wind.  Driving the xB was like constantly juggling the two – low to the ground, forward thinking, but with a bulk that made maneuvering more complicated than it had to be. But man those speakers…all I needed was my cassette of The Wall, a bunch of pierced, flannel shirted friends,  and a 6 a.m. forensic meet to get to.

So maybe that’s it – the xB is a teenage dream for grownups. Not the fantasy, but the reality – a safe, muted blank slate to pour hopes, dreams, tunes and treasure into while cruising around with the people you love best.