Here's the situation.
I'm looking to get my first car.
Found a Scion xB 2006 w/ less than 11,000 miles on it, for about $13k.
Seemed golden to me, especially because I could probably get it for less.
Thing is, the car is a manufacturer buyback.
apparently the xb was sold back to scion (or toyota) because of an "engine hesitation problem", my guess under the lemon law.
I've read a lot on here about the xB having issues with slow reaction time to hitting the accelerator, which, with my best guess, is what the owner had problems with. Test drove it and it seemed fine...

I want your guys opinion on the car... Ever heard of anything like this? should the engine hesitation be a serious red flag? should I not buy a buyback, period?
thanks for your help..

 

don't know what it could be, you should maybe ask the dealership what the problem was, see the service records say. it should have documents of the customers complaints and the procedures that the dealership took to do it.

only thing i can think of is that somebody mentioned something about taking the slack out of the throttle body cable to improve engine responsivness.

but i would not buy it ofr 13 thousand, that is almost the price of a new one, and considering it is 2 years old and has over 10 thousand miles on it, it should be under 10 grand for price. anyway.

 

I don't think the price is that bad (if it weren't a buyback). Retail price on the xB really hasn't dropped much from new for a low mileage, late model used one.

I'd pass unless you can find out exactly what was wrong and what was done to fix it. If nothing else, the car is flagged as a buy back and could be more difficult for you to sell or cause you to get a lower price later. If you do go ahead, I'd knock a lot off the price.

I'm sure it's possible for a consumer to abuse a lemon law to get rid of a car they don't want anymore. I'd be inclined to believe the car had a real problem for Toyota to do a buy back so I'd want to know the details.

 

My 10 month old '06 is offended.

 

Don't buy a manufacturer buy-back! This usually means that the xB was at a dealership, several times and the problem/problems wasn't fixed by the dealer. A seroius problem exists with this xB...LEAVE IT ALONE!
We had an '04 Armada that we couldn't figure what the hell was wrong with it, so NissanUSA bought it back. About a year later, I spoke to a Rep from Nissan and I asked about the Armada and he said to this day, they (Nissan) still couldn't figure out the problem with it!