Road Test
What you see here, young people, is yet another manifestation of Toyota's reaching out to you. We're talking to all you echo-booming Net-Gen millennials who think a Toyota badge equates with a paunch, TV golf, and crab-grass anxiety. Never mind Toyota's enviable car-biz record for value and durability. To you, Dad's Camry or Mom's Sienna is the automotive equivalent of sensible shoes, and the antithesis of body piercing.
This generational schism is thoroughly traditional. Kids reject the styles and values of their parents because nothing their parents espouse could possibly be cool, and also because kids are essentially immortal: Getting old couldn't possibly happen to me. Not exactly new, although the widespread use of one's skin for artistic self-expression is new, at least in this country.
Toyota doesn't necessarily endorse the self-mutilation that passes for personal adornment today, but whatever young people do to their bodies-nose rings, tongue studs, tattoos-is okay by the company's marketers, provided those young bodies transport themselves in Toyota products. But that's not happening. At least not to the extent Toyota would like.
Toyota Division general manager Don Esmond says, "Toyota's future success lies in its appeal to young buyers looking for something new, different, and affordable." Esmond said that four years ago during the presentation of a new car designed to address the "new, different, affordable" imperative.
That car was called the Echo. And it flopped. Sales fell short of the 50,000 annual target, but the real failure was demographic. Instead of 20-somethings, the Echo attracted adults-median age 45 years, 67-percent women, 47-percent married, with a median income of $42,400. Toyota's response was a two-fold strategy: repackage and rename. And the Scion brand was born.
Regular readers already know Scions come in two shapes, the less expensive xA, and the bigger xB. Measured against the current U.S. traffic mix, they certainly meet the "different" criterion, particularly the xB, which looks like a toolshed on wheels. They also qualify as eminently affordable, at least in terms of base price. The xA starts at $12,965, the bigger xB at $14,165.
As to the "new" part, to borrow from the biblical, it's old wine in new skins. The sheetmetal is clearly unlike anything in Toyota's U.S. portfolio, but it surrounds hardware that is, as they say, proven, thanks to the Echo. Yup, it's the same stuff-same bones, essentially, and same powertrains: Toyota's thrifty little 1NZ-FE 1.5-liter DOHC 16-valve four mated to a five-speed manual (standard) or four-speed automatic ($800). The "essential" bones caveat applies to the xB, which has 5.1 more inches of wheelbase (98.4 versus 93.3), although front and rear track dimensions are the same as the xA's at 57.3 and 56.3 inches. So is the suspension-front struts, trailing arms and twist-beam axle rear, with front and rear anti-roll bars (Echos make do with a front bar only).
