The 2011 Scion xB: The Extreme Box

It’s a box; that’s about all that runs through your head when you first see it. Gleaming under January’s delinquent sun, resplendent in its geometric glory, adorned with various TRD go-fast goodies and freshly detailed, there was absolutely no mistake to be made: it’s a box.

And, not surprisingly, I struggled to be anything but indifferent over this fact. It is, after all, the most common shape mankind has come to encounter. Your cereal comes in one, your take-out sushi in another, your music from another, and you might well be placed in one when you die. Heck, you’re staring at one right now… and that very box is displaying within it, other boxes. In fact, if you’re artful with the mouse and have nothing better to do (or are at work) you can readily recreate a Scion xB’s silhouette with nothing more than your Windows desktop. Of course, if you want to replicate the car’s front fascia, you’ll need a couple other ingredients, namely a chipmunk and a handful of nuts. Hold onto the chipmunk, feed it the nuts, watch its cheeks swell, and repeat. Yes indeed, it’s a shoebox on wheels... with a pair of overstuffed chipmunk cheeks as its sole concession to style.

But perhaps I’m being too critical. This is, after all, one of Scion’s best selling models, historically. And for good reason: it’s practical. Insanely so, in fact. Apparently being so perfectly, geometrically unimaginative pays dividends on the interior, where the slab-sided sheetmetal provides the maximum amount of interior room possible. Sliding into the low-slung driver’s seat, it’s a little disconcerting how far away everything else is; an illusion that’s helped by the centre-mounted gauge cluster and subsequently low dashboard. The control cluster and radio occupy similarly central positions, and both are quite easy to use. In a nod to the brand’s youthful heritage and target market, Scion has opted to fit their vehicles with aftermarket stereos, and the Alpine premium unit fitted to my test vehicle certainly seemed at home within the car’s futuristic confines. However, I did have one issue with the stereo: namely its inactive GPS button. Apparently requiring an additional Alpine navigation unit’s installation, it seems almost cruel to fit the car with a button teasing of further, but unavailable, features... or perhaps I'm nit-picking.

Then again, maybe complaining about the lack of navigation isn’t nit-picking when it’s in the context of a car that makes reading street signs as difficult as this. With a somewhat rearward seating position and the bunker-like slit windows that have become popular since Chrysler’s pillbox-on-wheels debuted a few years ago, seeing anything at an altitude of a dozen or so feet off the ground in nigh impossible from the Scion’s driver’s seat. You quickly transition to looking at the red lights on either side of an intersection, but the tunnel-vision effect never truly wears off, and it can wear on you when you end up inevitably stuck in hectic downtown traffic. Furthermore, the same stalwart c-pillars that thwarted rearward vision in the xD make a reappearance here in what one can only hope is a nod to unibody strength and crash safety (both xD and xB are based upon the same chassis). However, once you get a little bit of open space, you find yourself breathing easier, and it isn’t long before the xB starts to show a little bit of its relaxed character. The ride, although feeling nearly devoid of body roll, is supple enough, and the seats are, like so many other economy cars', ridiculously comfortable. The drivetrain sometimes comes across as a little wheezy in the cut and thrust of city traffic, but overall, it’s got long enough legs for the intermediate-length highway jaunts that are a part of so many Canadians' commutes. The steering is very light when initially moved off centre, but weights up as you keep turning in, and subsequently works divinely in almost all settings. As with the xD, traction was still at a premium, albeit less of one, although road conditions and snow tires conspired against reaching any sort of fully formed conclusion as to the bento box’s handling.

Overall the xB is, much like the xD I drove a week prior, starting to feel its age. And although Honda may have canceled the boxy Element that birthed this whole market segment, Nissan has come to the plate in a big way that’s both younger and quirkier than the Scion… but that might just prove to be a blessing in disguise for the xB. Intended to capture the young market shopping for their first or perhaps second car, Scion executives were quite surprised to discover that some of their models were being snapped up by a surprising number of senior citizens. Apparently enjoying the car’s low, retirement-income-friendly price tag, hip-replacement-friendly ingress and egress, and antiquing-friendly cargo capacity, seniors flocked to the xB in numbers that would leave Nissan cube salesmen green with envy. And although the shag-carpeting equipped cube does benefit from a few more years worth of technology and is, for the most part, the better vehicle for it, there’s still something to be said for that most basic of shapes: the box.