2004 Scion xB in Albany

We've all voted," announced Lovely Rita, Queen of the Fourth Avenue and William Street parking garage. "It looks awful." Yvonne of the night shift was nicer. "So you got the Vault today, eh?" she wisecracked.

Yes, the Scion xB looks different. The Vault. The Paddy Wagon. The Toaster. The Refrigerator. We heard it all. To see an xB on the roll is to stare. Ours attracted attention like the villainous Magneto waving his magic fingers around in a ball-bearing factory. Nicole Lazarus, our assistant art director, put it best when she wrote in our test car's logbook, "If you're ever feeling lonely, take the xB."

You'd think the earlier Honda Element would have blazed a tiny path of boxy-car consciousness across America, but no. Junior high preteens, oldsters, "tough guys in Dodge Rams"-the logbook listed them on every page-all wanted to know what a Scion xB was. The problem was we couldn't tell them. We called the xB "something distinct," which is why we decided it was outselling the more prosaic xA by a margin of two to one, a big surprise to Toyota. We called it "something basic, remarkably rewrapped in unique packaging, like new fridge-packs of Coke." We described it as "a Beetle for our generation." We decided that it wasn't a minivan or an SUV but "an odd little box."

We took some time getting used to our xB, keeping it close to Ann Arbor for the first three months, discovering early that the small 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine "gets the job done," in senior editor Joe Lorio's words, "but you need all of it." This is not unlike most Toyotas: just enough power (108 hp), just enough pull, and admirable fuel economy.... Read full article