Scion’s youthful xB good for grown-ups too

Dan Carney • E-mail

In designing the new, bigger 2008 version of its cult-hit Scion xB subcompact cube, Toyota took a leaf out of General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz’s book.

In “Guts,” which he wrote after his departure from Chrysler in 1998, Lutz outlines his Immutable Laws of Business. Rule No. 1: “The customer is not always right.” That may sound heretical in this age of customer satisfaction, but consider this passage:

“Most people buy subcompacts because that is what they can afford, not because they have some warped desire to sit with their knees up around their chest,” Lutz wrote. “Thus, when asked what they’d like changed about their cars, it’s axiomatic that subcompact owners would like them bigger.”

Lutz even prescribed how much bigger. The number he named — four inches longer in wheelbase — is exactly the amount Toyota has stretched its new Scion xB, even at a time when consumers are showing increased interest in smaller cars.

Why? Because just as Lutz said they would nearly a decade ago, although xB owners love their cars, they want then to be just a little bit bigger explains Steve Haag, Scion’s corporate manager.

Stretching the xB has moved it up a class — from a subcompact to a compact car by EPA standards — and that doesn’t make it a bad car. It’s actually a very good car that is likely to have much broader appeal than its iconoclastic predecessor, but it seems less likely than the old car to serve its intended purpose.

Scion is Toyota’s effort to attract younger car buyers. The Toyota brand is so entrenched with retirement-age baby boomers that the company’s average customer age is looking more like Buick’s. Scion has successfully attracted younger customers, and Haag says Toyota genuinely prefers to sell fewer Scions, as long as they help pull a new generation of customers into Toyota’s camp.

Toyota The xB’s price mandates hard, cheap surfaces everywhere, but at least those cheap surfaces are textured and have a matte finish.

In this regard, Scion’s first three models — the xA, the xB and especially the tC coupe with its average customer age of 25 — have succeeded marvelously. By contrast, Honda’s similarly developed Element SUV failed in this mission, attracting older customers who appreciated its practicality and who might have thought its unorthodox styling made them look young and hip.

By making the new xB a larger, more comfortable, more expensive and more practical car, Scion runs the risk of seeing the average age of its buyers climb as quickly as their cholesterol numbers. The danger is that the intended twenty-something hipster buyers will soon see Scions piloted by gray-hairs on every corner.

Practical-minded customers flock to the Scion xB because it’s a great car at a great price. It employs the versatile small wagon/four-door hatchback body style that packs the most interior space in the least exterior space, and it’s large enough for adults with families to look at it as a fuel-efficient family car instead of a small wagon or SUV.

And while the xB’s increased length means it’s less appealing to drivers faced with the challenges of urban parking, it will be more appealing to older suburbanites wanting to pack in their families.

The xB maintains its cubist exterior design, but the new version sports beveled corners where the old car featured the sheer facets of a cut diamond. These softened edges and integrated bumpers give the new car a fresher, sleeker appearance. Gone is the old car’s petulant lower lip of a front bumper, but the hugely stretched length and extended front and rear overhangs imbalance the car’s proportions, giving it a bit of a dachshund look.

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