The engine seems pretty peppy and it rides very well. The seats are comfortable and there is great rear seat room. The high beams are BRIGHT!!!

The mileage so far is not as much as I expected. The interior could be better illuminated. The bridgestone tires seem to give a lot of road noise. Could be quieter.

Only have 1000 miles so far bit very happy with it. Wife loves the elusive blue color. I would buy another one and maybe throw a TRD supercharger on it for fun.

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Honda fit

amazing content for the price - great stereo and seats - tons of back seat room - excellent commuter with a great hiway ride...feels much bigger than it actually is

Windshield... only 20K on my xB and the windshield will need replacement soon...this windshield is a magnet for stones

a great car... I've got the 5 speed and occasionaly I get a little crunch going into second...but I'm training myself to avoid it...just over 30mpg (mostly freeway driving)....I'm 6'5" and this car fits me better than anything I've tested including much more expensive vehicles

Lots of room
decent engine
good styling

WINDSHIELD PROBLEM
Manual transmission grinding

First off, anyone doing a lot of highway driving should NOT by this car, because you'll go broke paying for the many cracked windshields. Other than that, and the grinding of the gears (5th gear synchro probably bad) occasionally, it's a nice car. Roomy, cheap, decent on gas, very customizable. But the windshield problem REALLY SUCKS. I've had mine a year and a half, and am going on my 3rd windshield. I cringe when I hear anything hit the windshield on the freeway.

I don't think you can get a better car for the money I paid. I can fit 5 six foot adults comfotably and not tell from the way it drives. It has the power that the previous model was lacking. I can also fit my mountain bike when I fold down the back seats.
I love the Ipod connetion and control... My commutes are now much better living in LA

I don't like the cheap plastic interior but thats all I can complain about.

Fantastic car for the Money!!!

> quite a roomy interior for a small car
> predictable handling, good build quality (flimsy sheet metal but fit and finish are good and thre are never any squeaks or rattles)
> easy to park in tight spaces

> Uncomfortable seating position that is impossible to remedy
> bland, featureless interior
> crappy sound system (base model)
> Come on, it looks ridiculous

Let me say up front that I never would have bought this car at full price; it's sooooo not my style. However, I got it for practically nothing. I say this just so the reader understands that my evaluation may have a slight negative bias.

Some may like the distinctive appearance. I do not. On the plus side, the boxy shape does allow for an amazingly roomy interior. This is a tiny car yet it fits five people comfortably.

The handling is stiff but reliable and not as top-heavy as you'd think by looking at it. I'm not sure why some of the reviewers here think it's peppy though. It feels pretty sluggish to me. My other car has 200HP, so maybe I'm just used to the speed of my Chevy Malibu. The gas mileage is not that impressive either. About the same as the Chevy, despite the Malibu being a much heavier and faster v6.

So far it has been very reliable (other than the pioneer cd player needing to be replaced under warranty). It fits in very small parking spaces and parallel parking is a breeze. Visibility is good, but that probably comes at the expense of safety. This thing is mostly windows, and I'm sure it would collapse like an empty beer can if it flipped over.

Honestly, this car is so bare-bones there's not much else positive I can say about it.

The worst thing about it is the position of the gas pedal relative to the (non-telescoping) steering wheel. On a vertical axis, they are way too close to each other if I back far enough away from the pedal for comfort I can't reach the steering wheel without hunching forward, but when I find a comfortable position with the wheel, I'm so close to the pedals my knees hit the bottom of the dash. A telescoping steering column would solve this problem. Maybe the newer models have one standard. Again, if I'd walked into a dealership and test drove this car, I never would have bought it for this reason.

Also, the stereo sounds wretched. You can choose from 8 colors for the stereo's digital readout but can't get anything close to a decent tone from it. I guess my priorities are different.

One more thing: A few reviews down someone complained about the ease with which the windshield cracks. I've had this problem as well, though, thankfully, not as bad as that person.

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Never drove a car like this before

Zippy little bugger on a corolla platform with a camry motor.Find me more standard features anywhere near it's price!

It is a 16,000 dollar car and suffers from the fact they could only fit a 25,000 dollar cars worth of stuff into it

I read a review where the writer said the cars performance was lacking.(74mph@6,000rpm in 2nd gear is not too shabby.)The Xb is just above an entry level vehicle in price, not in features.I do agree that the Xb isn't flawless,it's not 50,000 dollars either.With the price of gas rising daily, I'm so happy I'm not in my little gas sucking 4X4 anymore!I use my car for everything the S-10 Blazer did,except I won't be towing like I did.I am so pleased with my purchase.American car manufactures should shut up,stop whining,and use this car as an example of what they should be doing.

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nothing like it except maybe other Toyota products.

Great handling, very surprising. You would think top heavy, but no. Like a go-cart at times. Good MPG's, and $20 to fill from 1/4 tank. I can live with that at these troubled times. interior space. You can live in it! Great passing gear.

thin windshield, peppy but not powerful. Needs about 20-30 more hp out of that tiny 1.5L. Should of went with a 1.8L VVTI.

First off, the car always got my attention since the launch of it in Japan as the Toyota bB. I liked that it was different, and that the dealership sold good quality upgrade parts in their show room that DONT void warranties! Unlike GM (who I still love, but it was time for something new) who sells overpriced upgrades that do little.

I have the window chip. But it happens. What happens is that Toyota made the windshields to thin, BUT if you replace it with a safelite window, it's thicker, and should last!. Just a heads up to you if you get the crack/chip and insurance will cover it.

The interior room is perfect. Although it could use another dome light in the rear. There are cheap options with needing zero electrical experience to do. Just buy a battery operated touch light, and find a nice place to mount it to with some double sticky tape. Problem solved!

Only complaints I have about the car is the tail lights. The clear tails not for me. So what I ended up doing was dis-assembling them, and spraying some Testors Candy Apple Red transparent paint on the inside, taping off a area for the reverse light to shine threw. Very easy to do, for a cost of $4. Can't beat that!

I have every option but a sunroof on mine. Factory alarm, keyless entry, all power options, rear defrost, am/fm/mp3/xm radio, traction control, stability control, 15" ICW wheels, auto transmission with overdrive, cruise control, stainless steel exhaust tip.

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scion xA, Scion tC, Toyota Matrix, Pontiac Vibe, Honda Pilot, Honda Fit, Honda Civic, Chevy Cobalt, Chevy Cavalier, Chevy HHR, Chevy Aveo

Surprising power for it being a 4-Cylinder.

Gas mileage is horrible might be something wrong, going through too much gas.

Needs an additional dome light the one does not give off enough light.

Not enough trunk space.

The xB is a nice little car, with many customizable features, but lacks in several area's.

But mine has been wrecked and took $7000 to fix up. No problems since it has been completed other than the gas mileage.

Overall the car has been a real blast to own. I do get a lot of looks and it handles pretty good. The engine is definitely sluggish, so don’t think you are going to be out there street racing like The Fast and Furious, because it’s just not going to happen. It is very spacious and I haven’t had any complaints about leg room. That is the one thing that surprises people most of the time is the interior space is such a small looking car.

There isn’t a whole lot of storage space in the back since it is a stubby little machine, but it makes up for that with tons of headroom. By adding the premium sound system with the bazooka-tube subwoofer you decrease that space about 35%. If you are just running to the store to pickup a few groceries it has plenty of room for them, but don’t try to hogtie your friend and toss them back there because they just wouldn’t fit. There is also the windshield problem and a sluggish engine to contend with.

The main problem I have with the car is broken windshields. I have looked around online, including epinions, and no one seems to be bringing this little design flaw up. I have owned my xB for about 6 months now and I have had to replace the windshield glass 7 times. That means 7 entirely new pieces of glass have been installed on the car. That is just insane. This week alone I have had to replace the glass 3 times. Each time the glass has cracked/chipped, the first time was 2 days after I purchased the car, I was driving between 40-70mph and have been about 4-10 car lengths away from the person in front of me.

Since I know the glass installers on a first name basis now I asked them about the whole windshield issue, because I have never had a problem like this with any other car I have ever owned. They told me that the Scion xB windshield is the most replaced windshield at their company, the second being the Jeep. They said it wasn’t just my car that was having this problem but all of the xB’s that have been produced. I asked them what made the xB such a problem child and they said the steep grade of the windshield and the fact that the car sits so low.

Knowing that it wasn’t just me having the problem made me feel a little better, but it was still an issue. The funny thing is I have spoken to numerous people now; from owners to people who run the local car wash, and they have all informed me that the windshield problem is quite common. At the car wash the attendant came up first thing and started looking at my windshield and asked me if I had problems with it because his friend who owns an xB does and he sees lots of cracked/chipped windshields roll through his business on the xB’s.

Well, the 7th cracked windshield happened last night on my way home from work and I pretty much just lost it because that was the 3rd new windshield this week that has been busted. I called up the dealership and asked them how much they would give me for a trade-in on the xB and they wanted to know what was wrong. I explained the situation about the windshield and they informed me they had never heard another complaint about it. They tried to blame it on where I live, but I am just not falling for it. Granted, I do understand that in the desert, I live in Arizona, there is going to be more rocks, but how come my wife, my parents, my co-workers, my friends, and everyone else I talk to do not have this problem? We have lived out here 5 years now and my wife has only had a crack once in that entire time. I have only had a chip once in that entire time on another car.

Luckily for me I do have full coverage insurance that has glass protection on it, so I do not have to pay a deductible every time I get a new windshield, but I have at least $3,500-$4,900 in new windshields paid for by my insurance. I am now afraid they are going to raise my rates because of this when it is the car’s design flaw, not mine, that the causes the windshield to keep getting cracked.

Having the xB, which I researched for 2 years before moving on it, has been a real headache. The car was equipped with everything I wanted, but it turns out to be more hassle than it is worth. No one can fix the issue that is causing the chips/cracks because it is a design flaw in the car. What is Toyota going to do about it? Nothing. They would have to design a whole new car to fix the issue and I don’t see them doing that anytime soon. So the rest of us are stuck with the stress of driving our car around like it is a fragile egg because we are afraid of the smallest rock coming close to us.

The other reviews are correct and the car is a lot of fun and a real blast, but in my shoes with my experience the windshield issue is just too much to put up with. If it wasn’t for the windshield I would love my xB and would probably purchase another one, but with the experience that I have had I won’t be purchasing an xB again. I would still consider a tC or the tA(?) because Scion seems to have a nice product but never again an xB.

Style, ecomomy, reliability, room, comfort.

Needs a little more power.

I have owned my Xb a little over a year now and have driven it for 20,000 miles. I can honestly say it is the best car I have owned, and I have owned some nice cars thru the years.

The car is up to every challenge I throw at it. It can haul all of my stuff, up to 4 other people, or take me on a longer journey without signing my paycheck over to some oil company.

It has an amazingly roomy cabin with seemingly endless headroom. I have always owned much larger cars because small cars left me a little claustrophobic. That's not the case in the Xb. You really feel like you are driving a larger car.

I have had absolutely no problems with the car in the 20,000 miles I have driven it. It's still feels as tight and put together as the day I bought it. I have been averaging 32 miles per gallon, with some long highway trips coming in closer to 36 mpg. All this is a peppy and stylish package.

The style, comfort, and economy offered by the Scion Xb are hard to beat. It may just become your favorite too.