It's hip to be square in Toyota's Scion xB

0 Comments | USA TODAY, March, 2004 | by James R. Healey

Toyota's small, youth-oriented Scion xB is everything its corporate cousin Scion xA is not: ugly, tinny, roomy and frisky.

The last likely is due to the manual transmission in the test car, a loaded xB priced $16,138. (It's fun to say "loaded" and "$16,000" in the same sentence.) You can spend dearly on dealer-installed Scion accessories -- most of them silly -- but the test xB, without those gimcracks, had everything you need and a $385 rear spoiler that you don't.

Scion is a Toyota sub-brand, low-priced and oddly styled to attract young buyers that Toyota doesn't because of its old-fogy image.

The B uses the same engine as, and weighs 55 to 70 pounds more than, the A, which should make it sluggish by comparison. But its manual gearbox has a considerable...