SANTA MONICA, CA – Folks wanting a boxy car soon will have fewer choices.
“The xB will be leaving the lineup at the end of the year,” Scion Vice President Doug Murtha tells WardsAuto here at a ’16 iA and iM media preview.
Murtha’s predecessor Jack Hollis told WardsAuto in April 2012 the xB would not see a third generation, but the Toyota youth brand kept the xB around for three more years, despite declining volume.
The first-generation xB is near-iconic and became the face of the Scion brand in its early years.
The square-edged car was a virtual copy of the Japan-market Toyota bB and immediately found fans in the U.S., some of whom saw it as a hipper and less-expensive alternative to a minivan.
Sales of the xB reached their pinnacle with that first generation, hitting 61,306 units in 2006.
But the second-generation xB, launched in 2007 as an ’08, didn’t measure up to its predecessor’s success.
Even Toyota CEO Jim Lentz thought the bigger and more American successor lost the first-gen’s unique character.
“(If we could) do things over again, we would (add) a little bit of fun-to-drive (spirit) back to that vehicle,” Lentz said at a 2009 industry conference.
After increasing in 2012 from 2011, sales of the second-generation xB fell in 2013 and 2014, with just 16,583 sold last year. In comparison, the competing Kia Soul delivered 145,316 units in 2014.
Ironically in its final year the xB has been trending up. Some 7,376 xBs were sold through May, a 5.4% increase from the same period year-ago.
The xB joins other discontinued boxes the Honda Element and Nissan Cube on the scrap heap of automotive history, leaving the Soul as the last model standing in the U.S.
Murtha sees the 5-passenger Scion iM compact hatchback as somewhat filling the xB’s void, but he doesn’t see it as a direct replacement of the model.
The iM goes on sale Sept.1 in the U.S.
