Unless your name is Humpty Dumpty a box is about the most efficient way to travel. You don’t get much boxier than today’s xB from the now defunct Scion, but will this one’s price have you saying box it up, I’ll take it?

I’m actually surprised that yesterday’s fell in a 59% Crack Pipe loss. I thought that one was a winner, winner, chicken dinner. I guess when you mention any sort of structural rust, no matter how minor, it sets off red flags and seriously clouds opinions. I would say to the seller not to worry however as, if recent events have taught us anything, it’s that anything can—and will—happen, you just gotta’ believe.

In the late ‘90s Toyota stopped believing that the Yoots were going to have anything to do with the brand. After killing off the wasabi-strength Supra, changing the Celica from pony to placebo, and denaturing any interesting factors out of the Corolla line, it was like they suddenly woke up and discovered that they had become… Buick.

Their answer to the lack of feeding into the marquewas to dust off some JDM cars not previously sold here and offer them under the new, hip moniker, Scion. Toyota threw all their marketing weight behind the value-focused brand, sponsoring X-games, having the cars attend raves and date Nickelodeon stars, but it was all for nought.

The youth in revolt didn’t gravitate to the sub-brand in the numbers Toyota expected or their bean counters demanded. Worse than that, the oldsters bought the cars because they were cheap Toyotas which further sullied the attempt to carve out a niche with theGen X or whatever annoyingly-young people go by today.

Now Scion is dead, but cars like this live on. Not all of them do so in as nice of condition as this wine in a box looks to have, however.

The thing about cheap cars is that quite often cheap people buy them. Cheap people don’t generally give a damn about keeping their shit nice and so they disregard things like normal maintenance and repairing that damn bumper skirt after breaking it off on a parking berm. They also like to put giant novelty bandaids on dents rather than have them repaired.

This xB on the other hand, looks to have been well-cared for. That’s ultra surprising as it presently lives on the Jersey Shore and if you ever watched the show of the same name you’d know that the people that live there can take fashion and living life to the extreme. The only even remotely extreme aspect of this Scion box is that it rocks a fairly rare manual transmission.

I’ve always liked the original xB for its boxy goodness. Based on the home-market Toyota bB which shared its platform with the U.S. market Echo/Yaris, the xB cozied up on the dealer’s floors with the smaller and less interesting xA.

Power here is provided by Toyota’s 108-bhp 1NZ-FE inline four and that manual gearbox sports five-speeds for all your rowing pleasure. There’s 148,000 miles on the car, and that ain’t all that bad considering it’s a Toyota.

This one doesn’t seem to be one of the multitude of special editions that Scion offered, and doesn’t even seem t have alloy wheels. That’s okay though as it does have all its wheel covers as well as its lower body trim. That’s not always the case on these as the extremely low end caps tend to get knocked off seemingly at the smallest provocation. The interior also looks to be in fine shape with the funky center-focused dash and lots of decent-quality plastics. A red-stitched shift knob spruces the place up a bit.

Now, one downside to the xB’s boxy design and the fact that it wasn’t ever originally designed for the U.S. market is that it does not come with side impact airbags and as such these cars fared terribly in the IIHS side impact tests. If you’re not ever planning on getting T-boned then it’s a moot point, but you should probably know about that.

You should also know that this xB asks $3,800 for the privilege of getting inside its box. Now that Scion is dead these cars will likely be seen as one of the brand’s more funky offerings and if someone has ever wanted to experience one, then this is the time. What do you think about that price tag on this box? Does that make it seem like a real deal? Or, does that make it a total square peg?

You decide!

Jersey Shore , or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to Fauxshizzle for the hookup!

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