This Pristine 2004 Scion xB Just Sold For $2,685 Above MSRP

While used car prices on the whole might be receding from pandemic highs, there are still some vehicles sitting up in the stratosphere, and this is one of them. A 2004 Scion xB recently sold on Bring A Trailer for $17.250, or $2,685 more than what this thing cost new. Yeah, this might be the funniest possible vehicle to put an “OVR MSRP” vanity plate on. So, even with just 6,000 miles on the clock, why on Earth would this automatic economy car sell for above MSRP twenty years later? Well, I reckon it comes down to two things: The Scion xB was a great car, and Scion itself was an incredible time.

Cast your mind back to the turn of the millennium, and Toyota wanted to become cool again. Sure, being the go-to brand for every Consumer Reports subscriber in the land was great for mainline business, but models like the Tercel and Corolla just didn’t resonate with young, hip buyers. So, Toyota assembled a skunkworks team and launched Project Genesis, a three-pronged approach to youth appeal containing the Echo, MR2 Spyder, and seventh-generation Celica. Yeah, that didn’t work at all. So, what did Toyota do? It tried again, using Los Angeles-area creative agency Fresh Machine for branding to create Scion, a sub-brand known for usually having the lowest median customer age in the industry.

Scion was a brand for weird Toyotas from overseas from the very beginning. The Scion xA was a rebadged Ist, while the Scion xB was a rebadged bB. This brave little toaster was just a boxy Echo designed for Japan and never really intended for Toyota’s American lineup. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Scion stumbled upon greatness. See, it turns out that the most efficient shape for moving people and their stuff in a given footprint is just a box. That’s why you don’t see any egg-shaped moving vans. The result? A genuine subcompact car with a whopping 43.4 cu.-ft. of cargo space with the rear seats folded down. Oh, but because it was still a subcompact car, it still got great fuel economy, was cheap to insure, easy to park, and didn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy. As a result, college graduates and seniors alike loved the xB because it was great at doing everything they needed a car to do.

Oh, and it was incredibly reliable. Jason’s xB survived Tiff Needell, a Panera broccoli and cheese soup bread bowl, thousands of miles of driving with a persistent misfire, and even Jason himself. That’s the man who broke a Ford pickup truck with a supposedly indestructible straight-six. In fact, it’s still going! A reader rescued it, de-moldified the interior, and is now just straight-up driving it. What a rockstar of a car.

Just as important as the car was the brand itself. Scion was loved. Scion was so fucking loved. Loved with molly eyes and fluorescent hearts and dancefloor sweat and crisp evening air. Not just as a maker of decent cars, but as a weird sub-imprinted that seemed to stand for the culture, because although it might not have had the best vehicle development budget, it knew how to throw a party and make owning a car fun, even if the mechanicals of the car itself were fairly pedestrian.

Scion knew that memories make a car great, which might explain why Scion had its own record label, its own series of music festivals, its own racing programs, its own film imprint. While other automakers were handing out brochures and posters at auto shows, Scion was giving out yo-yos and CD samplers, stuff you could have a good time with. Oh, and when it came to music, Scion AV genuinely had a good business model. It covered production, licensing, and distribution, but artists held onto creative control, kept their ownership, and saw royalties because Scion wasn’t taking much off the top. It might’ve seemed like the sort of utopian marketing project created by a college grad just trying to make sure their art friends got paid, but for a while, it actually worked.

Then there was the fact that Scion would let you accessorize the crap out of your car if you liked. We aren’t just talking floor mats and rain visors, we’re talking superchargers, big brake kits, skirt package, everything you needed to terrorize your neighbors. All done through your dealership, all proven to fit, and you could even get warranties and financing on many of these accessories. In short, Scion wanted buyers to have fun, but also wanted to keep things relatively affordable, a combination that almost seems crazy today when everything has premium aspirations.

Sadly, Scion didn’t last. It couldn’t. The plan of frequent model cycles combined with low margins took a hit during the 2008 recession, and as overseas Toyotas gained bloat, so did Scion’s lineup. Eventually, Scion needed to be killed to revitalize Toyota’s image, because how cool could Toyota be if it had a supposedly cooler sub-brand? It was an experiment without a clear end from the start, but man, was it ever a good time.

All that history brings us to this car here. With just 6,297 miles on the clock, this Black Cherry Pearl 2004 Scion xB looks like an absolute time capsule from an era when jeans were getting skinnier and song titles by alternative bands were growing increasingly ridiculous. Its bumpers have escaped the wrath of street parking, its wheel trims haven’t flown off on the 405, or the BQE, or the New Jersey Turnpike, it just looks fresh in a way few examples do.

On the inside of this Scion xB, the upholstery still looks mint, the carpets still look new, the urethane steering wheel still looks surprisingly chewable, unmarred by hundreds of thousands of miles of sweaty hands. There appear to be a few slight depressions in the rear seat, but considering what else went on in the rear seats of many Scions, I wouldn’t worry about it one bit.

The 1.5-liter 1NZ-FE four-cylinder engine should run like a peach until the heat death of the universe, provided you change the oil, keep gas in the tank, and don’t let it overheat. Even the four-speed automatic ought to still shift smoothly. You’ll get to where you’re going eventually, just believe in it. This thing’s a good memory machine, one that the new owner will remember for a long, long time.

So yeah, $17,250 for a pure slice of nostalgia for some of the better bits of the 2000s? The bloghaus/MySpace/tuner scene/flash photography/unadulterated weirdness part of it rather than the war/political division/terror/recession part of it? That’s not the worst price in the world for that sort of hit. Scion as a brand may be dead, but long may the memories of it and the cars it made run.

(Photo credits: Bring A Trailer, Scion, Scion A/V)

Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.

• These Are The Most Regular-Ass Cars For Sale At Pebble Beach Next Month

• This Is What An $850 Car Looks Like On Bring A Trailer

• This Custom Mercedes-Benz S600 Station Wagon Has The Greenest Interior I’ve Ever Seen In My Life

• This 22-Year-Old Toyota Camry Just Sold For Almost As Much As A New Corolla

• You Can Buy A High-Performance Porsche Cayenne For Less Than A New Kia Seltos

Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage.