Scion xA - 2006 Review

i bought my 2006 Toyota Scion xA in October of 2005.  I was first introduced to it when I was researching cars and my coworker pointed it out to me on the website.  I saw it and fell in love.  It was so cute and bubbly and exactly the style I was looking for.  I immediately went to the car dealership and ran my chances of being able to purchase a new vehicle.  I was only 20 at the time, and had only been at my job for 6 months but had just gotten my first raise at that job.  I qualified with flying colors at a good interest rate. 

After driving it for a while you start to realize the limited space in the car.  The hatch space is very limited and the backseat is pretty tight also.  I have four people in my family, two of them in carseats, and we can't really fit anyone else into the car with us unless they are pretty small.  But I don't really need that much space for now, so it doesn't really hinder my everyday driving. 

 Physically, other than the space issue, I love everything about the car.  The seats sit high, so it feels like you are driving an SUV vs. feeling like your sitting on the ground in a low car.  It drives good, but it is a four-cylinder, so you have to expect the slower pick-up.  And I think the outside of the car is just beautiful.

 I did encounter some problems with the driver's side rear wheel bearings.  My car kept making this noise and I didn't know what it was so I took it to the dealer in February of 2007.  They told me it was road noise due to the tires.  He said that the noise would continue until I bought four new tires, and then proceeded to give me a quote of $360 for 4 new tires.  Well, since I had only put about 25,000 miles on the new car, I wasn't about to spend money on new tires.  So I took it and continued driving on it for the next few months.  The noise just kept getting louder and louder so I took the car in again around July 2007.  This time it was a different guy who told me that I needed a $200 brake job because my brake pads were 95% worn and if I drove it at all before fixing it, I would be in danger.  I was at about 28,000 miles at this time and had not felt any problem with the brakes so I took an application form for financial assistance and left to talk to my boyfriend about it.  He didn't think there was anything wrong with the brakes so he checked them and said that they were only about 70% worn and we could just buy them from Autozone for $20 and do it ourselves.  Then he decided to check the wheel bearings just because of the type of sound it was making, and sure enough the left rear wheel bearings were shot.  It was a grinding sound that could only be caused by lack of oil during manufacturing.  So we took the car back up there and went straight to the service manager.  My boyfriend was upset that it had gone on this long without them finding it.  I drive with my kids in that car every day. 

 To make a long story short, they fixed the wheel bearing, and also put a new catalytic converter in because the check engine light had come on, at no charge to me.  They also gave me a rental car for the week that they took to fix the car.  The manager was very apologetic, but when I went back to pick up the car, the worker insisted that it was caused by a rock getting in it or something silly.  But I don't think of this as a knock against the car as much as a knock against the dealership.

 Since then I have had no problems and the car gets excellent gas mileage, which is helpful in these $3 a gallon days.