Lexus SC430, Toyota Scion xB excel in different areas

By Gary Anderson, Special to the Town Crier

During the past month, Toyota has given us the chance to go from the sublime to the ridiculous.

However, which adjective you’d apply to which car depends on whether you think that a car should primarily provide luxurious driving satisfaction or function as an efficient, utilitarian transportation tool.

My two rides were the Lexus SC430 two-seat hardtop sports car, and the five-door Toyota Scion xB utility vehicle. Separating these two vehicles are three doors, two seats, 192 horsepower and $44,000.

The Lexus SC430 is designed to provide two people with comfortable high-speed motoring pleasure in all weather. The most striking innovation on this car is the hard top that folds beneath the rear deck, converting the car into a convertible roadster at the push of a button.

The Scion xB is designed to provide up to five people with practical transportation and a maximum of hauling capacity in a minimum-sized vehicle. The striking feature of this vehicle is its form-follows-function design. It looks like someone took an SUV, carved off all the styling, and plopped it down on a roller-skate.

My surprise was not that Toyota could manage to produce both of these cars to high levels of quality. Toyota’s quality is a given.

Instead, the surprise was that the two vehicles can perform such different functions and each manage to do them quite well.

However, I have to inform Toyota that it has targeted the Scion xB at the wrong customer. According to the press releases, this is the vehicle for “generation Y,” people who received their driver’s licenses at the turn of the millennium.

In my standard Draeger’s parking lot test, no gen-Y person of either gender took a second glance at the car.

Instead, the people who came over to ask questions had gotten their drivers’ licenses when Eisenhower was president. They cared little about how it looked — a few thought it was cute, and some thought it was plug-ugly — but instead were only interested in its functionality.

They noted the ease in which a person could get into the front or back. With the Scion’s low stance, the seats are at a level where passengers can easily sit down or stand up getting in and out. With the high roof, headroom is fantastic and the large vertical windows provide 360 degrees of excellent visibility.

The interior is configured just like an SUV, with comfortable rear seat leg room. The rear seats fold down to provide a flat space in the rear. The rear area is accessed by a hatch that pivots up at the top, so there are no obstructions to loading grocery sacks, garden supplies or whatever.

But the difference is that this un-SUV gets 30-34 miles per gallon with the automatic transmission and doesn’t require a stepladder to get in and out. It also handles much more like a sedan than an SUV, with very little sway on tight corners.

The four-cylinder front-drive engine is rated at 108 horsepower, with 105 pound-feet of torque. That’s more than enough to move the vehicle’s 2,400 pounds with great alacrity around town.

I didn’t think it would make a great highway vehicle, however. It doesn’t do a great job of absorbing bumps and that slab-side design is going to be skittish in high crosswinds.

The example I drove sells for only $18,413 and that includes alloy wheels, the “Bazooka Mobile” AM/FM, six CD audio system and the enhanced trim lighting package, none of which we think the Eisenhower generation is going to select.

At that price, this is an effective little urban errand-mobile. It’s very good, but, sorry Toyota, I’m afraid it’s too last century for gen-Y.

The Lexus SC430 sports tourer sits at the opposite end of almost every vehicle spectrum. For errands to pick up anything larger than a brief case and two small sacks of groceries, it just won’t work.

However, the 4.3 liter V-8 engine puts out 300 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque, which is more than enough to merge easily and cruise comfortably on Highway 280, or get around a truck on a two-lane back-country road.

By the numbers, the car can go from zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds and tops out at 156 mph.

The car also has a new safety feature: a warning light that comes on when pressure in any one of the tires drops below an acceptable level. On the way home from the city one evening, the light came on. Sure enough, a check with the tire gauge indicated one tire was low, due to a nail that the dealer found in the tire. With the run-flat tires, my wife and I were in no danger, but this is a feature we hope will find its way to other cars soon.

At $63,634 as we drove it, including run-flat tires and a rear spoiler, this car is in that rare class occupied by only a few other sports cars. But if you’re considering a car in that price/performance class, the Lexus is easy to sum up.

Aside from two Mercedes roadsters, it is the only current production car that offers the comfort of a hardtop, the pleasure of open-air motoring, and the convenience of having either option at the push of a button on the dashboard.

If you want that feature as well as the car’s entertaining performance — and can live with the bulging rear end styling that is necessary to conceal the top — then you will like the Lexus SC430 a lot.