Has anyone heard if Toyota is going to up the power of the 1.5L for the '06 or '07 xB & xA? Everyone seems to say it's underpowered. So you'd think they would respond to that.

 

The 1.5L is fine. When people say its underpowered is because some are used to driving faster vehicles. No point in changing the engine. But they could retune the engine and increase BHP/BTorue. On my 01 Camry (136bhp/150btorque), the BHP/Btorque numbers were higher compared to the 97-99 (133bhp/147btorque) models. Same 2.2L 5SFE engine but retuned.

 

From the talk i hear, they'll discontinue the model before that...

 

Why.
Are they going to kill the xB?
Are they getting lousey sales numbers?

 

Scion’s story

Now that Toyota’s youth-targeted Scion division has cars on sale nationwide, the company isn’t worrying too much about what follows the boxy xB, because in the U.S. market there won’t be a next-generation xB.

Rather than struggle with the Beetle/PT Cruiser conundrum of trying to update the styling of a car with such a definitive design, Scion vice president Jim Farley says the division will scrap the xB as part of its “disruptive” product strategy of dropping models and replacing them with something else. “The next xB may not look like the current one, and it won’t be called xB either,” says Farley.

http://www.autoweek.com/cat_content...._code=05630840

 

well, not only is the car selling well enough for them not to up the hp/tq. but, its also not really cost effective for them to do it. remember, they basically brought over the exact same thing they had in japan. for them to up the hp/tq, they would have to change something (probably the engine, because 5hp/tq isn't gonna satisfy the people complaining). no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

And more power means more gas or in other words, less MPG. It's a trade-off... I think they found a nice balance of both.