anyone ever thought of suiciding the rear doors on their xB? :D

 

The element is clunky looking and the xB is very sleek

 

As an ex-Element owner, a few quick comments on the suicide doors:

The support (b-arm?) is built-in to the doors, ... it's not like it's totally unprotected and going to buckle-in with no resistance if you get t-boned. The passengers in the back actually sit about a foot BEHIND where the door hinges to frame.

The built-in support makes the suicide door very very very heavy (but easy to swing open/close). You have to "train" the passengers to gently shut it otherwise they slam the hell out of it.

Putting the support into the suicide door means that when the front and suicide doors are open, you have a HUGE entrance with no "pole" between the front and rear seats. This makes it super easy to get big things (packages and people) in and out of the car.

If you haul a lot of people around a lot of the time, then not having four full doors with four full windows would be something to think about. But if you're the kinda person that only every-now-and-then does that, plus hauls around a bunch of junk on the weekends, then it works out pretty well.

I think that Toyota is gonna kick butt with the Scion -- it's a sweet looking ride with a nice price tag and a lot of things can be done to it. But I also agree with others that it's not in the same category as the Element. The "design philosophy" behind both seem totally different.

 

You CAN'T spray the interior down with a hose .. unlike Wranglers, the E doesn't have any drain holes, so you'd end up with about an inch of water in the front foot wells!!!

There are no electrical connections in the Element within (I forget how many) inches of the floor, and the speaker wire connections are waterproof. Again, still not designed to get "sprayed", but you don't have to worry about sloshing water around.

Washable = you can take a pretty wet towel and wipe everything down and not worry about getting that funky smell that can happen in some cars with carpet.

You can also pile into it after going swimming and not worry about messing anything up.

Not touting the Element (which I just traded for Wrangler) , .. digging the Scion .. just don't like misconceptions flying around ...

 

WEEELLL, at least i can roll down my rear windows!

 

An interesting point someone made about the Element doors which I found interesting:

If you are getting out of the E in a parking lot, you open the front door to get the rear door to open. Then, when the person steps out of the back door, you both are caught in this little triangle where you have to move forward to close the rear door. Sounds really awkward...

And I don't see why a little healthy debate is a bad thing. Even tho wedon't group them, obviously lots of people do or can't tell the difference between the two, based on the questions I get from people. We are doing a service to comparison shoppers to give honest fact based opinions. If it were just baseless bashing, I could see the point...