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For a mass-produced car to become collectible requires enormous demand among well-moneyed buyers. And collector tastes are fickle. There's no way to tell what collectors might think is cool 10 or 20 years from now.

Hagerty Insurance, a company that specializes in insuring collectible cars, decided to try anyway.

Last year, the company began routinely asking its roughly 50,000 customers to guess which of today's common consumer vehicles they thought might be hot collectibles decades from now.

The most surprising thing about the resulting list, said Hagerty Insurance president McKeel Hagerty, was the number of Japanese cars on the menu. And the relative absence of American cars.

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Scion xB
Hagerty's "Future Collectibles" list included the "Toyota Scion." Of course, Scion isn't a specific car, it's a separate brand -- Toyota's anti-Lexus -- that includes, for now, three different models.

Scion is targeted at the young, thrifty and hip. The cars are simple, not terribly powerful and made to be easily customized. To maintain maximum flexibility, Scions are rarely sold off the dealer's lot. Most are held at the port until a customer has signed an order, That way, whatever add-ons or decals the customer wants can be put on right before delivery.

The tall, boxy Scion xB is the most popular model and the most instantly recognizable to American consumers. The version shown here is the xB Release Series 4.0 which features color-shifting paint.

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