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The New Scion 2008 xD
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Comments
Another surprise is that hip room, both front and rear, is narrower by over 3 inches, even though the external width of the car is wider by 1.2 inches.
That force would be called "gravity", and its effect on your downhill speed is not related to your mass:
"The common laws of gravity... state that freely falling objects accelerate and that the rate of acceleration is independent of their mass."
http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/gravity.htm
"... When I go biking with my 180 pound friend Matt, and we get to the top of a hill and coast down together, my extra mass shoots me downhill a LOT faster..."
Your extra weight is not pulling you downhill any faster than your friend. Look elsewhere for the reason. See this skier study:
"Question: Does a skier’s weight effect how fast they are skiing? In this experiment... If the average acceleration changed when more weight was added, then it would be determined that weight affects the speed of a skier.... when I had completed this experiment... weight does not change the acceleration of skier because acceleration due to gravity is constant. As I added more and more weight, the acceleration stayed the same... "
http://www.suberic.net/~avon/mxphysics/anne/Annie Mears.htm
"... At the top of the hill, I've got lots more potential energy than he does - that's what's being converted to kinetic energy as we roll."
That is true. The study above explains that potential energy = mass x gravity x height. But potential energy is not related to the velocity of falling (or speed downhill).
Since you know that the force is called gravity, you may also recall that it is a force, and not an acceleration. Yes, there is such a thing as "the acceleration due to gravity", but the property that pulls things down is a Force called Gravity. You must multiply the Acceleration times the Mass to get the Force: F=MA.
Are you really trying to tell us that weight doesn't increase with mass? F=MA tell us otherwise. Everyone knows that things on this planet are heavier if they have more mass. You do too - you're just getting tangled up in techno-talk.
You keep trying to make this into a "freely-falling" physics experiment. It isn't. The difference between that assumption, and what is actually happening with a car riding downhill on a real road, is friction. That little thing makes all the difference.
I knew their would be at least one in the group with this to say. Don't worry it will be braking down soon. VW's are very poorly made. Some of them are good looking but they are very poorly made. They make chevy and ford look fantastic. in terms of reliability. Who knows, maybe you got one of the few good ones. For your sake I hope so.
"when will the xd's be hitting dealers? anyone know?"
August.
What originally was an interesting posting turned into a tiresome thread.
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uh, ok. You've got your opinions. The mkV is known as one of the most reliable vw's ever made, and has had a pretty damn good history. Just becasue in the past they have not been amazing, means nothing to the current gen.
how soon is soon by the way? 20k enough for ya? but you have your opinions, and you are entitled to them, however erroneous they may be.
Back to the xd.
disparaging remarks about a man's car is like trying to emasculate him. if he said it never gave him any trouble, why can't you take his word for it and move on. this reminds me of how kids behave at the play ground.
xd news, anyone?
Americans are overweight (*waves*) and want at least some comfort. Every little bit of hip room counts in these instances. I have a tC and love the hip room. When I drive my wife's Focus...I feel like a sardine. I'm all smooshed and almost feel claustrophobic.
So I hope for the future of small, economical hatchbacks that this item is not as bad as it seems..or wrong. Econoboxes already have enough on their plate to try to pursuade American buyers to like them.
Volkswagens are built in Mexico.
The new Scion XD looks exactly like the new XB.
not all of them. Both the gti and rabbit are built in wolfsburg.
The new Scion XD looks exactly like the new XB
you think so? they look nothing alike?
Consumer reports is broken. Its the one thing everyone quotes when they bag on vw's reliabiltiy. one thing people (including you) fail to realize is the consumer reports ratings are based on owners who subscribe to the magazine. isn't it funny how in the past, vw was rated horribly, but the magazine's own subscribers have not learned their lesson and just keep buying vw's? don't you think they would have learned eventually? or could it just be that everyone who has a bad vw just automatically subscribes to consumer reports? Something to think about.
actually, if you want to get technical, cr does not have enough data to rate the rabbit, same goes for the gti, but they do call it one of the better spory small cars. And guess what? the passat carries the checkmark bestowed upon reccomended cars.
Every car manufacturer can have a lemon. Funny enough, while i never had any real problems with my 06 civic, it technically has given me more grief than my rabbit has.
ohplezz? yes totally.
with regards to reliability , i hope the xd does well, and if it doesn't, we'll most likely never hear about it, except for on this website.
this is only speculation, but it makes sense to me.
with the new 2008 mpg guide lines, the toyota should be high 20's in city and high 30's highway. with a lighter body the scion should be at least 30 city and 40 highway.
they don't have the same drive train either. Its a new 1.8 engine never used in north america, and its based off the yaris' platform.
better yet, can you direct me to the site that you got your information from?
off the top of my head i belive its around 25-26 city and about 33 highway.
This is close to the honda fits 28/34 rating and on par with maybe the nissan versa, which is on the bulky side like the xd.
And for the person who thought the Corolla is a much heavier car than the xD, think again. The Corolla weighs in at around 2500 pounds, barely heavier than the old xA. The xD will be heavier by 100-200 pounds, is my guess. However, the new engine has VVT-i on both intake and exhaust, which should flatten the torque curve even more, for better pep around town than the current Corolla.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
from reading some of the postings, the xd won't have cruise control. the few pics i've seen of the steering wheel and dash shows a stalk that looks like cruise to me... am i mistaken?
And the poster a while back was right about the motor being in both the corolla and the xD. You were right as well Eldaino. In the U.S the current gen corolla uses the old motor. In other countries the new motor, that will be in the xD, is being used in the new corolla that was released earlier this year.
And to the last poster, scion at first was going to be cheap and not offer cruise on the xD but people got pissed and started complaining to toyota and toyota coughed up the money for the cruise. Cruise control WILL be standard on the xD this fall.
http://www.toyota.com.au/corolla
http://pressroom.toyota.com/Releases/View?id=TYT2007050338941
If last Gen's xA/xB had standard cruise here in the Great Lakes area, I would have bought one of them instead of the tC. I did not want a dealer touching my electrical system, personally, unless it was absolutely necessary. So I went with the tC since it was the only Scion with standard cruise. :shades:
Its gonna have.
Cripe, my 2001 Mazda 626 with a V6 gets nearly the rated mileage of these cars. My 1983 Nissan Sentra got 40 mpg overall, real world. I'm sure vehicle weights in general have increased significantly, but has performance? Why can't manufacturers do better?
As the xA was $1200 cheaper than the old xB (with only a larger body and traction control as the main differences) I'm hopeful that the price gap between the new xB and xD will be bigger (like $2000 or more).
Both the hatch and sedan from the Aussie site look good to me. Wish we'd get the hatch here in the U.S. But if the Corolla costs $2-3000 more than the xD, they can keep it.
And I think you are going to be disappointed with the xD price. At best I'm thinking the difference will be 1k between the 2 gen xB and the xD. Their is no way that its going to 2k. Not a chance.
But yes, they are just numbers. We can still calculate our gas mileage the same way and strive for better gas mileage figures.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
If the difference between Corolla and Camry is roughly $4000, the difference between xB and xD should be more than $2000. If not, I'll probably just go with the xB and with the kind of driving I do still hope to average over 30 mpg.
oh well. back to the xd. anyone read the fitvsxd comparo? another testament that edmunds secretly has it out for honda...they just can't say it out loud. i read the full test for the fit sport after reading this, and was suprised at how much praise the fit was given on it drving dynamics...only to have its outstanding points dumbed down here. (i.e. ofcourse the xd is more stable...its a bit heavier!)
still, the fit certainly held its own...not bad for a almost six year old car. its nice to see the competition catching up.
Introduction
By Dan Edmunds, Director of Vehicle Testing Email | Blog
Date posted: 06-10-2007
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Kids today, eh? The 2007 Honda Fit Sport and 2008 Scion xD are meant to grab the attention of a generation that knows how to play it loud. These cars are supposed to be all about watts, speaker count and iPod inputs.
Yet they are both so sensible that you'd swear the coveted Gen-Y market was filled with aging no-bones consumers more interested in price and practicality than loud music. And in fact, older drivers are proving to be just as enthusiastic about sensible, stripped-down cars as younger drivers.
It's true that the 2007 Honda Fit Sport and 2008 Scion xD reflect the way in which cheap cars have been transformed into cool cars. But once you cut through the marketing hype, you discover that these cars capture our imagination precisely because they're about everything but loud music. Sorting them out is a matter of function, not flash.
Honda Has a Fit
While the Honda Civic has never shown a big thirst at the gas pump, its ever-increasing dimensions (and price) have squeezed it out of the entry-level market. Korean-built subcompacts have eagerly filled the void, hungry for the chance to secure new customers. And then, of course, Scion arrived in 2004, changing the rules in the entry-level market entirely.
Enter the Fit, which burst onto the U.S. market in 2006. First introduced in Japan, some 250,000 were sold there in 2002, which topped the country's sales charts. Just 35,000 examples of the Fit have been allocated yearly to American Honda, and 27,934 were sold over nine months in 2006.
Pricing for a base-model Fit starts at $14,445 and includes a full complement of safety features and most of the available convenience items. We tested the Honda Fit Sport, more fully equipped and vastly more popular as well. For $15,765 our Fit Sport features 15-inch alloy wheels carrying 195/55HR15 tires, cruise control, keyless entry, foglights, aero-style bodywork trim and a better stereo with an auxiliary input.
Every Fit features a 16-valve DOHC inline-4 with Honda's step-type VTEC variable valve timing, and the engine develops 109 horsepower.
Scion, You Crazy Diamond
As a branding exercise, the Scion experiment has been a huge success. Out of nowhere Scion has become the No. 1 Internet brand, with 80 percent name recognition among online shoppers under age 35. Even so, only 28,033 examples of the Scion xA were sold in 2006, less than half the number of Scion xB sales.
As a result, Scion has decided to renew the entry-level Scion's identity at the same time that it renews the hardware, so the xD has appeared. Banished is the anemic 103-hp 1.5-liter engine, and it's replaced by a 128-hp 1.8-liter mill with variable valve timing for both the intake and exhaust cams. The xD also makes side airbags standard, not optional as they were for the xA. The tires have grown to 195/60HR16s, and electronic stability control is available as an option. Features such as cruise control and keyless entry are now standard.
Standard content costs money, so a 2008 Scion xD will cost more than an xA when it goes on sale in August. Exact prices have not yet been announced, but expect the price of the xD to begin at about $15,080. Of course our test car had the optional stability control, a stereo upgrade and illuminated door sills, so we believe its as-tested price sits around $16,368, give or take a bit.
What Counts Is What's Inside
The Honda Fit and the Scion xD rest on nearly identical wheelbases, some 96.5 inches for the Honda and 96.9 inches for the Scion. Their other dimensions are also nearly the same, with the Fit measuring 2.7 inches longer while the Scion spreads 1.7 inches wider. These cars are both 60.0 inches tall.
Both of these front-wheel-drive cars have transverse four-cylinder engines. Both have strut-type front suspension. Both have a twist-beam rear axle (think of it as essentially a huge stabilizer bar with the wheels mounted on the ends) that helps to lower the height of the floor in the rear of the car even as it creates a void for a spare tire.
Honda even improves the Fit's space-efficiency by locating the fuel tank under the front seats. As a result, the floor height goes down farther still, enabling the second-row seatbacks to fold forward all the way into the footwells, creating a dead-flat loading floor and 41.9 cubic feet of cargo capacity. The seat bottoms can also be folded up to meet a normally positioned seatback, creating a "tall mode" suitable for standing a bicycle up in the backseat. In comparison, the Scion affords 35.7 cubic feet once the conventional split-back folding seats have been laid down.
The Honda Fit Sport offers 90.1 cubic feet of passenger volume and the Scion xD has 84.5 cubic feet of living space. In our experience, a wide variety of body shapes can find a comfortable fit behind the wheel of both cars, perhaps helped by the high hip point for the seating position. The Honda Fit's driving position and control layout did seem sized for smaller drivers, though, as the steering wheel fouled the knees of our tallest driver and the pedal action seemed designed for drivers who sit very close to the steering wheel.
Which One Is Go, Again?
Although we had VTEC-inspired expectations of extreme performance from the Fit Sport, our Honda hatch proved loath to accelerate without judicious rowing of the five-speed gearbox. This 16-valve DOHC inline-4's 109 hp and 105 pound-feet of torque aren't quite enough to move this 2,472-pound box smartly enough to make highway merges and passing maneuvers a matter of routine.
The Scion xD has 128 hp and 125 lb-ft of torque underfoot, so it moves out with much less fuss, despite weighing 2,615 pounds (143 pounds more than the Fit). Daily driving proved to be far less of a stress test, and fewer downshifts were required to summon up speed at the right moments.
At the test track, all this boiled down to an 8.4-second run to 60 mph in the Scion xD, compared to 9.0-second acceleration to 60 mph for the Fit.
Fuel economy laurels go to the 2007-model Fit, but just barely. At first the Fit's rating of 33 mpg city/38 highway seems to trounce the 2008-model Scion xD's estimated 27 city/33 highway. But
Will Honda short-cycle it? 2010 is probably the earliest we'll see a redesign.
Toyota Yaris outsells Fit 2-1. :surprise:
DrFill
Dave Becker
The article just about ignored the Fit's great advantage in handling, versatility, and nice shifter. It sure played up the xD's slight acceleration advantage, and Ipod compatibility. The exterior appearance and interior comments don't agree with any review anywhere. Neither the Fit or xD are lookers, but they are both okay looking. The Fit interior is nice quality; it is just missing a few features seen in newer designs.
No doubt, the xD has a number of nice qualities, but that review sure seemed written by someone out to cut the Fit down to size unlike the other dozen or more reviews written about the Fit.
Yaris is shooting for $14K sales and making its numbers that way, while Fit sells 2:1 Sport vs base model, which means it is selling much more at $16K. Two different philosophies, two different and successful ways to generate profits.
Then the xD will jump in to the fray, probably selling at exactly $14,995 (stick), $15,995 (automatic). Will it outsell the Fit in its first full year, despite being six years newer? Time will tell. We know how many Fits will sell: every one of the 35K Honda has allocated to the U.S. annually. And 35K is a little more than the old xA sold in its best year.
Me, I will be looking for Toyota to make good on its promise (well it wasn't a promise exactly, but more like a tentative suggestion) to sell the 5-door Yaris in the U.S., with a little more standard and optional content. That would probably sell around the $15K mark too, only it would have significantly better fuel economy than xD at the expense of acceleration speed. I wonder which would sell better? I think it would be the Yaris5...
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
As for the '09 Fit, I think it will be a spring release in Japan, and we will get it just before Christmas next year, but don't quote me. Honda is mum as usual.
I am just hoping they allocate more Fits to the U.S. in the next model run.
Scion, of course, wants to limit total sales to 200K per year. With the tC selling over a third, we will have to see how the sales mix shakes out between the the new xB and the xD. I am sure Toyota could sell a lot more than 35K xDs per year if the demand were there.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
and yeah, they totally downplayed its attributes (i.e.handling, shifter) and with regards to the interior, sorry, the xd being as new as it is SHOULD have a nicer interior, and even then i bet its only slightly; the fit has had a hold on nicest interior in its class for awhile.
With regards to the ipod compatiability...the fit has an aux jack, which is the same thing! and if you don't have an ipod, you can still hook up your mp3 player, just because it doesn't say 'ipod' on it like the xd makes no difference. If the xd's connection is in fact ipod specific, it sucks for those who don't have one. If it has a second jack for other mp3's its unneccesary and the fit already has it covered.
Honda doesn't have a Matrix-type vehicle, so they can push a 5-door at that price without cannibalizing sales.
Maybe that new engine technology Toyota is going to use will come out in the Toyota Blade next year, with a 2.0? :confuse:
DrFill
The Yaris 5-door is always the most popular Yaris configuration north of the border. That's why it stinks that we can't have it down here, as similar as the automotive regulations are between the two countries.
Doc: the Matrix/Blade will be the next size up, using the next-size-up engine. I would imagine the Blade and Matrix will run pretty close to $20 grand at base price too, where the Yaris5 could come in around $15K.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Has anyone driven an xD in temperatures over 100 degrees?
Is it any good?
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
1.5L engines shouldn't be put in modern (read heavier) cars with automatic transmissions. The difference jumping up to a 1.8L is significant (25 - 30% increase in power).
The Aussies get a 5 door Corolla, but fat chance it'll ever show up in the U.S.
With the expected $3000 difference in MSRP between Corolla and xD, the Corolla better be much better equipped and/or more luxurious. I'd vote for a more solid feel and smooth engine/ride, like my '89 Camry (that averaged 35 mpg in rural/highway driving). OTOH the xD would seem to offer every feature I want in a small car.