Spotted recently on I-80 not far from Sacramento, California, was a Scion xB pickup with a bicycle hanging out of its cargo bed. But this isn’t just a typical xB pickup. (Yes, I said typical, because apparently chopping up xBs is a thing.) No, it’s a convertible xB pickup, with what looks like a Jeep Wrangler soft top clamped to the car’s roof rails.
Jalopnik reader David Carbonell sent these photos of a gentleman driving down the highway in a custom Scion xB, a vehicle that — and you wouldn’t know it by looking at these photos — was actually sold as an economy car and not as a heavy-duty, bicycle-hauling convertible pickup.
Google “Scion xB pickup” and you’ll be surprised at how many truck-ified xBs you’ll find (and you’ll even find the “Toyota bB Open Deck” pickup designed by Toyota itself). The vehicle’s hilariously boxy shape lends itself to cool customisations, so I get it. That said, I’m not sure I quite get this:
There appears to be glass behind the driver’s seat, so this is a regular-cab pickup conversion. But the rear doors don’t look to have been welded shut, and given the fact that there’s a soft top over the front half of the bed, I have to wonder if there are still provisions in place for seats. And if so, is it awesome sitting in the open-air second row of the Scion, or is it strange looking at a pane of glass and not being able to shut the windows when it rains?
Actually, perhaps it is possible to close windows by zipping the Jeep Wrangler’s clear plastic windows onto the top and then buttoning them onto the door and B-pillar. Those look like buttons in the photo above, right?
I’m confused, but in a good way. This is the kind of wackiness we need more of in this world.