Believe it or not, when I drove my blue Scion xB nearly stock in the Sunday Cup, I was surprised. This MPV (when it's young and powerless) is all handling.  So long as brakes are applied in a timely fashion, the steering that follows is genuinely precise, and only in the tightest corners will the front-drive system start to protest with bits of slow-corner exitness.

 

What I was expecting of course was a lot of understeer, but also oversteer as well. Yes there is some of this recalcitrance, but only if you mistreat the xB. Heavy braking? Yes ... but not necessarily early braking that is needed 100% of the time.

 

It seems that perhaps this wagon's squatness and lack of body overhang helps in this regard. Real-life xB's turn .83 g on the skidpad when equipped with Toyota-warrantied sport-handling parts and tires; absolutely amazing for what is supposed to be Generation Y's star multi-purpose vehicle. The best thing about SCION as I hinted is all their options (the body kits, the silly paint jobs) are warrantied.

 

And no, I don't work for Toyota or SCION. :0

GT5
Not much to report here. Like the xB of GT4, in this game the xB always does what it's told at first, with some understeer happening only if the driver forgets what the brake pedal is. Otherwise, this one always feels grippy into turns, and has loads of traction out of them, even with the crappy medium-grade radials equipped and no TCS. It helps that the xB has a rather car-like center of gravity, rather than a minivan-like center of gravity. The xB sometimes feels a little slow in turns with such tires equipped, and we can't always use the gas-pedal at the exact moment we'd like, but otherwise the xB does fine. 

 

...All of this assumes lower-speed turns are being tackled, though...during GT5's long list of easy racing expeditions.

Now, if we take a gander at the tire monitors, we can actually see the xB is often at the very edge of disaster! Those front tires especially are constantly heating up to red. A track like Madrid or London is an example here. Such shorter tracks have cramped, tighter turns, and the xB survives these turns with any complaints being rare ones. Only once this bulkmobile happens to driving thru some longer curves (Route 246 for example) during which longer moments of punishment are being dealt, will the xB finally start to understeer mid-turn more heavily.   

I drove an xB recently in the Clubman Cup. My yellow box (see pic) had medium-sport tires now, which is like trading a pair of off-brand shoes from Payless for a pair of Air Jordans. The Scion (in this set of races, and on these tires) has handling traits that are still mostly desireable than they are awful. Late braking can be used reliably as a tool to get by others, for instance. The Box also still grips, and displays also major traction out of slower areas, even without a limited-slip device. The only complaint here is a very minor one.

At Route 246, my Box had about 175 horsepower. Out of the final sharp turn, it started to display a few seconds of smokey wheelspin as I got onto the long "straight" area. This could have been cured with some LSD. But I still won the race (and with the stock 4-speed automatic transmission still in place!), so it can still be said that a limited-slip device is still very secondary.

Another complaint isn't so minor: understeer. It was encountered mostly at Tsukuba and Route 246, but it was just as easy to avoid this understeer as it was to explore it.

I like that word ... "explore". This is a really safe car to drive in this game. For somebody who is a new to GT5, the Scion xB makes a great beginner's vehicle. This green driver can learn about all the fun intricacies of understeer: how it starts, and what we can do as drivers  and tuners to avoid it. The xB is not the most understeery machine on the market, surprisingly enough, and for this reason it's a great teacher without being too demanding of a tyrant.  
 
Summary

So overall, not bad. The xB is not a sports car by any means, but compared with a Caravan, Kia Sephia, or some other such vehicle made for soccer moms? The xB stacks up mint baby.