-slapdash- Scion iM 6mt Review

"sony1492" (sony1492) 07/29/2020 at 13:00 • Filed to: oppo review

5

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One point eight liters of naturally aspirated glory paired with six short ratio gears aught to be fun right?

The Scion iM was produced for the 2016 model year before Scion fell and it was rebadged as the Toyota Corolla iM. Luckily its just a Toyota Corolla Auris outside of the United States sharing the ubiquitous Toyota corolla platform along with the same 1.8L engine. Parts for everything are cheap and common. Though it does come with independent rear suspension whereas the corolla is a torsion beam, and wears a wider set of 225/45/17's as standard.

The interior has good materials with soft touch on the right surfaces, being an economy car cheaper plastics can still be found but they are not agregous. The seats ride a bit high, if your over 6ft there will be room but not much. Pedal placement is poor in the sense that the brake is 4 miles from the throttle so heel-toe is near impossible.

As you’d expect the touchscreen can pair to your Bluetooth, there are steering wheel buttons for taking calls, volume, and skipping songs along with key physical buttons on the dash for volume and home. Navigation of the screens is quick and it has never been a source of frustration. The screen also doubles for the standard backup camera. The stereo is one of the best standard setups I’ve seen with a solid mid and bass.

The ride is soft and controlled, roadnoise is adequately muffled and it’ll eat miles with the limiting factor being the admittedly decent seats.(just not decent after sitting for 8 hours straight)

Handling is expectedly soggy. The steering has absolutely no feel, knowing what the tires are doing has everything to do with sound and nothing to do with steering feel in this car. Understeer, the TCS system does quite a bit to make the car feel stable I suspect by shuffling brakes to each corner as necessary. Turn TCS off and the car feels much different, still numb steering but a tad more neutral as the rear end has more to say about weight transfer. It ends up being a large shift in handling that requires a couple minutes to adjust as the car goes from feeling planted to slightly unstable.

This is a 6 speed because its has to be. The 1.8L making 137 hp tries valiantly but the cars heavy at around 30 00lbs. Highway driving is frustrating in the PNW, any whiff of a grade and you’ll be downshifting into 5th at 70mph to stay in the powerband at 4k. If you shift too late you’ll have to resign into 4th and crawl the miles of highway at 55-60mph while still winding the engine out. Its the classic underpowered car experience of gaining momentum before the hill then bleeding it off and downshifting into the powerband praying the grade dosent get steeper.

The power is adequate for city driving and merging onto the highway but the engine being gutless will become apparent past 3rd gear. For driving backroads theres enough power for fun, its slow car fast so nothing new.

Flaws: The engine tuning on the manual trans. It has a system of trying to,”help” starts from a stop where it will partially modulate the throttle while you release the clutch. This is an immense PITA, it seems the throttle sensitively changes for starts but the value of change depends on where the clutch is. Example: Give it almost any amount gas before releasing the clutch and the car will rev out to 2k, breath on the gas as you release the clutch and it will rev out as it catches the clutch then tank the rpm because you were barely on throttle. Its hard to explain how difficult this system is.

Also it does a lazy Rev match on downshifts but not adequate as its a sloppy slow rpm increase that rarely matchs, sometimes it will raise rpm on upshifts because it thinks you were going to downshift. Incredible revhang is a given.

Overall I’m happy with the car, its eaten over 2500 miles in the past month of ownership and I could see living with it for quite a while. Its hard to recommend it though primarily because its gutless and the clutch truly is an abomination(maybe in 10k miles I’ll have the hang of it better)

dogisbadob > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 13:04

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I totally forgot about these. Yeah they came in a cool yellow color, but sadly no sunroof :(

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 13:05

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An engine management system that tried to teach me how to modulate clutch and throttle would really grind my gears.

The suspension sounds like my moms 2010 impreza, it was tuned for  a soft ride and roll stiffness, it was terrible when pushed. Just normal driving and it was okay.

MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 13:19

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That clutch engagement must be hard to get used to, any way to fix it?

I regularly get pissed off at the A/C messing with how the clutch engages.

I’m not one to lament modern cars being slow....because they really aren’t. That being said your iM has 10hp more than my Fiesta, but 700lbs more, and I get annoyed with how slow the Fiesta is sometimes.

Good write up, thank you. 

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 13:20

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My 2019 hatch does the same stupid throttle thing on launches. Pulling away its a complete crap shoot if it gives me the ~1500 rpm I want, revs itself to 3k+, or does absolutely nothing. Sometimes I give it 40% throttle and it does nothing until I get the clutch all the way out at which point it takes off rather briskly because suddenly its actually at 40% throttle. Once I get out of warranty I’m finding a tuner who can make the throttle pedal to throttle body position relationship 1:1 all the time because right now it’s not.   

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 13:40

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Hmmm that car has 6 less horsepower and 300 more pounds than my Cruze, which many considered unacceptably slow. I can see how Scion didn’t sell too many of those. And mine is an auto too yet it can accelerate on grade in the overdrive 6th gear at 70 + mph on its own without freaking out. 

That nanny infested clutch sounds infuriating.

How’s the practicality? Big hatch and lots of room I'd  imagine.

CompactLuxuryFan > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 13:56

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Just as I’ve always felt about these: they could have been great (even with that engine) but you know some people over at Toyota had to mess with it to be “thoughtful” about their consumers:

That’s how it ended up with funky start helper, dead steering, and a completely wasted IRS that kinda ruin it. Still, it should be an extremely good value for daily driving, just like a Matrix.

sony1492 > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 07/29/2020 at 13:59

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Please let there be some sort of fix for this short of a new engine management system. Its disappointing that they didn’t fix that on the newer models, its sabata ge of manual transmissions.

sony1492 > MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) 07/29/2020 at 14:00

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Thanks, I misspoke on the weight, its 3000lbs. Still too much.

It feels like a car that got left behind in the horsepower wars

sony1492 > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 07/29/2020 at 14:02

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I misspoke about the weight, its 3k even.

The interior is large, I was able to fit 4 14" rims in the hatch with the seats folded up no problem. Ha vn' t had to haul anything big yet but its roomy

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 14:07

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Can you sit behind yourself comfortably?

My car is 3k lbs even  and has 6 more hp, so probably similar levels of s l o w.

sony1492 > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 07/29/2020 at 14:12

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Im 5'11" and theres tons of room.

S L L O O O W W WW

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 14:19

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I am six feet exactly but that height is thrown around so much it makes me sound shorter than if I were 5'11". Looks like there is plenty of room in there, but with my, were, relaxed, driving position there might be a good deal less.

But s l o w car fast and all that. You can pretty much floor it at every stoplight and o n ramp without frightening your passengers.

Does the engine like to rev? Anything past 4 k on mine and you feel like you are tearing the engine apart and it very much complains. 

sony1492 > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 07/29/2020 at 14:28

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In the pic theres still about 4" of room, but I do sit upright and close to the wheel. Having never sat back there its more then expected.

It revs out a little past 6k, it feels stable until just before redline. Ive had plenty of cars that felt like exploding past 5k but its fairly smooth in this. The vvti really steps in around 35 00rpm and pulls until about 60 00 so high 5000's is the best shift point for acceleration. 1-3rd are fairly peppy so you wouldn’t go flooring it in the city but highway driving will require revving the nuts off the engine to pass on a hill. I feel bad holding 4500 rpm for long periods of time but it dosent feel like a timebomb.

For backroads its p lenty powerful given you have the road to yourself to maintain momentum. 

MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 14:49

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I’m always surprised to see new NA 4 bangers still making 120-140hp. I guess some of them are ‘not broken don’t fix it’ holdovers, but we can get more out of NA engines.

I guess the people who buy them just don’t care. Not that I’m complaining.

3000lbs is a little better

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 15:32

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For my NA 136 horse engine, it doesn’t like to rev, or provide power, or really anything but trundle along at 2k RPMs for max fuel economy.

There is no power until 3.5k revs and it disappears at 4.5 k revs.

Interesting. But the Average Americans doesn’t want a super re vy engine. They want flat easy power curves that don’t require downshifting to accelerate.

Jayvincent > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 18:40

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sounds like it needs a turbo... (so does my ‘05 Scion Tc 5-speed, so maybe I can swap in the iMs 6speed while I’m rooting around under the hood?)

externalcombustion > sony1492 07/29/2020 at 18:50

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I owned one of these (an ‘18, so it wasn’t a Scion anymore at that point) for a solid 4 months before I finally couldn’t take it anymore. Mine was also the 6spd manual. That had to be one of the worst manual transmission cars I’ve owned. It was definitely one of the worst cars I’ve owned.

I only bought it because I had a serious case of “manual fever” and had spent months looking for something- anything - with a manual. The handling was as you’ve described: remarkably uninspiring despite the decent multi-link rear set-up. I could deal with that. But man, that awful 6spd just ruined the whole car.

FWIW I actually have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the “helper system.” I know new Corolla’s have this but I don’t believe it was equipped on these cars. I hated that transaxle because it felt like crap. It HATED being shifted with any sort of haste. Rev matching was easy as cake, but it never rewarded you for it anyway.

TL;DR horrible automobile.

sony1492 > externalcombustion 07/29/2020 at 19:29

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Its the worst manual trans I’ve had bar none out of several shitboxes. T he first model year came with the assi st then it was taken out and I assume reworked for the next gen corollas. Tbh they put too small of an engine in it, its not particularly hateful just not enough.   This is the nicest car I've ever owned so the 90's Mercedes handling isn't a huge letdown when the interior is actually nice and its reliable. It needs 50 more hp stat

duurtlang > externalcombustion 07/30/2020 at 06:37

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In Europe this IS the Corolla, we didn’t get the sedan. Or at least my market did not. We got the hatch that was available in the US as well, and a wagon that you did not get. Anyway, these cars are designed for and bought by the elderly. Usually with a hybrid drive train, which was its only positive USP.

That they are no fun to drive is to be expected. They were never meant to be.