This car had just over 60,000 miles on it, barely driven (by one owner), and also had a recently replaced water pump and freshly changed coolant. We took a trip last year from OR to the Grand Canyon in September, driving a total of 5-6 hours per day with several rest breaks and even stopped at points along the way for several days at a time. This seemed like a very reasonable amount of use for any vehicle in reasonable condition/age, it was driven gently and well below the speed limit.

Further, I can say with absolute certainty there was never any sort of warning in the gauge system to indicate any indication of overheating during the entire trip, but I could not tell you what the exact temperature was because the gauge system does not even show that kind of detail, it only lights up symbols when things are at the point that they have apparently ceased to function entirely.

Upon returning from this trip, the car started to drive oddly at high speeds, with occasional sort of random, sudden nearly whiplash inducing jolts backwards. I took it to the dealership and was told that the gasket is failing, they rated it at a 3 out of 5 in severity and said it would be over a $2,000 repair job.

I feel like this is Unbelievable for a $20,000 car, with well under 100,000 miles, to not be able to make a very easy trip through the desert in the fall. That said, I don't live in that area and I will admit I don't recall seeing any other Scions while on this trip, so maybe the locals know this is a s**y car for that climate.

I would never again recommend a Scion to anyone looking to buy a car, it seems their engines are poorly designed to fail and absolutely do not have long life expectancy like Toyotas seem to. I also think this is completely unacceptable from a business standpoint and I feel duped by Toyota so I definitely have mixed feelings about buying anything else from them in the future and would caution anyone else considering the same.

Update from Nov 4, 2019: This is actually a 2009 Scion.