Remember the Toyota Echo? In other parts of the world, they were the first generation of the Yaris, and in still other places, they were known as the comical-sounding Platz. Because it sounds like plotz. And perhaps you’ll consider plotzing like I did when I show you this Echo I happened to see, which, thanks to the inspired and unexpected addition of a big bull bar, may be the most badass Echo still buzzing down the streets of this great and complex nation of ours.
Before I get into talking about this particular Echo, it’s worth talking Echoes themselves, because they were interesting little cars. The Echo, which shared most of its mechanicals with the Scions xA and xB and the Toyota WiLL Vi, was built between 1999 and 2005, and was part of a plan by Toyota to recruit more young buyers to the brand, much like what Toyota was hoping their Scion sub-brand would do in 2003.
And, like Scion, the Echo seemed to do the opposite of what their builders wanted, attracting older buyers instead of younger ones, but those older buyers were very loyal and appreciative of this little car’s charms.
Here’s some commercials that show how desperately Toyota wanted The Youths to buy some Echos:
Those swirly colors, that birds-eye-view photography angle, once a MySpace selfie staple, those were all how one tried to lure kids into spending their money in the early 2000s.
This next commercial featured the famous Arecibo Radio Telescope, which, as you likely remember, was what pretty much everyone under 30 who was looking for a cheap car in America was obsessed with:
The Echo had a pretty novel design, being unusually tall for its length, giving it a kind of endearing, cartoonish look.
There was a coupé version as well as a four-door, and I always thought these had a friendly sort of charm. Maybe that’s why when I saw an Echo – a rare sight to see at all these days – on the road wearing a full bull bar bumper setup, it caught my attention.
It looks either like a geeky kid wearing an unfortunate orthodontic headgear or a scrappy pug armored up and ready for a fight. Personally, I love the dichotomy of this chubby little subcompact wearing that huge add-on bumper setup. It feels just a bit unhinged, in a good way.
Oh, and as an aside, look how nicely this character line defines the amber reflector area of the side marker lamp:
That’s just a nice little touch.
So, what is this person doing with their echo that they need it fitted with such a battering ram? Did they, like me, smack into too many deer? Because I considered what a bull bar might look like on my Pao after I hit a second deer in the car:
I didn’t do it, though, but this Echo owner certainly did. That bull bar on the Echo has big rubberized push bars/bumper guards, which makes me wonder if this car may be used to move things around somewhere? Or maybe the owner just likes sending shopping carts skittering around parking lots at wild speeds, like pinballs, just for fun.
There are a few dents in that Echo’s hood that suggest maybe there were some, uh, incidents, that brought this on.
Maybe they’re tired of hitting deer. Or hoping to hit more deer. I hope it’s just deer, at least. Or tired of being intimidated by bigger cars. Maybe this little Echo is just ready to take on whatever the world throws at it, and it is equipped accordingly, with substantial front-end protection and one lone cyclopean yellow foglamp?
Whatever the reason, I think it makes this Echo look and feel pretty badass, and I salute you, armored Echo driver!
It always seems that when manufs make a car for the yutes, but then end up selling a load of them to the oldies, they seem disappointed. Which is weird, because the best way to get cars into the hands of yutes is when gran gives up driving. So really, having these being bought new by oldies will get a load of them being driven by kids anyway.
If you’ve never tested how fast a shopping cart will go before it leaps vertically into the air in an effort to emulate a deer, have you really lived? My testing found that in one particular parking lot a steady state 35 mph was enough, but steady acceleration could keep one on the ground until around 45 mph. Definitely a left foot covering the brake adventure. Whoever put a bull bar on this Echo clearly knows how to live.
Torch, the pic of the Pao parked next to Rewind Retrobar made me a little sad, since this past Saturday was their last day in business.
On a positive note, I heard there’s a barcade in Chapel Hill called Baxter’s. I plan on reaching out to maybe establish a recurring TriangleRAD meetup there, which would be right in your backyard. I’ll keep you posted.
Odd, my Jewish friends around Cleveland used “plotz” more to mean like a face plant. From what I picked up while living there for a couple of years, Yiddish has more than its fair share of fun, colorful words and phrases.
Anyway, rest in peace or pieces, Arecibo Radio Telescope.
I rented one of these in Canada and it drove nothing like my friend’s 1G xB (which I quite enjoyed driving around town).
I’m also interested in the giant fog light. This person is prepared for…something.
So weird that it’s off-center.
The “bull/’roo” bar reminded me of an interesting style choice someone in Beaumont, TX made for their brand-new F-250 nine years ago. It gave me serious Dame Edna vibes at the time.
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Woof. I see it too.
I’ll be very impressed if someone can identify what vehicle the bull bars came from, based on the headlight outline shape and maybe its height with respect to the mounting attachment.
My theory: this particular Echo is actually an unmarked police pursuit vehicle. The bull bar is there to facilitate PIT maneuvers at speed. Under the hood is a modified powerplant based on a contemporaneous Toyota rally car, complete with twin turbos.
🙂
I drove an Echo a LOT. It belonged to a 90-something-year-old neighbor of mine who was going blind (macular degeneration gets most of us if we manage to live long enough) and I’d drive her to her regular eye doctor appoinments on Melrose. I’d have to kill a couple hours, so I’d mosey over to nearby Fairfax and check out the big thrift store there, and sometimes pick up a nice marble rye from the bakery across the street.
The Echo was a great car for what it is. What it is not: luxurious, powerful/fast, or (probably) all that safe in a severe collision. What it IS: easy and even a bit entertaining to drive with decent pep for an econobox, with great visibility, decent comfort, shockingly easy to parallel park (I daresay even Ray Charles could have done it in an Echo), and it even had some personality (albeit a weird personality given its looks). I was honestly a bit heartbroken when I learned that her Echo got sold to her tax preparer’s adult son. 🙁 Foolishly, I assumed that I’d likely get first dibs given all the chaufrerring I’d done for her over the years, but I got gazumped by a guy who barely knew her.
It’s not like I needed another car of course, but that homely/pugnacious little Echo was such a good local runabout, and of course it got far better MPG than anything I’ve owned since selling my VW TDI. I had a fantasy about taking a plasma cutter to the back half of the greenhouse, and reinforcing it with a roll cage before affixing one of those aluminum cargo boxes they put into the belly of jetliners. Not that this would actually have happened of course, but even stock (without the ability to carry a dryer) the Echo had a certain charm. I miss it.
Ha! Echo and police pursuit vehicle are not words I expected to see in the same sentence.
Related tale: My old neighbor had a Panther Grand Marquis with a trailer hitch. He was one of the lazy types who couldn’t be bothered to remove the drawbar and ball when not in use. Then one day the car got hit from behind. The hitch took all the forces, transferred them directly to the car’s frame, and bent the frame so badly that the rear doors sprung open, never to close properly again.
I have the same worry with this Echo, only maybe worse. Unibody cars are designed to bend and crumple in a certain, specific way when the (stock) bumper gets hit. The addition of the bull bar will transfer collision forces in a way that Toyota designers couldn’t have foreseen, and I’m frightened for the outcome for the car’s occupants.
College friend had an ’81 F150. Rusted out, POS. Got rear ended by a late model Acura. Looks at the Acura – crumpled hood, bumper, puking coolant. Looks at his truck. Acura owner says “Mighty strong bumper you got there son”. Pal spits out tabacco, says “You asshole, you scratched my trailer hitch ball.”
Has Toyota offered to fix the Arecibo Radio Telescope? Can’t believe they drove a car around it, let it collapse and just walked away..
Reminds me of my HS friend’s Datsun 1200 with a pair of industrial I beam bumpers. Getting out of tight downtown parallel parking situations was no problem.
My favorite bumper was a friends rough cut 4×4. No matter what he pushed, the bumper never scratched or rusted.
Came to see the Echo, but glad I stayed to see the Pao rendering. I feel like the Pao needs to spend some time in the Galpin Garage to receive a custom bull bar setup especially if it could be tied into the existing bumper. Although with the Pao’s desire for deer meat, a NERF bar might be a better bet, but you know one that is actually made of NERF foam.
Mmmmm: deer meat! 🙂 Perhaps Galpin could weld a few ‘ornamental’ spikes onto the Pao’s bull bar and over time, it could be festooned with rotting/mumified remains of those deer unfortunate enough to encounter it like some sort of Mad Max homage?
PAO! The venison maker.
I think what this car really needs is a great big giant wing on the back. That will amp up the onlooker-confusion factor significantly.
If it was heavy enough, it would counterbalance the bull bar!
Seems very Australia to me. I like the single, off-center fog light.
Why do car companies bother to market to the youts? They don’t have any money. Market to the old gits, they have all of it.
Generally true. Except for that tiny group of Youtubers/influencers who make actual $$$, young folks are cash poor.
Most of them are faking it too. The only yout with real money are the Trustafarians and the tiny numbers who get finance-bro jobs. The former spend money like they are old gits anyway, and the latter either have no free time or are spending ALL of their money to live in places where owning a car is a liability.
“You can sell a young man’s car to an old man, but not an old man’s car to a young one.” Bill Mitchell, I believe, or maybe John Delorean.
Those guys of old knew what they were doing.
No lie. Marketing to young buyers is the most effective way to rope in old buyers.
Frankly it worked for me – see all the young’uns in the 2015 Fit commercials. I bought mine at 59.
It sure looks to me like the bend in the room bars, the dent in the front of the hood and the dent at the windshield washer are in line. As if it had yet another incident AFTER installing them…