Maroon / gold (Super Custom?) Ashington, 03/10/2019

Ashington (Northumberland), seen yesterday on Lintonville Parkway heading in as I was heading out. This looked like a super Custom, maroon & gold livery with a standard factory roof height. IIRC, the van was on a W prefix plate and it was sparkling like a very sparkly thing in the low late afternoon sun.
Lovely van, whoever you were, made my day seeing it!

I was the grinning person in the opposite carriageway, driving my daily Toyota, seen below in case anyone doesn't know what a bB looks like :

This looks more like a Toyota Rukus or a Nissan Cube??

The Cube is much smaller inside and a little shorter and less tall, I was shopping for one of them when I discovered that I can't fit between the front seat and the dashboard, so went to view a bB locally, drove that, then travelled 300 miles south to buy mine, as it only had 119000 on the clock and even now has only covered 181000 since I bought it some 3 & 1/2 years ago.
Rukus and Rumion are much larger cars, rare in the UK but interesting in their way, if larger engines with less power are your thing. There is a connection to the bB though but, which is that the Rukus was also the second generation Scion xB, the USA-built bB with bucket seats replacing the bB's much more practical 3 abreast bench up front, floor mounted gear lever with a manual option not available in the bB, floor mounted, hand operated parking brake and a fixed rear seat, something to do with the US version using the 4x4 shell even though all xBs were front wheel drive only, front wheel drive bBs all have a rear seat that slides right the way back for when you need more passenger space than luggage space, or when the bed is required.

Second generation bBs evolved differently from the Scion xB and were also sold as the Subaru Dex, the Daihatsu Coo (for the JDM), Daihatsu Materia (UK & RoI) and of course the Toyota badged bB itself, which was released in 1999, so before Datsun came up with the famously weird Cube, though an earlier car named Cube was built by them, only that looked much more conventional, like a Honda Fit (Jazz in the UK) but without that car's versatile seat folding arrangements.

There's a Wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_bB#Subaru_Dex , but this has some errors, for example the bB and its badge engineered variations were all available with both the 1500 and 1300cc options, though rarest of the lot and JDM only, is the 131 bhp (N/A) 2NZ (1300cc) engine as found in some 1st gen bBs, including mine thank goodness, as the stock 1NZ (1500cc) is just as strong but came with 108bhp and most 2NZs were only blessed with 90bhp at most, which would have made long drives a rather less enjoyable experience.

It comes as no surprise to find that the bB is every bit as rock solid reliable as my much loved Corolla Liftback (a 1989 AE92R) and I expect similarly trustworthy service from Yoda, a far simpler vehicle in that there's even less complex stuff to fail, so the theory goes..

You'll wet your pants over the ute/truck/mobility version of the bB called the Open Deck
(If I can remember how to load pics!)

Here's a link to one for sale in my neck o the woods.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/toyota/auction-2356870846.htm

The Open Deck is well represented in the UK too, though most of the local ones are battered, abused cars that often seem to have lost their shine, especially the yellow ones. Most of the bBs currently on eBay and Gumtree in the UK are Open Decks, seemingly we as a nation prefer eccentric cars, as if the MPV version weren't eccentric enough..