Five Axis Scion xA - Audio, Accessories & Review

According to Troy Sumitomo, president of Five Axis, "a wide-body conversion was a given." Of course, many of us come up with ideas like this, but it is Five Axis that follows all of them through to fruition. The concept for the Five Axis xA Speedster was to incorporate both the public display element of the Wide-body DJ xB and the aggressive aerodynamic styling of the Wide-body tC. Paying close attention to Scion's MTV-generation targeted audience, Five Axis focused on one of the most prevalent hobbies nowadays-playing video games. Flash forward from the days of the Commodore and the original Nintendo, and modern video games are massively complex, graphics-driven magic boxes that continue to amaze both children and adults. With Playstations and Xbox's flying off the shelves, it was only a matter of time before people began incorporating TV's and games into their cars, unable to sever their umbilical cord-like attachment to video games.

Refusing to play their fiddle to everyone else's tune, Five Axis went beyond the path of just installing some LCD screens and a console into their xA. "Anyone can hook a game console up to a TV in a car so we had to go one step further... okay, maybe two," Sumitomo said. Instead of building a car where you just sit and pick up a controller to play games inside, Five Axis created an xA that would let you enter the game. With the underside of the motorized front-flipping hood acting as a screen for a high-lumen Casio video projector, the driver would be able to stop driving for real and use the MadCatz steering wheel and pedals to play Microsoft's latest driving game, Forza Motorsport, on the in-car Xbox 360. Plus, with the rear-motorized deck flipped straight up, two more Xbox 360 hub-linked gaming centers appear. Complete with LCD monitors and MadCatz wireless controllers, the two extra gaming stations allow three players total to race against each other at the same time.

Obviously, it is not a good idea to be playing video games projected on an open hood with the same steering wheel and pedals that are able to control the entire car. I don't know how good you are, but when I play racing games, I always seem to spend half my time hitting walls or catching air. It wouldn't exactly be the greatest thing if the car responded to my controls and ran into walls whenever I hit them in video games. To counter this point, Five Axis allowed the factory pedals to interface with the Xbox and made the stock Scion steering wheel interchangeable with the MadCatz gaming wheel.