Either way, soon we’ll find out if Toyota’s plan to use Scion to induct young shoppers into the fold actually worked.
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Scion’s 22 dedicated team members, who represent sales, marketing, distribution, strategy, and product and accessories planning, will have the opportunity to take on new jobs at Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.in Torrance.
Scion was created to appeal to younger buyers at a time when Toyota and other mainstream brands could not attract emerging Gen X buyers – many of whom viewed Volkswagen as the youth brand. After declining sales the last few years, it was announced today that while the brand will be discontinued, several of their cars will live on, re-badged as Toyota vehicles for Model Year 2017 (MY17). But I suppose Scion cars will endure in some fashion, with FR-S, the iM and the iA surviving the brand collapse.
Since 2015, the company had made efforts to revamp the Scion brand as it showcased a small crossover C-HR concept auto in Los Angeles Autoshow in November 2015.
“In the end, Scion just had fuel economy and price, and those just didn’t stand up as competitive differentiators anymore, especially with plunging gasoline prices leaving dealers with huge inventories of fuel-sippers across the market”.
In a statement, the company acknowledged that Scion would be absorbed into the Toyota brand. Toyota refers to Scion as “an experiment” that taught the parent company how to reach younger buyers. The brand was targeting about 80,000 deliveries this year, Andrew Gilleland, Scion’s vice president, said in an interview last month at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Toyota is working to make the transition easier for customers and dealerships alike.
The sun is setting on Scion, Toyota’s youth-oriented division, at the ripe age of 14. If they could be persuaded to buy a ,000 Scion, Toyota executives rationalized that these buyers would upgrade later to Toyotas or Lexuses, increasing the population of loyal customers.
Toyota also said the move won’t mean any of its products are getting cut and that it won’t change its relationship with partners Mazda and Subaru; those continue as is. Only 56,167 were sold in 2015.
Bob Carter, senior vice president of operations for Toyota Motor Sales told Automotive News there’s no change to the customer.
Scion’s first four years went well, but then its lineup withered thanks largely to Toyota’s unintended-acceleration crisis and the global recession the following years.
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Toyota launched the brand in 2002 in the USA, but only brought it to Canada in late 2010.
