After more than a decade and more than one million vehicles sold, Toyota announced Wednesday it was ending its Scion brand.
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“It’s been a great run and I’m proud that the spirit of Scion will live on through the knowledge and products soon to be available through the Toyota network”, said Scion vice president Andrew Gilleland.
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.
Starting in August, the model year 2017 Scion FR-S sports auto, iA sedan and iM 5-door hatchback vehicles will be rebadged as Toyota vehicles. This includes the FR-S sports vehicle, iA sedan and iM hatchback.
Scion owners will continue to visit Toyota dealerships to have their cars serviced.
The Top-Selling Car At Scion Is the Toyota Celica GTThose who owned or remember the Toyota Celica know that the Scion tC (as in Toyota Celica) was never a new vehicle.
“When Scion debuted in 2003, it was meant to bring in a younger demographic to Toyota, but growth was derailed by the recession and the brand never reached its intended volume targets or demographic”, said KBB analyst Rebecca Lindland.
We’re used to seeing domestic brands like Mercury, Oldsmobile and Plymouth die, and even import brands ranging from Daihatsu to Isuzu to Renault have left the USA market over the years. Could be, but the fact remains that Scion sales a year ago totaled 56,000, less than half the brand’s peak of 173,000 in 2005, according to Automotive News.
But sales have been lagging for a while now, presumably due to younger shoppers not being able to afford an automobile purchase – though Toyota says its intended audience has also grown up.
Beatty said Toyota would work closely with its dealer council in the transition.
And as MotorTrend points out, “A brand targeted at young people in an era when those young people are buying fewer and fewer cars occupies an extremely narrow niche”. It’s likely their parents or older family members looked to Toyota to provide similar attributes; Scion was just the younger version.
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M – Scion, Toyota’s onetime youth-oriented brand, has come to the end of the road. It’s only officially being killed off now, but it’s felt like the brand has been dying for the past several years.
