Scion kills off its Scion brand

Turns out, maybe driving the same auto as Dad isn’t so bad: Toyota announced today that it is eliminating Scion, the brand it established in 2003 to attract younger buyers who considered Toyotas too stodgy.

Scion cars getting the call up to the varsity squad for the 2017 model year include the FR-S sports vehicle, iA sedan and iM 5-door hatchback, as well as the CH-R concept that debuted at the Los Angeles Auto Show last fall.

“Scion has allowed us to fast-track ideas that would have been challenging to test through the Toyota network”, Toyota North America Chief Executive Jim Lentz said in a statement. The Scion tC coupe will be discontinued, with production ending in August. Toyota refers to Scion as “an experiment” that taught the parent company how to reach younger buyers. In Canada, 65 per cent of Scions were purchased by customers new to the Toyota family and Scion has one of the youngest average customer age in the industry of 39 years.

“For those buyers, frankly speaking, Toyota as a brand is more aspirational than Scion was”, Carter said. Sales stood at 56,167 in 2015. The fact of the matter is that young people have come to appreciate the traditional attribute of the Toyota brand.

Scion acted as a funnel to bring new buyers to Toyota, Lentz says, with 70% of Scion buyers never having owned a Toyota-made vehicle.

The cars were sold at Toyota (TM) dealerships but in areas set off from the rest of the showroom and, when buying a Scion, there was no haggling. Scion owners will continue to receive those services from Toyota dealerships and service centers. The brand will be axed in August and existing Scion models will be magically transformed into Toyotas, sort of like Cinderella at midnight.

There’s also no denying that Scion sales had slumped steadily since their peak in 2006, not helped by a two-year gap, 2013-2015, when dealers received no new product. Times have changed with Millennials being in the market and viewing Toyota favorably and as a better brand than Scion. “Scion products have not resonated with consumers, and the lineup grew stale”, Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Rebecca Lindland told Business Insider. The brand was available nationwide by 2004 and later expanded into Canada in 2010.

Say goodbye to the Scion brand because, soon, it’s going to vanish from the Earth.