Toyota Killing Scion as Youth Brand Struggles to Regain Traction

“Scion has allowed us to fast track ideas that would have been challenging to test through the Toyota network”, Jim Lentz, CEO-Toyota Motor North America says in a statement.

After more than a decade and more than one million vehicles sold, Toyota announced Wednesday it was ending its Scion brand.

Besides the emphasis on genuinely creative ads focused on youth customers, Scion will be remembered as the brand that sold badge-engineered Toyota models.

Established in 2003, Scion was aimed at younger urban buyers with distinct styling, cheaper prices, and edgy experiential marketing.

The Japanese automaker said the Scion FR-S, iA sedan and iM hatchback will be re-badged as Toyotas. He said while Gen Xers wouldn’t touch the same brand their parents and grandparents liked, Millennials see Toyota more favorably than they did Scion.

While Scion had some critical and sales successes such as the TC sports coupe and the XB crossover, it never lived up to Toyota’s expectations in terms of sales and brand reach.

Rumors have been swirling since late last night that Toyota is set to shut down Scion.

All 1,004 Scion dealers nationwide are also Toyota dealers, so it’s just a matter of removing the signage and stripping out the Scion elements, said Nancy Hubbell, spokesperson for the brand formerly known as Scion.

However, Scion sales had tumbled over the past few years, peaking at 173,034 in 2006 and then declining to 68,321 in 2013, 58,009 in 2014, and just 56,167 last year. Some Scion employees will continue to work for the parent company. “Our goal was to make Toyota and our dealers stronger by learning how to better attract and engage young customers”. Those Corollas were literally next to the Scion tC and other small cars inside Toyota dealerships.

The addition of specialty cars – the FR-S coupe co-developed with Subaru and the bite-size iQ microcar – gave Scion new life two years later. Much of the shopping could be done online, except for signing the deal and picking up the auto.

As time went on and sales failed to stabilize, Scion abandoned its original pitch to younger buyers, and in 2011 it made things official by dropping the outsider identity and advertising its line-up to a broader base of potential customers.