It’s a costly endeavor starting a new brand from scratch. Just ask Hyundai, which is reticent about spending the cash to launch a new luxury brand, despite the possibility of juicy profit margins. Scion has been an interesting exercise for Toyota. The Toyota brand itself has lost a lot of younger buyers. Scion was pitched as a way to fix that, positioned as an “experimental” division.
Roughly nine years later, Scion is announcing that it is cutting two models – the xB and xD. The xB is the car that started it all for Scion, and it is being cut? Crazy we know. The boxy original was successful – the redesign, not so much. The original sold in nee volumes, which begs the question why Scion doesn’t try to take the xB back to the basics for another go at it. The original had a formula that worked.
Ironically Hyundai/Kia seems to have usurped Scion’s position with the Veloster and the Soul. They’re doing something right over there. If it wasn’t for the new FR-S being launched as a Scion, we’d be wondering about the future of the brand. We still are a bit…
As of today, the lineup will include the FR-S, iQ and the tC coupe.The iQ won’t be a volume seller, so it’ll be interesting to see what else is in the works for the brand going forward. Given that Scion dealers are within Toyota stores though, there isn’t as much of an impetus to push for heavy volume. Placing FR-S over at Scion makes even more sense in light of these cuts to the product line. If you’ll remember, some of the Scions of the past actually appealed to many older buyers. For the first time we could see the FR-S bringing in a heavily youth-dominated demographic to the brand. Give us more cars like the FR-S (such as a sedan version!) at Scion and we’ll be happy. To have a hope of succeeding, somewhere along the line Scion will need to define what it wants to be again.
