Goodnight Sweet Scion

And the path currently taken by Toyota continues to mimic General Motors of old.

At least Toyota did not wait too long to pull the plug on Scion, unlike GM with Saturn.

And the path currently taken by Toyota continues to mimic General Motors of old.

 

At least Toyota did not wait too long to pull the plug on Scion, unlike GM with Saturn.

It was only 5 years difference between the two.

mr regular has an amazing review of the scion xb on youtube and calls out a lot of gripes that generally plagued scion and the designs it put out. frankly im surprised it mad it this long...

This is the kind of thing that happens when a brand for old people tries to be cool.

Just swap the badges, no one will notice..they are all sitting on the same lot at the local Toyota-Scion store...

I guess their target Millenial customers all grew up and moved on to Toyotas...

 

And the path currently taken by Toyota continues to mimic General Motors of old.

 

At least Toyota did not wait too long to pull the plug on Scion, unlike GM with Saturn.

 

It was only 5 years difference between the two.

 

Only 5 year difference?

Why does it feel much sooner?

I dont know whether its because I perceive  Saturn to have been with us as long as Pontiac was..._{(yeah, I know Pontiac=1926 and Saturn=1988 or 1989 or 1990)} because Saturn did feel like  it was part of the GM family for a helluva long time because I kinda liked Saturn...

Or because I feel like it was just yesterday literally   that Toyota announced they wanted to start selling cars to Generation X & Y and they will create a new brand underneath the Toyota nameplate...because I never took to the Scion brand...because ugly as sin cars...

I'm someone that Scion could target, and I would consider their cars.

It's one of those brands that yeah maybe their cars are a good value- an perhaps the iA, which is a Mazda is probably excellent for the money.

But I'm the kind that would just save a bit more to get a decent mid-size sedan. The new Malibu or Mazda 6 could attract my dollars way better than any Scion ever could.

I don't know how to express my utter sadness in words.  So I won't post in this thread.

This makes sense. Scion sales are junk. The GT86 would sell better as a Toyota, and the tC was a good Celica/Grand Am coupe type replacement 10 years ago but it is well past due now.

Toyota should just make a Celica off the Corolla platform, and build a new boxy thing to compete with Kia Soul. Those Mazda rebadge Scions that will become Toyotas won't do anything.

Well it might have something to do with the fact that Toyota just bought full control of Daihatsu. Daihatsu will become the new Scion. Otherwise there are too many divisions.

Finally, a stupid idea that could have been done under Toyota is dead. They hit it on the nose when the comment was made of Toyota being like GM of old. Right now there is still too many name plates in the auto world. As a true global economy kicks in, I expect to see more name plates retire as they move to less. The big boys will survive and the small one will die. China is the next place to end up having auto name plate reduction. Way to many china companies trying to build cars and are only equal to Yugo or worse.

In a weird way, I'd suggest Scion was a victim of its parent's success, as well as the fact that figuring out what Millennials find appealing is like herding cats. 

With declining license rates and millennials typically less jazzed on cars, the family's hand-me-down, faultlessly reliable Camry is an attractive vehicle for a young person to learn on, and then continue driving until their mid-20's.

There's little incentive for a young person or their family to purchase a new Scion when Mom's sedan runs just fine, and then Mom can upgrade to a lightly used RX350. 

By the time a late-20 something millennial is ready for a new car, they'll either find Scion's vehicles to be comical, pseudo-urban trappings of what was considered cool in 2004, or just uncompetitive against other vehicles. 

Scion loses on all fronts to what everyone else is putting out as a competitive entry level auto.

xB fueled Scion. It was part of that bunch, PT Cruiser, HHR, xB, those odd vehicles that were momentarily cool alternatives to sedans and brought in acceptance of new forms of vehicle packaging.

Since then, buyers welcomed 'new forms of vehicle packaging', and sedans continue to slide....but the masses now seem set on a standard design language for what crossovers etc. should be.  In other words the experimentation phase is over, and everything is being mandated to fit the crossover styling formula.

Well, if that's going to be the net result, then just sell a few more RAVs and highlanders.

Even the Venza had to die, that is how rigid the rules are getting for vehicles that are not sedans.

xB fueled Scion. It was part of that bunch, PT Cruiser, HHR, xB, those odd vehicles that were momentarily cool alternatives to sedans and brought in acceptance of new forms of vehicle packaging.

 

Since then, buyers welcomed 'new forms of vehicle packaging', and sedans continue to slide....but the masses now seem set on a standard design language for what crossovers etc. should be.  In other words the experimentation phase is over, and everything is being mandated to fit the crossover styling formula.

 

Well, if that's going to be the net result, then just sell a few more RAVs and highlanders.

 

Even the Venza had to die, that is how rigid the rules are getting for vehicles that are not sedans.

The Venza had a face only a mother could love... that was the primary issue there.  It was just uuuugly. 

The Scion brand dying is really a shame. And it's a shame because of what it could have been. Toyota had an opportunity here to throw whatever crazy car they wanted on the market, and if flopped, shrug their shoulders and say, "Who cares?!?" And they totally squandered it. Instead of being an outlet for goofy, risky, out-there automotive ideas, they became just another brand under the Toyota umbrella that was ruled by bean counters and conservative thought.


The problem with Scion was that they were afraid of their own success. When they came out with the xB and it proved to be wildly successful, they started overthinking things. They started applying their Toyota mentality to the Scion brand. They became worried about sales numbers and the success of their models, and that led to safe calls with mediocre vehicles that didn't break any new grounds on the design, packaging, value, etc fronts. They basically just started making vehicles that could have been Toyotas.


Which leads us to today. For the last several years, having the Scion brand was a waste. You had no vehicles that were unorthodox or unconventional in the lineup, which was what the brand was for in the first place. And all the vehicles they did have would have been better served as Toyotas. Instead, it just limited the sales and exposure of those vehicles, and at least in the case of FR-S, prevented an improvement of Toyota's image. The death of Scion happened as soon as the second generation wave of products arrived.


I own a 2005 Scion xB, and people can talk trash about it and the brand all they want, but it is a brilliant little car. Unapologetically functional, efficient, well-built, affordable, reliable, unconventional in style. It was so square (pun intended) it was cool. It is such an obviously un-American car. It actually has good torque for city driving, it rides fairly well, it gets almost 30mpg in town, it has good steering, it is impossibly roomy inside, it does awesome in snow, and the thing will last to 400,000 miles with just basic maintenance. And the crazy thing is, after 11 years and 130,00 miles, it's still worth almost half of it's original MSRP. I'll never get rid of the thing, I love it.


Ultimately, the writing was on the wall for this brand a long time ago. Just one more casualty in the name of homogeneous autodom.

 

xB fueled Scion. It was part of that bunch, PT Cruiser, HHR, xB, those odd vehicles that were momentarily cool alternatives to sedans and brought in acceptance of new forms of vehicle packaging.

 

Since then, buyers welcomed 'new forms of vehicle packaging', and sedans continue to slide....but the masses now seem set on a standard design language for what crossovers etc. should be.  In other words the experimentation phase is over, and everything is being mandated to fit the crossover styling formula.

 

Well, if that's going to be the net result, then just sell a few more RAVs and highlanders.

 

Even the Venza had to die, that is how rigid the rules are getting for vehicles that are not sedans.

 

The Venza had a face only a mother could love... that was the primary issue there.  It was just uuuugly. 

 

it had a proportioning problem.  It was not quite tall enough to look like a crossover.  It still looked a bit like a wagon.

The Scion brand dying is really a shame. And it's a shame because of what it could have been. Toyota had an opportunity here to throw whatever crazy car they wanted on the market, and if flopped, shrug their shoulders and say, "Who cares?!?" And they totally squandered it. Instead of being an outlet for goofy, risky, out-there automotive ideas, they became just another brand under the Toyota umbrella that was ruled by bean counters and conservative thought.

The problem with Scion was that they were afraid of their own success. When they came out with the xB and it proved to be wildly successful, they started overthinking things. They started applying their Toyota mentality to the Scion brand. They became worried about sales numbers and the success of their models, and that led to safe calls with mediocre vehicles that didn't break any new grounds on the design, packaging, value, etc fronts. They basically just started making vehicles that could have been Toyotas.

Which leads us to today. For the last several years, having the Scion brand was a waste. You had no vehicles that were unorthodox or unconventional in the lineup, which was what the brand was for in the first place. And all the vehicles they did have would have been better served as Toyotas. Instead, it just limited the sales and exposure of those vehicles, and at least in the case of FR-S, prevented an improvement of Toyota's image. The death of Scion happened as soon as the second generation wave of products arrived.

I own a 2005 Scion xB, and people can talk trash about it and the brand all they want, but it is a brilliant little car. Unapologetically functional, efficient, well-built, affordable, reliable, unconventional in style. It was so square (pun intended) it was cool. It is such an obviously un-American car. It actually has good torque for city driving, it rides fairly well, it gets almost 30mpg in town, it has good steering, it is impossibly roomy inside, it does awesome in snow, and the thing will last to 400,000 miles with just basic maintenance. And the crazy thing is, after 11 years and 130,00 miles, it's still worth almost half of it's original MSRP. I'll never get rid of the thing, I love it.

Ultimately, the writing was on the wall for this brand a long time ago. Just one more casualty in the name of homogeneous autodom.

I can pretty much agree with this. Bottom line it was a chance to be different. And kids do like different, even some people. It didn't even have to be crazy, just something different along the lines of the xb.

The xB grew on me...I even like the second gen quite a bit....

 

The Scion brand dying is really a shame. And it's a shame because of what it could have been. Toyota had an opportunity here to throw whatever crazy car they wanted on the market, and if flopped, shrug their shoulders and say, "Who cares?!?" And they totally squandered it. Instead of being an outlet for goofy, risky, out-there automotive ideas, they became just another brand under the Toyota umbrella that was ruled by bean counters and conservative thought.

The problem with Scion was that they were afraid of their own success. When they came out with the xB and it proved to be wildly successful, they started overthinking things. They started applying their Toyota mentality to the Scion brand. They became worried about sales numbers and the success of their models, and that led to safe calls with mediocre vehicles that didn't break any new grounds on the design, packaging, value, etc fronts. They basically just started making vehicles that could have been Toyotas.

Which leads us to today. For the last several years, having the Scion brand was a waste. You had no vehicles that were unorthodox or unconventional in the lineup, which was what the brand was for in the first place. And all the vehicles they did have would have been better served as Toyotas. Instead, it just limited the sales and exposure of those vehicles, and at least in the case of FR-S, prevented an improvement of Toyota's image. The death of Scion happened as soon as the second generation wave of products arrived.

I own a 2005 Scion xB, and people can talk trash about it and the brand all they want, but it is a brilliant little car. Unapologetically functional, efficient, well-built, affordable, reliable, unconventional in style. It was so square (pun intended) it was cool. It is such an obviously un-American car. It actually has good torque for city driving, it rides fairly well, it gets almost 30mpg in town, it has good steering, it is impossibly roomy inside, it does awesome in snow, and the thing will last to 400,000 miles with just basic maintenance. And the crazy thing is, after 11 years and 130,00 miles, it's still worth almost half of it's original MSRP. I'll never get rid of the thing, I love it.

Ultimately, the writing was on the wall for this brand a long time ago. Just one more casualty in the name of homogeneous autodom.

 

 

I can pretty much agree with this. Bottom line it was a chance to be different. And kids do like different, even some people. It didn't even have to be crazy, just something different along the lines of the xb.

 

The xB grew on me...I even like the second gen quite a bit....

 

While never a fan of the scion auto's as they felt cheap to me when you were in one but then it was supposed to be an entry point, I think Scion is where Prius and all EV's for Toyota should have been. What the fuggly Iphone is to millennials Scion could have been to them also. A whole little or lot of different. Toyota due to their ultra conservative be like everyone else blew their chance to really make themselves different.