For the past couple of years, we have reporting on countless rumorpile stories concerning the Scion FR-S. Most of these stories have dealt with a convertible and turbo power, and whether or not they are off or back on the table. Well it might be that two things may never come.
Wards Auto spoke with Doug Murtha, senior vice president at Scion. Murtha explained that Toyota couldn't make a business case for either proposal.
“So on the convertible we went down swinging,” said Murtha. “I think we were pretty aggressive on our (submitted plan), but we looked at what we would have conceivably lost on the product and said, ‘We’re not going to even push it further.’ Nobody was more disappointed than we were.”
This isn't the news the FR-S wanted to hear. At the moment, the model has been experiencing sales drop for most of the year. This is due to the phenomenon of sports car sales falling off halfway through the lifecycle of the vehicle, something Murtha admits.
“You get 24 months out of those products and they tend to have a steep fall-off (and) we’re seeing a little bit of that. I don’t think that’s necessarily a surprise. I think the challenge is back to us to do some interesting things that keep the vehicle fresh.”
For now, Scion is hoping the recently launched FR-S Release Series 1.0 will be able to bring back some interest in the sports coupe.
Source: Wards Auto
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