Demise of Toyota’s Scion brand mirrors that of GM’s Saturn
Sheer lack of interest results in line’s demise
The news of Toyota putting to rest its long- suffering Scion brand should have come as no surprise. With minimal new product investment for more than a decade and a movement away from the Scion brand’s original values, the demise of the Japanese automaker’s so- called youth brand can be best described as a death by a thousand cuts.
Even more worrisome for Toyota fans is how similar the Japanese automaker’s bungling of Scion mirrors General Motors’ spoiling of its defunct Saturn marque. GM created Saturn in the mid1980s to attract buyers who were purchasing Japanese imports. Sold as “a different kind of car company,” Saturn had some initial sales success with a unique, no-hassle sales process and fuel- efficient small cars with dent-resistant body panels.
However, Saturn’s troubles began a decade later when a financially struggling GM stopped investing in brand-exclusive products. Not so “different” anymore, GM pulled the plug on Saturn, along with Pontiac, Saab and Hummer, as part of its bankruptcy recovery plans in 2009.
Similar to Saturn, Scion was created to be different. The Toyota brand was first launched as a collection of small, Japanese- market vehicles for 2003 to attract young, urban American buyers who would never consider buying a Toyota like their parents drove. Initially a success, Scion sales peaked at 175,000 units in 2006.
But then, just as GM cynically took advantage of the goodwill created by its original Saturn concept, Toyota seriously misjudged the loyalty of Scion customers. In quick order, the first Scion xB and xA models were replaced with larger, heavier and less- distinctive looking versions. And guess what? Customers who created Scion’s initial success weren’t all that impressed by the new Americanized second-generation cars.
Not unexpectedly, Scion’s U. S. annual sales plummeted, to just 58,000 by 2009. And ( again, like GM), parent Toyota stopped investing in new Scion products. With the exception of the second- generation 2011 tC Coupe, Scion relied on special editions during a time when small cars from Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Ford and others started to eat Scion’s breakfast, lunch and dinner.
At this point in the Scion s t or y, y ou would have thought Toyota had suffered enough and would pack it in. But instead, it pushed ahead with plans to expand the lame-duck brand and its aging product lineup into Canada, with highly optimistic sales expectations. In October 2009, a year before Scion’s Canadian- market l aunch, Toyota Canada’s president, Yoichi Tomihara, projected that by 2013 over 30,000 Scions would be sold annually in Canada.
When Scion vehicles became available at Canadian Toyota dealers in fall 2010, reality started to creep in. By 2015, only 4,659 Scions were being sold in Canada.
Not only is that a far cry from the 30,000 per year Toyota Canada officials had hoped for, it’s a fraction of what single nameplates such as the Honda Fit (9,088), Kia Soul ( 13,335) and Hyundai Accent ( 19,371) sold in Canada last year.
So why did Scion fail? Someone at some point will likely write a book about Toyota’s botched “youth” brand experiment. But the condensed version seems to be similar to why GM’s Saturn died: a sheer lack of interest in what was not a core part of Scion’s parent’s business. The fact that Scion lived on for 10 years after its sales started to sag in 2006 says more about the deep coffers of Toyota.
In truth, during the past decade of malaise for Scion, the Japanese automaker had plenty of opportunities to make the brand relevant again. For starters, Scion designers never seemed to lack new ideas. For years, Scion would tease us with an interesting concept at each New York auto show, but like the 2008 Hako Coupe, they would never see the production line.
To rationalize its poor sales, Toyota often said Scion was a “marketing experiment,” to draw in younger buyers who would never consider a fuddy- duddy Toyota. But recent Scions ( save for the quirky and unsellable iQ city car) were anything but “experimental” or trendy. For example, the stillborn 2017 Scion C-HR small crossover, Toyota’s six- years- too- late response to the Nissan Juke, tells you everything you need to know about Scion’s lazy product investment.
In the end, Scion could have been much more than a dumping ground for products the mother ship didn’t feel confident in selling as Toyotas. Like BMW’s “i” brand, Toyota could have employed Scion to sell Toyota’s alternativefuel vehicles, like its plug-in electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Or, like what Mercedes-Benz has attempted with its Smart city cars, Scion could have been at the forefront of a Toyota car-sharing program.
Of course, all this is now moot. And the demise of Scion may not mean Toyota has given up on Millennial and Generation Z consumers. Lost in the Scion news was Toyota’s purchase of fellow Japanese automaker, Daihatsu. Reportedly, Toyota’s intent is to make the small carmaker a competitor to BMW’s Mini brand on a global scale, a mission the automaker never felt confident or bold enough to take on with its now-dead Scion.