Toyota To Scrap Scion Model
Automobile giant Toyota recently announced the proverbial end to its supposedly youth-oriented Scion brand after a streak of disappointing sales performance to lure young American drivers for more than a decade. Its highest recorded number of car sales was way back in 2006 when 173, 000 Scion cars were reportedly sold in the US. Last year, however, Toyota only posted 56, 167 of such cars sold.
After an apparent setback in its effort to ignite interest in the youth segment, the Toyota Motor Corp. plans to integrate the Scion line into the mainstream Toyota brand by summer.
"This isn't a step backward for Scion; it's a leap forward for Toyota. Scion has allowed us to fast track ideas that would have been challenging to test through the Toyota network," remarked Toyota Motor North America CEO Jim Lentz in an official press release as quoted by The Examiner.
Why did the Scion experiment fail?
With all its intention to create a "youth brand" which ended as a flop, Toyota based the whole idea on a flawed premise.
In an article penned for The Street, Doron Levin cited two main reasons why the Scion brand never delivered what was expected of it. First, the emergence and explosive rise of car-sharing services like Uber and ZipCar currently points to an ongoing trend of young people ditching added "expense" and "hassle" linked to owning and maintaining a car. Second, less and less young people are interested in driving according to a University of Michigan-led study that revealed a significant decline in the number of American youngsters having driving licenses.
From another viewpoint, car review author Michael Ballaban, criticized the Scion brand as being un-youth to begin with.
"Scion's thesis statement, the image it launched with, was half right and half a profane insult to the intelligence of the people who were supposed to buy it...No one was rushing to be your friend when you had a Scion...It had no power and no style. And that's actually what young people want. Something with either a fast, loud engine that annoys parents, or something that at least looks good," remarked Ballaban in his article that appeared on Jalopnik.
