Toyota has announced that they will be absorbing the Scion brand, ending the youth brand’s 13 year run. As of the 2017 model year, all Scion branded vehicles will become Toyotas and will be sold under the Toyota nameplate.
Scion sells to a younger audience than any other vehicle brand, with an average buyer being age 35 and with some models selling to an average buyer as young as 29. This is about half the age of the industry’s average new car buyer and shows that the Scion brand found a metric that clicked with younger new car shoppers. Scion also brought nearly three quarters of its buyers to the Toyota brand, with more first-time purchasers and first-time Toyota brand buyers than repeat buyers for the brand.
As of August of this year, when 2017 model year vehicles begin to appear, the Scion brand will phase out with all of its vehicles, such as the Scion FR-S, iA and iM, will become Toyota-badged products. From there, it is likely that some of the Toyota lineup will begin to see a little shakeup as either a former Scion or a current Toyota vehicle takes precedence and the other is dropped or renamed and absorbed. Scion will be ending production of the tC this model year in favor of the C-HR, which was introduced at the LA Auto Show.
Our Predictions
We predict that the current Scion iM will become a Toyota Corolla Hatchback, since the two are so functionally similar. It’s likely that name changes will soon come to several Scion vehicles as well. The iA has a non-conventional Toyota name, so we expect to see it changed. The FR-S will likely remain as-is with perhaps cosmetic changes to go with the Toyota branding. Lastly, the production version of the C-HR will look nothing like its conceptual (this is a no-brainer).
