Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) said Wednesday morning that the company is dropping its Scion brand, introduced in 2003 to attract a younger buyer. The company will rebrand the vehicles with the Toyota badge.
According to the announcement from Toyota USA, the company has sold more than a million of the cars and more than 70% of buyers were new customers, while 50% were under the age of 35.
Toyota North American CEO Jim Lentz said:
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. I was there when we established Scion and our goal was to make Toyota and our dealers stronger by learning how to better attract and engage young customers. I’m very proud because that’s exactly what we have accomplished.
Beginning in August 2016, model year 2017 Scion vehicles will be rebadged as Toyotas. The FR-S sports car, iA sedan and iM 5-door hatchback, will become part of the Toyota family.
The tC sports coupe will have a final release series edition and end production in August 2016, and the C-HR, which recently debuted at the L.A. Auto Show, will also become part of the Toyota line-up.
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Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Bruer noted:
We’re used to seeing domestic brands like Mercury, Oldsmobile and Plymouth die, and even import brands ranging from Daihatsu to Isuzu to Renault have left the U.S. market over the years. But this is the first time a U.S.-specific brand, launched by a successful Japanese automaker, has been killed. While some Scion products were more appealing, and more successful, than others, they were always limited in price and cost to draw in young buyers. For many potential buyers this likely translated into seeing Scions as ‘lesser Toyotas,’ — not the best tagline.
Scion reached its highest sales level in 2006 when more than 173,000 vehicles were sold. Only 56,167 were sold in 2015.
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