What was Scion?

US only attempt for marketing.

All of their vehicles are rebadged toyotas sold elsewhere in the world just under the Toyota badge (and a Mazda 2 I guess).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scion_vehicles

 

I thought the scion brand offered good vehicles. I think Toyota would have been just as successful. Selling the same vehicles badged as Toyotas. I think most Scion buyers bought them because they are Toyotas.

I have also thought that Scion didn't live up to the Toyota brand level of quality, in the eyes of Toyota. In the event the cars did not live up to people's expectations. Toyota wouldn't be tarnished as a brand if this happened.

I have seen plenty of older folks driving Scions mostly XBs, and some of the TCs IAs and Ims. The Kia Soul has become the vehicle of choice for that demographic.

 

Well, they got the second and third ones right...lol

 

Indeed they did.

 

I had two Scion tCs before my current Tacoma. A 2006 and a 2013, both manual trans and both were great little cars. I put 150k trouble free miles on the 06 and about 80k on the 2013 before trading it in.

They were basically Camrys dressed to look more appealing to younger buyers. The only issue the 06 had was that damn lift handle for the hatch that would pop off if you looked at it wrong. Virtually every 1st gen tC you see on the road has it taped on or dangling off, Toyota never offered a fix for it which was lame.

 

There's one left but it's going way in the US market when the 21's are all gone. The Toyota C-HR. It was planned and designed as a Scion but the Scion idea folded up before release. 2018, Toyota decided to roll it out after the fact. It's made in Turkey. Runs a Corolla 2.0 motor with the old school CVT that does NOT have the launch gear. I just posted a thread on it a while back as we were interested and test drove one on the lot. It's slow and noisy but the design was pretty cool in this old guys eyes. Looks like the late models, '20-'21 were pretty solid but I saw a rash of transmission issues that seemed to plague some of the '18-'19 model years. That's just an observation. Apparently there was no "rebuilding" that CVT and those that I saw reported on their forums were 5-10k out of the 60k Powertrain warranty. Replacement costs were no less than $8500!!

I got hit up by some guys in Sweden and they said the car is very popular and solid OUTSIDE the US market. They have motor options, hybrid, and AWD options but Toyota never released that in the US. Now it's gone.

 

The Scion xb was intended for the young crowd but the codgers loved them more and were buying them up kind of like what they were doing with the Kia Soul and Honda Element. They were fairly cheap to buy, reliable easy to drive and you could haul a wheel chair in one if needed. If for no other reason that Xb had a certain cool factor to it.

 

I always thought the C-HR looked like something out of the Scion camp.

I had forgotten that Lexus has a marketing campaign geared toward younger buyers. They were pushing the IS to the young hip crowd, and now the NX. Maybe it was the smaller CUV.

 

I still have our 06 xb that we bought new. Best damn eco box I have ever had. 35mpg all day at 80. It now serves as taking my elderly parent to the docs(easy to get in out) and my dogs to the trail(low and large flat rear area). I will never get rid of it.