Toyota – “Scion Lives On”
Toyota/Scion has released a video covering the history of the brand and the impact it has left, in both the community and within Toyota itself. Scion was a test bed, a free-standing brand that was able to take risks that Toyota couldn’t afford with it’s mainline brand. This manifested itself in several ways.
Scion tried no-haggle pricing a la GM’s Saturn, and precursor to the Tesla sales model. The premise was that the traditional dealership process scared and deterred younger customers who didn’t want to mess around with long winded negotiations and back and forth hassle associated with it. No-haggle pricing was just that: here’s the price of the car, no more, no less.
The Scion brand was heavily vested in youth culture; with advertising that an adopted urban, futuristic aesthetic, utilizing heavily modified vehicles; and a lot of support in areas of interest for the youth market. That meant Scion had brand ambassadors, and collaborations with style and music icons. You know what else it meant? Drifting. Scion Racing was born and became a key player in the at-the-time new for the U.S. Formula Drift series.
This video look back takes us to a time when the xA was a new car, the xB a new car, and then the tC. Those three models covered a lot of ground for Scion until in 2012, the flood gates opened, with iQ, the launch of the FRS in 2013, and the iA and iM in 2016. Each car reflecting a period of development for the brand and a leak in terms of expectations and goals.
Though the Scion dealerships may have shut off their lights for the last time, the Scion brand isn’t gone: Toyota has taken it’s ethos to heart.
via Toyota USA
