Toyota Kills Scion After Slumping Sales

After pulling the plug on it's famous toaster-shaped Scion xB last year, Toyota announced February 3 that it is doing the same for the entire Scion brand this year. The once popular brand had seen sales rapidly decline recently, no longer turning the profit that it used to. You know you're in trouble when not even a toaster-shaped car can make you enough bread.

Like the xB, one or two models will get the ax, but many will simply be re-branded as Toyota's for the 2017 model year.

The idea behind Scion was a simple one: Keep young drivers in the Toyota family for as long as possible. Scion was intended to be the bridge that would transition teens to Toyota and then, hopefully, to Lexus. To a degree, this idea worked because "70 percent of Scions were purchased by customers new to Toyota and 50 percent were under 35 years old," according to Toyota.

But in addition to sluggish sales (173,000 cars sold in 2006 versus 56,000 this year), the brand suffered from a very thin, six-car lineup. It offered the tC coupe, the FR-S sports car, and the new 2016 iM hatchback. However, Scion never offered a crossover, one of the most popular automotive segments today. The closest thing to that was the "hip-to-be-square" ex-xB.

Toyota has already announced that the FR-S, the iM and the new 2016 iA will all live on as Toyota's for the 2017 model year. They will end production of the tC coupe following this model year.

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