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UPDATE: Scion Is on the Verge of Death

This is somewhat out of the blue, but the Scion brand is apparently on the brink of being killed off by Toyota. BJ Killeen of CarBuzzard is the journalist who has broken the news. Motor Trend also covered the subject, and then the Scion Wikipedia page was updated with the account, citing the latter publication. At the time of writing, Toyota hasn’t commented on the subject of pulling the plug on Scion.
Scion xB 1 photo
Photo: Scion
According to the original source, Scion employees learned on Tuesday afternoon that the brand would cease to exist. Some of the workforce has been laid off, as per the report. Fortunately for those who have to clear their desks, the mother company offered them the chance to reapply for jobs at Toyota Motor North America’s headquarters in Plano, Texas, roughly 20 miles north of Dallas.

An announcement on the demise of Scion is expected to be made by Toyota at 9:00 AM today. If the inevitable happens, we will update this story with the confirmation from Toyota that Scion is indeed dead. Until that moment comes, let’s go through some of the potential reasons that made Scion meet with the grim reaper.

Other than the Mazda2-based Scion iA, the rest of the Scion lineup is made up of badge-engineered Toyota models. The xB? That’s a Toyota Corolla Rumion with a different badge and name, nothing more, nothing less. The same applies to the FR-S sports car, iM hatchback, and tC coupe. Don’t know about you, but the fact of the matter is that rehashing existing designs didn’t turn Scion into the youth-targeted brand Toyota intended it to be.

Compared to the 175,000 vehicles it sold in 2006, Scion only managed to move 56,167 units in calendar year 2015. To put that into perspective, the Toyota Avalon outsold all Scion models last year.

The bottom line is that Scion failed miserably on too many occasions to recount them all. The end was sure to come sooner or later, more so if you consider that the Scion brand was on life support from Toyota. Chances are few people will regret the passing of Scion except for the brand’s employees.

UPDATE: It's official - Scion is dead. More details in the press release below.
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press release
About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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