GM Blockade: How the Big Three Fared During the Financial Crisis

By 2007, General Motors (GM) had been working with its parent company to find a solution to its financial struggles. However, by that point, the company was already facing significant challenges. The parent company was considering selling GM, but ultimately pulled back its support, leaving the brand on the brink of bankruptcy.

Saab, which was the only brand owned by GM at that time, also faced financial difficulties. Despite being a high-end luxury car brand, Saab struggled to stay afloat, and it eventually lost the license to manufacture cars in 2016. The brand's demise was a significant blow to GM.

Ford, on the other hand, had taken a different approach during the financial crisis. In 2006, Ford mortgaged its assets for billions of dollars and took out massive loans to overhaul its company. This move allowed Ford to maintain its independence from government assistance, which ultimately proved beneficial to the brand's reputation. As a result, car buyers were eager to purchase cars from a brand that didn't have to rely on bailouts.

Ford's strategy was successful, but it came at the cost of another brand: Mercury. The Mercury brand, which was designed to fill the gap between the Ford Mustang and Cadillac, struggled to stay relevant in the market. Despite its initial success, the brand began to distance itself from other cars, eventually being phased out by 2010.

The demise of Mercury was a significant blow to Ford's lineup, but the company managed to adapt and continue to thrive. However, another brand, Scion, which was Toyota's attempt to appeal to young people, also struggled during this time. Introduced in 2002, Scion's goal was to build cheaper cars that looked like MTV ads, with a focus on customization from a catalog at the dealership. Unfortunately for Scion, its efforts failed to resonate with customers, and sales began to fall.

By 2007, Scion had lost a quarter of its customers, and by 2010, it had lost an additional 70 percent. As a result, Toyota killed off the Scion brand in 2017. Some models, like the iA and IM, continued on as Toyota models, while others, such as the XB, were sent to their "final rest" – or as some might say, their own personal hell.

The story of GM, Saab, Mercury, and Scion serves as a reminder that even the biggest brands can struggle during times of financial uncertainty. However, it also highlights the importance of adapting to changing market conditions and maintaining a strong brand identity.

Ford's success during this time period was largely due to its ability to maintain independence from government assistance and stay focused on building cars that resonated with customers. As a result, car buyers were eager to purchase cars from a brand that didn't have to rely on bailouts. Mercury's demise serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of staying relevant in a rapidly changing market.

Scion's failure highlights the challenges of appealing to specific demographics and maintaining a unique brand identity. Despite its efforts to build a brand around MTV-inspired ads and customization options, Scion ultimately failed to connect with customers. Toyota's decision to kill off the Scion brand in 2017 was likely seen as a pragmatic move, but it marked the end of an era for the small car manufacturer.

As we look back on these brands' stories, it's clear that the financial crisis had a significant impact on the automotive industry. GM, Saab, Mercury, and Scion all struggled to stay afloat during this time period, but in different ways. Ford's ability to maintain independence and adapt to changing market conditions ultimately proved beneficial to the brand.

In conclusion, the story of GM, Saab, Mercury, and Scion serves as a reminder that even the biggest brands can struggle during times of financial uncertainty. However, it also highlights the importance of adapting to changing market conditions and maintaining a strong brand identity. As the automotive industry continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how these brands' legacies continue to shape the market in the years to come.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe 21st century has killed some of our favorite car brands and most of our dreams today we're going to look at every automaker that has died this Century everything from Saab to Pontiac why did these car companies fail and did they deserve it let's find out welcome to Donut dude this is a pure sports car experience yeah kind of Peppy honestly hey welcome to Donut at beginning of this Century the U.S reigned Supreme as the world's top automaker thanks in large part to the fact that this country is pretty much designed around cars and the fact that everybody has one it's kind of a problem yeah but just being from America isn't good enough cars had to actually be good to sell and if you don't sell you don't make money and if you don't make money then you die our first victim of 21st century Automotive economics was the rock that we didn't land on it landed on us Plymouth my Plymouth Plymouth Plymouth started in 1928 as a way for Chrysler to compete with low-cost alternative from Detroit's other automakers and its affordability actually helped Chrysler pull through the Great Depression if you or a car company that you know is going through a depression great or otherwise you aren't alone email Nolan at Mrs Harry Styles at donutmedia.com we're here to help yeah but it wasn't until 1955 that Plymouth started making cool cars for us to remember like the fury named after the Bradley pit Shire lab Ruff movie those early models came with a 5.2 liter V8 engine making 290 horsepower which was pretty decent back then and it came in tons of different body styles to make it appealing to everyone from hot rodders to Housewives to house Riders to hot wives after that Plymouth doubled down and became a real muscle car brand with Classics like the Barracuda and the Superbird which won a lot of NASCARs like so many freaking NASCAR races you won't even believe I don't uh why don't car manufacturers nowadays just make the same thing call it the same thing in different versions right don't they things were going well for Plymouth until the 1990s when they started badge engineering their cars basically that means they just started pulling parts and design cues from other Chrysler bottles and putting Plymouth badges on it it's like buying a real name brand wheel plates and putting them on knockoffs right so once the company starts doing that it's pretty much game over baby kills everything that made those cars unique is that a play with laser I don't know is an eagle talon Mitsubishi Eclipse nobody knows as the 2000s got closer Plymouth tried a few different brand pivots to get a better sense of its own identity and it had one more trick up its sleeve this was going to be the thing that saved the entire company it was Chip Foose the guy that you know did overhauling it was a Chip Foose Design Open Wheel Roadster with big gray bumpers and a tiny little V6 of course we're talking about the hot rod inspired Plymouth Prowler one of the best cars to ever be named after a creepy guy Prowler Prowler Plymouth had dumped tons of money into this thing hoping that it'll be the kind of retro modern classic that would save the company from its misery instead Plymouth made a unique looking car with a goofy automatic V6 it was soft and only old people liked it like tapioca pudding it also cost over seventy thousand dollars in today's money oh God all that in an era of sports cars like the C5 Corvette and the Honda NSX the prowler never stood a chance never stood a chance all right so the prowler was in plymouth's only flop either some of its last cars on the market were boring sedans like the breeze which is named after a wimpy win and the PT Cruiser which is named after the director of Boogie Nights for some reason it's a PT Anderson joke you guys so on June 28 2001 plymouth's last car rolled off the production line and nothing else bad happened for the rest of that year we're talking about Oldsmobile Oldsmobile have been in business since the early 1900s before it was bought out by GM in 1908 which is still the early 1900s yeah but back then Oldsmobile was synonymous for Innovation power and Adventure just like Justin built for it I'm talking about cars like the lightweight 1949 Rocket 88 with this big old V8 engine which was super popular in NASCAR it might be the actual first real muscle car yeah and the Starfire which ensures the automatic transmission to America boom technology and the surprisingly sporty Cutlass but like the early 90s just like a bowl full of those candies that look like a strawberry and they got the jelly in them and they never go stale they never go stale but unlike that Oldsmobile did get stale the image problem was one thing especially when you could get better more reliable cars like the Nissan Altima and the Honda Accord not even the alar could save the brand because that's another great name fiber cereal yeah you're Alero or or medicine yeah ask your doctor if Valero is right for you uh olds phased out most of his models before it was killed off and the final Alero rolled off the production line in 2004. then something happened that we're still feeling the repercussions of today I'm talking about the 2008 financial crisis this is everything that you need to know to get up to speed on that some dumb money people messed around with money in a dumb way and it left 9 million people without jobs and a bunch of people lost their houses and as you can imagine not a lot of people were buying cars at this time at all at all about the end of 2008 GM and Chrysler were weeks away from collapse and to prevent even greater economic Devastation the government bailed them out to save an estimated one million jobs but that meant GM and Chrysler had to make some sacrifices and cut a lot of their fat and by fat I mean iconic car brands all right let's start with Pontiac Pontiac started in 1926 and was designed to be a step up from entry-level Chevy models like a more luxurious brand but then it transformed into a performance division in the 1960s thanks John DeLorean yeah it's basically John DeLorean throughout pontiac's history we saw icons like the Pontiac Bonneville the train Trans Am the GTO the firebird all of which became Legends of the American muscle car era and then Pontiac started to get a little weird in the 1990s and 2000s they took big Swings with cars like the Pontiac Aztec and the solstice while they phased out more iconic models like the firebird this is the best condition Pontiac Solstice we could find yeah so that we can rent it and it is a horrible spec automatic in a but it does have 18 inch wheels which you know feel pretty good in the steering and it's kind of heavy honestly hey dude this is a pure sports car experience yeah one of the last pure sports cars Pontiac Solstice convertible rear wheel drive comes in a manual got big old Wheels four-cylinder four-cylinder turbo four-cylinder or four-cylinder turbo um Ryan Turk drove one of these NFD Red Bull sponsored one for Ryan Turk back in FD they actually performed really well for a little short wheelbase cars so what happened why is this car not here and why is Pontiac dead well when the financial crisis hit GM originally stated that it would retain Pontiac but trim down its lineup to Niche models that would appeal to a younger audience they lie they lied and they killed it in order to secure Financial backing from Congress selling off all of its inventory and saying that Pontiac was not for sale the last Pontiac a G6 left the assembly line in January of 2010 now it's in-house probably still only worth six grand but I'm sure you're asking what about some of GM's other brands they had to be worth keeping right in an era of fuel-efficient cars something like Saturn should be surviving thriving right it's named after a freaking planet just like Tesla is it Tesla's a person Saturn was GM's attempt to offer a domestic counterpart to all the Japanese Imports that had skyrocketed in popularity GM started Saturn in 1985 and its employee-owned structure made it pretty different from all the other GM brands that Independence enabled Saturn to develop Dent resistant polymer exterior panels I.E plastic plastic car the Saturn Ion with Dent resistant side panels in its lifetime Saturn basically had two fun cars the sky and the ion red line that was it and they're both based off of other GM properties they weren't really original they looked kind of cool and then GM had to kill Saturn to avoid bankruptcy yet again and it tried to sell Saturn to Penske you know the rental truck brand but the deal fell through because Pinsky could not find a way to actually build the cars that's one thing that you definitely need if you're going to run a car company yeah if you're going to sell cars you got to be able to build them yeah you can't just sell sketches it's economics 101. by the end of 2010 GM devoured Saturn just like he had done to his son who now remains in hell he just referenced this painting it's called Saturn devours his son maybe try crack books sometime yeah all right so Hummer was always a bit of a different breed GM bought the military Humvee line from AM General in an effort to produce the beefy civilian models that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger I've wanted so bad GM bought the name in 1999 and it mostly focused on marketing and distributing Street versions of the ogh ones made by AM General it's all a money grab yeah it's a freaking cash crab but Hummer's timing just wasn't right the H2 and H3 models were huge and a little goofy they sucked up gasoline like it was a freaking milkshake you know those ones that are hard to get at McDonald's something that Americans loved until gas prices got crazy in 2003. sucking up gas like it's a milkshake sucking up gay ass like it's a milkshake when the financial crisis hit in 2008 GM had already been talking about selling Hummer in 2009 it seemed like GM had struck a deal with a Chinese company as part of its larger bankruptcy settlement but that deal collapsed when it became clear that hummer would never actually meet Chinese regulations GM's last option was to kill off the entire Hummer line in 2010 but the main game Hummer is back and now it doesn't suck up gas like a milkshake it doesn't suck gas at all it's electric now just like the freaking Terminator all right Humvee wasn't GM's last sob story The Last sob story for GM would be this sob story s-a-b GM bought Saab in 1990 but it was originally founded back in 1945. its best-selling model the Saab 900 launched in the late 1970s and under GM's ownership it developed the 9-3 and introduced the badge engineer 92x n97x 92x based on Subaru the sabaru it was clear that Saab just really wasn't working for GM by 2007 and the parent company was talking about selling it at that point they pulled back its support and Saab essentially went bankrupt Saab was the only brand that GM actually sold in 2010 Dutch Supercar brand Spiker actually bought it and it had already started to go downhill GM Block the sale to a group of Chinese buyers in 2011 so saw a petitioned for bankruptcy just before it was sold to a brand new company called national electric vehicles Sweden then it lost the license to manufacture sobs and died in 2016. we still got other companies that were in the red light for the blood of your enemies Ford was the only company from Detroit's big three that didn't accept government assistance in 2008 and that is because two years earlier in 2006 Ford mortgaged all their companies assets for billions of dollars took out a bunch of loans that they used for a massive overhaul it seemed like a desperate move at the time but it meant that Ford was able to exist as an independently operating entity after the financial crisis they still lost money but didn't have to rely on the government handouts which worked for them politically very well yeah and that partly came down to public perception car buyers were absolutely stoked to buy from a brand that didn't have to get bailed out one that had already been focusing on consolidating re-envisioning and refining its lineup the cars cost a little bit more than GM or Chryslers but buyers show that they were willing to invest in a company that reflected their actual values Ford did have to sacrifice one little thing though Mercury Mercury the planet the planet another planet gone blew it up all right so Mercury was originally designed to fall somewhere in between Ford and Cadillac in terms of fanciness and price and its integrated bodies like the 9cm the James Dean drove and rubber Without a Cause were huge with hot rodders in the 1950s you ever heard of a Lead Sled that's a Merc and after years of borrowing body designs from other cars Mercury started to distance itself in the 1960s and 70s with the cougar yeah yeah we love the Cougars the cougar filled the gap between the basic Mustang and the luxurious Thunderbird in the 1980s the Grand Marquis which is named after a place where the names go at the top of the theater and the Sable which is named after a ferret headed into the lineup a literal slew of full brand redesigns in the 1990s helped keep mercury in the market but it was obvious by the turn of the century that the brand was struggling to get attention from literally anyone who wasn't shoving tapioca pudding into their toothless mouth hole Mercury started getting rid of cars and different model lines and basically all they kept were four things with a Mercury badge on it and in 2010 Ford killed it like an old dog on a farm get out of here yeah I don't want you no more Mercury all right even Toyota makes mistakes I am of course talking about Scion since the brand was introduced in 2002 Scion's whole shtick was to appeal to Young People by building cheaper cars that looked like MTV make them easy to buy and let you customize them from a catalog at the dealership young people love individuality and they love catalogs man I can't get enough of them the FRS is obviously cool because they're still making a version of it today but what about the rest of the Scions you know who liked them DJs and guess what old people sales started falling in 2007 when Scion lost a quarter of its customers by 2010 it had lost a further 70 percent sent as a result Toyota killed off Scion in 2017. some of its models like the Ia or IM lived on in Toyota form others like the XB were sent across the Rainbow Bridge and now they live in hell thanks for watching this video and everything else on donut hit that subscribe button to make sure you don't miss anything go to dunamedia.com we make a bunch of different clothes and accessories and stuff I really like that follow Justin at Justin Freeman on me at James Pumphrey there's an airplane we're missing an airplane have a good onethe 21st century has killed some of our favorite car brands and most of our dreams today we're going to look at every automaker that has died this Century everything from Saab to Pontiac why did these car companies fail and did they deserve it let's find out welcome to Donut dude this is a pure sports car experience yeah kind of Peppy honestly hey welcome to Donut at beginning of this Century the U.S reigned Supreme as the world's top automaker thanks in large part to the fact that this country is pretty much designed around cars and the fact that everybody has one it's kind of a problem yeah but just being from America isn't good enough cars had to actually be good to sell and if you don't sell you don't make money and if you don't make money then you die our first victim of 21st century Automotive economics was the rock that we didn't land on it landed on us Plymouth my Plymouth Plymouth Plymouth started in 1928 as a way for Chrysler to compete with low-cost alternative from Detroit's other automakers and its affordability actually helped Chrysler pull through the Great Depression if you or a car company that you know is going through a depression great or otherwise you aren't alone email Nolan at Mrs Harry Styles at donutmedia.com we're here to help yeah but it wasn't until 1955 that Plymouth started making cool cars for us to remember like the fury named after the Bradley pit Shire lab Ruff movie those early models came with a 5.2 liter V8 engine making 290 horsepower which was pretty decent back then and it came in tons of different body styles to make it appealing to everyone from hot rodders to Housewives to house Riders to hot wives after that Plymouth doubled down and became a real muscle car brand with Classics like the Barracuda and the Superbird which won a lot of NASCARs like so many freaking NASCAR races you won't even believe I don't uh why don't car manufacturers nowadays just make the same thing call it the same thing in different versions right don't they things were going well for Plymouth until the 1990s when they started badge engineering their cars basically that means they just started pulling parts and design cues from other Chrysler bottles and putting Plymouth badges on it it's like buying a real name brand wheel plates and putting them on knockoffs right so once the company starts doing that it's pretty much game over baby kills everything that made those cars unique is that a play with laser I don't know is an eagle talon Mitsubishi Eclipse nobody knows as the 2000s got closer Plymouth tried a few different brand pivots to get a better sense of its own identity and it had one more trick up its sleeve this was going to be the thing that saved the entire company it was Chip Foose the guy that you know did overhauling it was a Chip Foose Design Open Wheel Roadster with big gray bumpers and a tiny little V6 of course we're talking about the hot rod inspired Plymouth Prowler one of the best cars to ever be named after a creepy guy Prowler Prowler Plymouth had dumped tons of money into this thing hoping that it'll be the kind of retro modern classic that would save the company from its misery instead Plymouth made a unique looking car with a goofy automatic V6 it was soft and only old people liked it like tapioca pudding it also cost over seventy thousand dollars in today's money oh God all that in an era of sports cars like the C5 Corvette and the Honda NSX the prowler never stood a chance never stood a chance all right so the prowler was in plymouth's only flop either some of its last cars on the market were boring sedans like the breeze which is named after a wimpy win and the PT Cruiser which is named after the director of Boogie Nights for some reason it's a PT Anderson joke you guys so on June 28 2001 plymouth's last car rolled off the production line and nothing else bad happened for the rest of that year we're talking about Oldsmobile Oldsmobile have been in business since the early 1900s before it was bought out by GM in 1908 which is still the early 1900s yeah but back then Oldsmobile was synonymous for Innovation power and Adventure just like Justin built for it I'm talking about cars like the lightweight 1949 Rocket 88 with this big old V8 engine which was super popular in NASCAR it might be the actual first real muscle car yeah and the Starfire which ensures the automatic transmission to America boom technology and the surprisingly sporty Cutlass but like the early 90s just like a bowl full of those candies that look like a strawberry and they got the jelly in them and they never go stale they never go stale but unlike that Oldsmobile did get stale the image problem was one thing especially when you could get better more reliable cars like the Nissan Altima and the Honda Accord not even the alar could save the brand because that's another great name fiber cereal yeah you're Alero or or medicine yeah ask your doctor if Valero is right for you uh olds phased out most of his models before it was killed off and the final Alero rolled off the production line in 2004. then something happened that we're still feeling the repercussions of today I'm talking about the 2008 financial crisis this is everything that you need to know to get up to speed on that some dumb money people messed around with money in a dumb way and it left 9 million people without jobs and a bunch of people lost their houses and as you can imagine not a lot of people were buying cars at this time at all at all about the end of 2008 GM and Chrysler were weeks away from collapse and to prevent even greater economic Devastation the government bailed them out to save an estimated one million jobs but that meant GM and Chrysler had to make some sacrifices and cut a lot of their fat and by fat I mean iconic car brands all right let's start with Pontiac Pontiac started in 1926 and was designed to be a step up from entry-level Chevy models like a more luxurious brand but then it transformed into a performance division in the 1960s thanks John DeLorean yeah it's basically John DeLorean throughout pontiac's history we saw icons like the Pontiac Bonneville the train Trans Am the GTO the firebird all of which became Legends of the American muscle car era and then Pontiac started to get a little weird in the 1990s and 2000s they took big Swings with cars like the Pontiac Aztec and the solstice while they phased out more iconic models like the firebird this is the best condition Pontiac Solstice we could find yeah so that we can rent it and it is a horrible spec automatic in a but it does have 18 inch wheels which you know feel pretty good in the steering and it's kind of heavy honestly hey dude this is a pure sports car experience yeah one of the last pure sports cars Pontiac Solstice convertible rear wheel drive comes in a manual got big old Wheels four-cylinder four-cylinder turbo four-cylinder or four-cylinder turbo um Ryan Turk drove one of these NFD Red Bull sponsored one for Ryan Turk back in FD they actually performed really well for a little short wheelbase cars so what happened why is this car not here and why is Pontiac dead well when the financial crisis hit GM originally stated that it would retain Pontiac but trim down its lineup to Niche models that would appeal to a younger audience they lie they lied and they killed it in order to secure Financial backing from Congress selling off all of its inventory and saying that Pontiac was not for sale the last Pontiac a G6 left the assembly line in January of 2010 now it's in-house probably still only worth six grand but I'm sure you're asking what about some of GM's other brands they had to be worth keeping right in an era of fuel-efficient cars something like Saturn should be surviving thriving right it's named after a freaking planet just like Tesla is it Tesla's a person Saturn was GM's attempt to offer a domestic counterpart to all the Japanese Imports that had skyrocketed in popularity GM started Saturn in 1985 and its employee-owned structure made it pretty different from all the other GM brands that Independence enabled Saturn to develop Dent resistant polymer exterior panels I.E plastic plastic car the Saturn Ion with Dent resistant side panels in its lifetime Saturn basically had two fun cars the sky and the ion red line that was it and they're both based off of other GM properties they weren't really original they looked kind of cool and then GM had to kill Saturn to avoid bankruptcy yet again and it tried to sell Saturn to Penske you know the rental truck brand but the deal fell through because Pinsky could not find a way to actually build the cars that's one thing that you definitely need if you're going to run a car company yeah if you're going to sell cars you got to be able to build them yeah you can't just sell sketches it's economics 101. by the end of 2010 GM devoured Saturn just like he had done to his son who now remains in hell he just referenced this painting it's called Saturn devours his son maybe try crack books sometime yeah all right so Hummer was always a bit of a different breed GM bought the military Humvee line from AM General in an effort to produce the beefy civilian models that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger I've wanted so bad GM bought the name in 1999 and it mostly focused on marketing and distributing Street versions of the ogh ones made by AM General it's all a money grab yeah it's a freaking cash crab but Hummer's timing just wasn't right the H2 and H3 models were huge and a little goofy they sucked up gasoline like it was a freaking milkshake you know those ones that are hard to get at McDonald's something that Americans loved until gas prices got crazy in 2003. sucking up gas like it's a milkshake sucking up gay ass like it's a milkshake when the financial crisis hit in 2008 GM had already been talking about selling Hummer in 2009 it seemed like GM had struck a deal with a Chinese company as part of its larger bankruptcy settlement but that deal collapsed when it became clear that hummer would never actually meet Chinese regulations GM's last option was to kill off the entire Hummer line in 2010 but the main game Hummer is back and now it doesn't suck up gas like a milkshake it doesn't suck gas at all it's electric now just like the freaking Terminator all right Humvee wasn't GM's last sob story The Last sob story for GM would be this sob story s-a-b GM bought Saab in 1990 but it was originally founded back in 1945. its best-selling model the Saab 900 launched in the late 1970s and under GM's ownership it developed the 9-3 and introduced the badge engineer 92x n97x 92x based on Subaru the sabaru it was clear that Saab just really wasn't working for GM by 2007 and the parent company was talking about selling it at that point they pulled back its support and Saab essentially went bankrupt Saab was the only brand that GM actually sold in 2010 Dutch Supercar brand Spiker actually bought it and it had already started to go downhill GM Block the sale to a group of Chinese buyers in 2011 so saw a petitioned for bankruptcy just before it was sold to a brand new company called national electric vehicles Sweden then it lost the license to manufacture sobs and died in 2016. we still got other companies that were in the red light for the blood of your enemies Ford was the only company from Detroit's big three that didn't accept government assistance in 2008 and that is because two years earlier in 2006 Ford mortgaged all their companies assets for billions of dollars took out a bunch of loans that they used for a massive overhaul it seemed like a desperate move at the time but it meant that Ford was able to exist as an independently operating entity after the financial crisis they still lost money but didn't have to rely on the government handouts which worked for them politically very well yeah and that partly came down to public perception car buyers were absolutely stoked to buy from a brand that didn't have to get bailed out one that had already been focusing on consolidating re-envisioning and refining its lineup the cars cost a little bit more than GM or Chryslers but buyers show that they were willing to invest in a company that reflected their actual values Ford did have to sacrifice one little thing though Mercury Mercury the planet the planet another planet gone blew it up all right so Mercury was originally designed to fall somewhere in between Ford and Cadillac in terms of fanciness and price and its integrated bodies like the 9cm the James Dean drove and rubber Without a Cause were huge with hot rodders in the 1950s you ever heard of a Lead Sled that's a Merc and after years of borrowing body designs from other cars Mercury started to distance itself in the 1960s and 70s with the cougar yeah yeah we love the Cougars the cougar filled the gap between the basic Mustang and the luxurious Thunderbird in the 1980s the Grand Marquis which is named after a place where the names go at the top of the theater and the Sable which is named after a ferret headed into the lineup a literal slew of full brand redesigns in the 1990s helped keep mercury in the market but it was obvious by the turn of the century that the brand was struggling to get attention from literally anyone who wasn't shoving tapioca pudding into their toothless mouth hole Mercury started getting rid of cars and different model lines and basically all they kept were four things with a Mercury badge on it and in 2010 Ford killed it like an old dog on a farm get out of here yeah I don't want you no more Mercury all right even Toyota makes mistakes I am of course talking about Scion since the brand was introduced in 2002 Scion's whole shtick was to appeal to Young People by building cheaper cars that looked like MTV make them easy to buy and let you customize them from a catalog at the dealership young people love individuality and they love catalogs man I can't get enough of them the FRS is obviously cool because they're still making a version of it today but what about the rest of the Scions you know who liked them DJs and guess what old people sales started falling in 2007 when Scion lost a quarter of its customers by 2010 it had lost a further 70 percent sent as a result Toyota killed off Scion in 2017. some of its models like the Ia or IM lived on in Toyota form others like the XB were sent across the Rainbow Bridge and now they live in hell thanks for watching this video and everything else on donut hit that subscribe button to make sure you don't miss anything go to dunamedia.com we make a bunch of different clothes and accessories and stuff I really like that follow Justin at Justin Freeman on me at James Pumphrey there's an airplane we're missing an airplane have a good one