The Scion Brand: A Brief Overview and Its Demise

I have to admit that I'm kind of surprised by how unheard of the Scion brand is now, especially coming out of Toyota which was kind of a boring esque brand at the time they mostly built cars just to get you from A to B it's what they're very good at but you know seeing that was really cool I never saw a TC with that supercharger kit on it not one time I met a few people who boosted them but the platform itself just couldn't perform because all it did was spin and I might be proven wrong by some people watching this video but most people I encountered they had horrendous traction issues.

I remember my first encounter with Scion was in Potomac Mills, it's a mall in Northern Virginia it was van skate park not to be telling you my life story but it's going to van skate park there which is now closed and as soon as I walked out of there and the mall was a Scion xB and I looked at it in this back in 2003 and my dad goes that thing looks ugly and I'm over here going I don't know maybe it's kind of cool has some personality to it but then I just kind of grew out of it.

They didn't do anything different then they tamed it when they curved it up and from there I feel like that's when things started to go south was when they kind of just didn't care or they played it safe one of the two and come to think of it their buyers were not even teens most of the time they are somewhere in their 30s a lot of the times and their demographic so that didn't work either.

What Toyota is doing is that they're taking the Scion brand and they're just getting making it go away and the rebadging all the cards is Toyotas which most of us would do anyway people take the FRS in the United States all the time and convert them into the gt86 in Europe and Japan and they put the Toyota badges on there instead I mean that just shows how much we didn't care about Scion in the automotive world for the most part.

They had some great PR at Formula Drift events and stuff like that, I always enjoy talking to them. Nothing against Scion you could get options like you know LED lighting inside there was one TC a friend of my had in high school named Jared he had the fluorescent flames on his you know like they did a bunch of wacky stuff at first.

You could kind of see this coming I mean we saw this with brands like Saturn and Pontiac and Saturn and Pontiac felt like they were just there like they didn't bring hardly anything to the table they felt like rebadged Chevy's or rebadged whatever American GM car. That's what Scion unfortunately kind of turned into.

And all of us kind of looked at each other and going why didn't we just badge the FRS as a Toyota because it would have given the brand some substance now this is going to be a little bit of a tangent but Toyota has a company dude I love you but your cars for the most part don't appeal to the enthusiasts that much right now.

The only car Toyota has is the FRS and the ft-1 is something all of us are looking forward to it gave the new Supra, you know what I mean I saw the FT one and SEMA in 2014 but then I went back to SEMA in 2015 and it wasn't there why it wasn't even at the Geneva Auto Show last year no ft-1 no ft-1 why Toyota make cooler home that is kind of shocking and people want Toyota to build new sports cars we all know what happens when Toyota builds sports cars it's great it's fantastic Motors like the one jay-z - jay-z those things come out of Toyotas over-engineering and that's why they're going to be cars are so reliable because they're pretty much over engineered.

When people ask me am I surprised that Scion died, I'm not surprised at all. It's just it doesn't feel like a big impact to the industry it doesn't feel like if like Ford or GM or Honda or any of those brands just had to go like that, doesn't have the impact like that it was just a tiny little sub brand that promised something but came out boring and it's sad it is sad.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys David here very quick little video today we're going to talk about something that recently happened in the automotive industry that might have a really big impact or it just might not have an impact at all and what we're going to be talking about today is the death of scion the brand by Toyota that was youth-oriented to try and get more youthful buyers into the Toyota brand due to their having an older kind of class of person buy all their cars the history of Scion is a little interesting because they came out with a few cars at first that one was super kind of original and the other one was just there it wasn't really that exciting there's a bunch of reasons why Scion in my opinion failed as a brand and here's a few of them one it was supposed to be a brand for the youth which means it prayed to kind of experiment with our our cars cooler or not so cool okay this idea doesn't work so let's try something else but they never tried anything else you know when the xB first came out it was like a little toaster you know you could do anything to this boxy car and had a very Japanese flair to it but then you had another car called the X a and the XA was quite literally a rebadged Toyota that brought nothing to the table it wasn't a crossover it wasn't a sedan wasn't anything and then his Scion tC came out things got a little bit better their sales peaked in 2006 for the entire brand but that's the last time they had really good sales 2006 I was four foot eight freshman year of high school in 2006 that is a very long time ago and if you're telling me that your brand never grew that much it kind of shows that they just didn't really care they did answer a lot of enthusiasts with the FRS now the FRS of course we know is the BR Z's twin and essentially the same car but at the same time people didn't like that it was called a Scion in the United States because the rest of the brand was just there it was kind of boring overall it's kind of sad because Sion had some elements that were really cool and sometimes not so cool but I remember one day a friend of mine was looking for a first car this is back when I was in high school this is probably 2008 and he walked in and they even offered like a centrifugal supercharger set up for the Scion tC from factory like that could have been an option you came to the dealership and they would install that that's pretty unheard of I mean some other brands have supercharger packages but you know coming out of Toyota which was kind of a boring esque brand at the time they mostly built cars just to get you from A to B it's what they're very good at but you know seeing that was really cool I never saw a TC with that supercharger kit on it not one time I met a few people who boosted them but the platform itself just couldn't perform because all it did was spin and I might be proven wrong by some people watching this video but most people I encountered they had horrendous traction issues and so sianevans portes car until the FRS my first encounter with Scion was in Potomac Mills it's a mall in Northern Virginia it was vans skate park not to be telling you my life story but it's going to van skate park there which is now closed and as soon as I walked out of there and the mall was a Scion xB and I looked at it in this back in 2003 and my dad goes that thing looks ugly and I'm over here going I don't know maybe it's kind of cool has some personality to it but then I just kind of grew out of it they didn't do anything different then they tamed it when they curved it up and from there I feel like that's when things started to go south was when they kind of just didn't care or they played it safe one of the two and come to think of it their buyers were not even teens most of the time they are somewhere in their 30s a lot of the times and their demographic so that didn't work either what Toyota is doing is that they're taking the Scion brand and they're just getting making it go away and the rebadging all the cards is Toyotas which most of us would do anyway people take the FRS in the United States all the time and convert them into the gt86 in Europe and Japan and they put the Toyota badges on there instead I mean that just shows how much we didn't care about Scion in the automotive world for the most part they had some great PR at Formula Drift events and stuff like that I always enjoy talking to them I'd nothing against Scion you could get options like you know LED lighting inside there was one TC a friend of my had in high school named Jared he had the fluorescent flames on his you know like they did a bunch of wacky stuff at first you could kind of see this coming I mean we saw this with brands like Saturn and Pontiac and Saturn and Pontiac felt like they were just there like they didn't bring hardly anything to the table they felt like rebadged Chevy's or rebadged whatever American GM car and that's what scion unfortunately kind of turned into and all of us kind of looked at each other and going why didn't we just badge the FRS as a Toyota because it would have given the brand substrain now this is going to be a little bit of a tangent but Toyota has a company dude I love you but your cars for the most part don't appeal to the enthusiasts that much right now the only car Toyota has is the FRS and the ft-1 is something all of us are looking forward to it gave the new Supra you know what I mean I saw the FT one and SEMA in 2014 but then I went back to SEMA in 2015 and it wasn't there why it wasn't even at the Geneva Auto Show last year no ft1 no ft-1 why Toyota make cooler home that is kind of shocking and people want Toyota to build new sports cars we all know what happens when Toyota builds sports cars it's great it's fantastic Motors like the one jay-z - jay-z those things come out of Toyotas over-engineering and that's why they're going to be cars are so reliable - because they're pretty much over engineered when people ask me am I surprised that Scion died I'm not surprised at all and it's not that I had anything against them it's just it doesn't feel like a big impact to the industry it doesn't feel like if like Ford or GM or Honda or any of those brands just had to go like that doesn't have the impact like that it was just a tiny little sub brand that promised something but came out boring and it's sad it is sad but we all move on and I'm wondering if they're going to do anything for those cars under the Toyota name so I just wanted to open a conversation what do you guys think about the Scion brand dying off it's going to be a great conversation in the comments below make sure to subscribe if you like this video and I'll see you guys next time it take it easy have a fantastic daywhat's up guys David here very quick little video today we're going to talk about something that recently happened in the automotive industry that might have a really big impact or it just might not have an impact at all and what we're going to be talking about today is the death of scion the brand by Toyota that was youth-oriented to try and get more youthful buyers into the Toyota brand due to their having an older kind of class of person buy all their cars the history of Scion is a little interesting because they came out with a few cars at first that one was super kind of original and the other one was just there it wasn't really that exciting there's a bunch of reasons why Scion in my opinion failed as a brand and here's a few of them one it was supposed to be a brand for the youth which means it prayed to kind of experiment with our our cars cooler or not so cool okay this idea doesn't work so let's try something else but they never tried anything else you know when the xB first came out it was like a little toaster you know you could do anything to this boxy car and had a very Japanese flair to it but then you had another car called the X a and the XA was quite literally a rebadged Toyota that brought nothing to the table it wasn't a crossover it wasn't a sedan wasn't anything and then his Scion tC came out things got a little bit better their sales peaked in 2006 for the entire brand but that's the last time they had really good sales 2006 I was four foot eight freshman year of high school in 2006 that is a very long time ago and if you're telling me that your brand never grew that much it kind of shows that they just didn't really care they did answer a lot of enthusiasts with the FRS now the FRS of course we know is the BR Z's twin and essentially the same car but at the same time people didn't like that it was called a Scion in the United States because the rest of the brand was just there it was kind of boring overall it's kind of sad because Sion had some elements that were really cool and sometimes not so cool but I remember one day a friend of mine was looking for a first car this is back when I was in high school this is probably 2008 and he walked in and they even offered like a centrifugal supercharger set up for the Scion tC from factory like that could have been an option you came to the dealership and they would install that that's pretty unheard of I mean some other brands have supercharger packages but you know coming out of Toyota which was kind of a boring esque brand at the time they mostly built cars just to get you from A to B it's what they're very good at but you know seeing that was really cool I never saw a TC with that supercharger kit on it not one time I met a few people who boosted them but the platform itself just couldn't perform because all it did was spin and I might be proven wrong by some people watching this video but most people I encountered they had horrendous traction issues and so sianevans portes car until the FRS my first encounter with Scion was in Potomac Mills it's a mall in Northern Virginia it was vans skate park not to be telling you my life story but it's going to van skate park there which is now closed and as soon as I walked out of there and the mall was a Scion xB and I looked at it in this back in 2003 and my dad goes that thing looks ugly and I'm over here going I don't know maybe it's kind of cool has some personality to it but then I just kind of grew out of it they didn't do anything different then they tamed it when they curved it up and from there I feel like that's when things started to go south was when they kind of just didn't care or they played it safe one of the two and come to think of it their buyers were not even teens most of the time they are somewhere in their 30s a lot of the times and their demographic so that didn't work either what Toyota is doing is that they're taking the Scion brand and they're just getting making it go away and the rebadging all the cards is Toyotas which most of us would do anyway people take the FRS in the United States all the time and convert them into the gt86 in Europe and Japan and they put the Toyota badges on there instead I mean that just shows how much we didn't care about Scion in the automotive world for the most part they had some great PR at Formula Drift events and stuff like that I always enjoy talking to them I'd nothing against Scion you could get options like you know LED lighting inside there was one TC a friend of my had in high school named Jared he had the fluorescent flames on his you know like they did a bunch of wacky stuff at first you could kind of see this coming I mean we saw this with brands like Saturn and Pontiac and Saturn and Pontiac felt like they were just there like they didn't bring hardly anything to the table they felt like rebadged Chevy's or rebadged whatever American GM car and that's what scion unfortunately kind of turned into and all of us kind of looked at each other and going why didn't we just badge the FRS as a Toyota because it would have given the brand substrain now this is going to be a little bit of a tangent but Toyota has a company dude I love you but your cars for the most part don't appeal to the enthusiasts that much right now the only car Toyota has is the FRS and the ft-1 is something all of us are looking forward to it gave the new Supra you know what I mean I saw the FT one and SEMA in 2014 but then I went back to SEMA in 2015 and it wasn't there why it wasn't even at the Geneva Auto Show last year no ft1 no ft-1 why Toyota make cooler home that is kind of shocking and people want Toyota to build new sports cars we all know what happens when Toyota builds sports cars it's great it's fantastic Motors like the one jay-z - jay-z those things come out of Toyotas over-engineering and that's why they're going to be cars are so reliable - because they're pretty much over engineered when people ask me am I surprised that Scion died I'm not surprised at all and it's not that I had anything against them it's just it doesn't feel like a big impact to the industry it doesn't feel like if like Ford or GM or Honda or any of those brands just had to go like that doesn't have the impact like that it was just a tiny little sub brand that promised something but came out boring and it's sad it is sad but we all move on and I'm wondering if they're going to do anything for those cars under the Toyota name so I just wanted to open a conversation what do you guys think about the Scion brand dying off it's going to be a great conversation in the comments below make sure to subscribe if you like this video and I'll see you guys next time it take it easy have a fantastic day\n"