[Dimman]

Maybe a different analogy will work...

Scion and Saturn.

GM made Saturn to appeal to a younger crowd as their 'appliances' weren't really appealing to youth. Like Scion. (Sure they had 'Vettes and Camaros at the time but they were out of younger people's range. Closest Toyota has is the Lexus ISF)

They were quirky, funny looking cars, like Scion.

They had a fixed pricing system, similar to Scion.

It, for some strange reason, had a very small but very devoted owner fan base, like Scion.

It tried to jump onto the import tuning bandwagon, like Scion. With FWD performance (Ion Redline).

It was not taken seriously by either the mainstream buyers, nor the performance enthusiasts. Like Scion.

They decided to move some of their vehicles towards the mainstream, like Scion.

They also thought a real performance car could help generate some 'street cred' (Sky Redline), possibly like Scion going after the FT/R-86/S.

Too late as the image of Saturn was a bunch of super obsessed weirdos that completely over-hyped their cars which were for the most part badge-engineered GM product, like Scion (Dragonitti-types in this case, why not do a crazy 2AZ turbo Camry performance-family build?).

Nobody else cared, Saturn died. And before you shout 'Economic Downturn!' there was talk of killing Saturn long before the economy tanked, the Aura (move mainstream) and Sky (real performance image) were both failed attempts to 'save' the brand.

Like Scion...?

The concern as stated by a few above, is that Toyota will give up on true performance if the car flops. This could be from many things, dumbed-down performance, too expensive, mis-branded, etc...