Quote:
Originally Posted by Bristecom
And you and I are not the only ones. My brother also wanted the 86/FR-S when he first saw it. He doesn't like the BRZ styling either. But when he found out the final specs and realized how cheap Scion was, he changed his mind. He said he refuses to buy a Scion now and is looking at the new Genesis Coupe instead (not that I would ever want/recommend one). So I wonder how many sales Scion will lose because of their insistence to not sell a higher trim and more options. Or maybe they will surprise everyone and change soon?
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The point of Scion has always been base spec and you modify to your liking. If Scion had all the things available from the BRZ, what is the point of the BRZ?
That is why badge engineering was so bad for GM. The cars overlapped way too much in price and features, so customers were pitting the brands against each other and pitting the ridiculously large dealer network against each other.
By keeping Scion as the low spec, it sets the base price and targets the demographic that is going to want the stripper model to modify. The BRZ gets more grown up looks and more grown up features targeting a slightly different market. The reason they don't offer a la carte options like MINI, for example, is because Toyota and Subaru are probably already losing money on these cars in the US. Our dollar isn't worth shit so one way of reducing cost is to limit options. This means that inventory is much more flexible when it hits the US port and that saves money.
Scion might lose sales, but 75% of those sales will be going to the Subaru dealership instead of deciding they want a V6 Mustang or Genesis. If you choose a car with a completely different character over something as silly as HIDs, you probably weren't that serious about the FR-S in the first place. Scion didn't lose a "certain" sale. They lost a "well, we were in the running" sale. Same goes for someone going with a vastly different car because they don't like the plastic bumper skin on the twin. I'd wager that 95% of the people think that both cars look great and it is just slight preference to one or the other.