Quote:
Originally Posted by daiheadjai
Don't get me wrong, I had a 7th Gen Celica and loved it (my first complaint with my BRZ was that it wasn't a hatchback).
I just felt that Scion was a cynical rebadged exercise (the xA and xD being just a Yaris/Echo hatchback in a hoodie).
The first tC wasn't bad either, nor was the xB (first gen), but it seemed like those were the only mainstream Scion products that benefited from real effort. The FRS and iQ were more niche, though I still think the iQ was pretty cool. Eh, maybe I'm wrong and Scion was just a victim of bad timing and market conditions.
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Yeah that Celica was wholly underappreciated, especially for taller folks - it was easy and comfortable for a 6'5+ individual to fit with helmet due to the really low seat mount and higher belt line. Lots of usable space.
My previous point was
it was great timing for Scion - they got sales in before a culture change. Those Fast and Furious movies aren't doing much for manufactures anymore
For a sub brand to sell an additional 1,000,000 units re-branded/cycled product to appeal to a greater audience from an
already developed product is fantastic. Sales numbers matter irregardless of real effort or not. If Scion was selling cardboard boxes hanging on a bicycle as an eco-model but still turned a profit and took a sale away from a competitor, it's a win.
In other words, I'm not judging the product, just the sales performance and what that meant to Toyota. And I'm pointing out that re-skinning or recycling internal products (paseo/tercel, tC/camry, xA/xD/xB/iA/yaris, iM/Corolla) or badge sharing (fr-s/brz, iQ/Cygnet) made a great deal of sense for the brand and in my opinion, increased profitability for any sales generated due to lowering direct costs for an easier break-even. I think the overhead on running the youth sub brand is far lower than running a free-standing company with product development like Subaru, Mazda, etc. which didn't see THAT much more volume (US sales only) compared to Scion over the decade plus it was alive. Let alone for the demographics targeted (restricted budgets = less inherent profit in up scaling!).
Point is, I think Toyota did a great move with Scion and as a knowingly experimental/interim sub brand, timed it very well and made the parent company good money. But I could be entirely false on all accounts - maybe the overheads were significant and the unit volumes sales didn't come with a significant enough premium over keeping the standard skin ala yaris, corolla, camry and would have been better off diversifying the Toyota lineup with more variants.
Edit: forgot I wanted to bring this back to the FT-1 with platform sharing with BMW. In retrospect with Subaru, I gotta say - I'm going to stay positive about the prospects. Like many posters here and throughout the armchair auto journalist empire, I, too, feel BMW has lost some of its DNA to the mass pool dilution with the I want everything for under $30k. Still, Toyota did it so damn perfect with Subaru on the FR-S in my opinion that I have faith they will deliver on the namesake of Supra with their collaboration with BMW. I mean come on - the history of inline 6's between the two is perfect!