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I remember the early days of Scion, where every Toyota dealership that carried the marque had a "Scion Champion." I even knew a few personally, and they were good sales people with a passion for cars and would be able to talk accurately and enthusiastically about the Scion product.
Sadly, those days are past. These people were ground into powder by their dealerships who had no damn clue about car enthusiasm and didn't give $0.02 about passion when it came to cars (a problem that it appears Toyota USA has finally started to realize). One of the best salesmen I knew was one of these guys. He was fantastic at his job, and sold more Scions in the Northeast Ohio region than the next few dealerships combined. He took care of his customers, which apparently management didn't agree with. After numerous incidents where he butted heads with two GMs, he was fired/quit. Sales at that dealership plummeted the next few months.
To this day, shopping for a Scion in a Toyota dealership is not the engaging experience it once was. You get whichever salesperson happens to walk up, and you're lucky if they know the difference between an xB and an xD. I was lucky in the purchase of my FR-S, the saleswoman, if a little disconnected, knew enough about cars to recognize the importance and passion surrounding the twins, and I actually had a few conversations with her that were more than me educating her about the car.
I guess my view is overly negative (especially considering how my friend was treated by the dealership he was working at), but I do miss the days of actually being able to talk intelligently about cars without raising my eyebrow at a statement from the salesperson.
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