If you had high hopes for Scion, and consequently, Toyota and Subaru, releasing convertible and turbocharged versions of their FR-S, GT 86 and BRZ sports car, consider them dashed.
Speaking to WardsAuto on the sidelines of the LA Auto Show, Doug Murtha, senior vice president of Scion, shot down all previous reports and rumors, beginning with the introduction of an FR-S Convertible model based on the Toyota FT-86 open-top study.
“So on the convertible we went down swinging,” said Murtha, adding that the company brass could not find enough other countries or regions within Toyota that were interested in a convertible “to make the thing pencil”.
“I think we were pretty aggressive on our (submitted plan), but we looked at what we would have conceivably lost on the product and said, ‘We’re not going to even push it further,’” he said. “Nobody was more disappointed than we were.”
Murtha gave the same disappointing news about a turbocharged version of the FR-S saying that, despite the “blogosphere” wanting it to happen, “that’s not something that’s coming,” without elaborating why.
The Scion boss also admitted that the FR-S has reached that half point in its life were deliveries start to fall, with the coupe’s sales down 23.2 percent in 2014 through October at 12,293 units – the Subaru BRZ also fell 6.3 percent to 6,680 deliveries.
For now, Murtha says Scion will try to spice things up with special editions like the limited run Release Series.
“You get 24 months out of those products and they tend to have a steep fall-off (and) we’re seeing a little bit of that,” he says. “I don’t think that’s necessarily a surprise. I think the challenge is back to us to do some interesting things that keep the vehicle fresh.”
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