Toyota is apparently hours away from announcing the axing of its US-only Scion brand.
According to CarBuzzard’s BJ Killeen, the decision was communicated at a top secret meeting yesterday afternoon, where some employees were laid off and told to apply for other jobs at Toyota, while others will stick around until August to help sell the last vehicles.
Founded in 2002, the youth-oriented brand targeted Generation Y in an era that young people are buying fewer cars.
Its best year in sales was 2006, when 175,000 units were delivered to their customers. In 2015, the brand sold just 56,167 cars, ranking 29th out of 35 brands in the States.
In addition to the marketed iA, iM, xB and tC, Scion offers the FR-S coupe, a rebadged version of the Toyota GT 86 and Subaru BRZ twins.
The lineup was supposed to be expanded with the addition of a new crossover,based on the Toyota C-HR Concept, as a Scion version of the design study was shown last November in Los Angeles.
We are still waiting for the official announcement, so stay tuned…
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