Scion Takes Over For Saturn As Canada's Struggling Niche Brand Of Choice
Ever since GM announced that Saturn would be winding down, there’s been a niche-brand-like hole in the Canadian car market. And rather than learning from GM’s struggles, Toyota’s jumping right in to repeat them. The Star reports that ToMoCo have announced that Scion is going to Canada. Toyota will start off with 45 dealerships in urban settings (makes sense for an urban marque, I suppose); 20 in Toronto, 18 in Montreal and 7 in Vancouver. It’ll start off as a “store within a store” format. “The next generation of young car buyers is carving its own unique social and cultural experiences and Scion dealers will be part of their lifestyle,” Larry Hutchinson, Scion’s director in Canada, said. By slathering sensible cars which appeal to empty-nester boomers with youth-oriented marketing? Yeah, that’s been working well so far…
To give you an idea of the size of the task facing Scion, in 2008 Saturn sold, in Canada, 18,729 units. In the US, which has more potential customers, Scion sold, in 2008, 114,000 units whilst Saturn sold 188,004. If Toyota’s hoping that the volume in Canada will offset the drop in the United States for Scion, then would they like to contact me as I have some magic beans I’d like to sell them……
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I did not know Scions were sold under a no haggle pricing structure. Considering Scion pricing overlaps some Toyota models and both are sold from the same showroom makes me wonder how frequently buyers choose Toyota over Scion because they don't have to pay MSRP. No loss when that happens for Toyota but I'm thinking it may be a factor in Scion sales numbers.