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……
More by Cammy Corrigan
Latest Car Reviews
Read moreLatest Product Reviews
Read moreRecent Comments
- Buickman if they name it "Recall" there will already be Brand Awareness!
- 1995 SC I wish they'd give us a non turbo version of this motor in a more basic package. Inline Sixes in trucks = Good. Turbos that give me gobs of power that I don't need, extra complexity and swill fuel = Bad.What I need is an LV1 (4.3 LT based V6) in a Colorado.
- 1995 SC I wish them the best. Based on the cluster that is Ford Motor Company at the moment and past efforts by others at this I am not optimistic. I wish they would focus on straigtening out the Myriad of issues with their core products first.
- El Kevarino There are already cheap EV's available. They're called "used cars". You can get a lightly used Kia Niro EV, which is a perfectly functional hatchback with lots of features, 230mi of range, and real buttons for around $20k. It won't solve the charging infrastructure problem, but if you can charge at home or work it can get you from A to B with a very low cost per mile.
- Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh haaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha
Comments
Join the conversation
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.