#ToyotaAuris

The Toyota Corolla iM is a bit of a paradox. The bodywork suggests it could be a fun-loving hot hatch, but the illusion dissipates the second you climb into the driver’s seat. The engine seems sick, unfit for the task it has been given, and the ergonomics leave something to be desired. While it’s not really much worse than the Corolla sedan, and it is a serviceable daily commuter for those wanting something affordably efficient, it doesn’t seem up to par with Toyota’s usual fare.

With Scion dead and buried in North America and the Corolla sedan outselling the iM ten-to-one, we’ve wondered if Toyota would even bother keeping the hatchback around. But it looks like it will. The automaker previewed the new Auris hatchback — a European model nearly identical to the Toyota (formerly Scion) iM — in Geneva this week, offering strong hints that it will make its way westward.

The strange saga of the Scion brand ended in 2016, but there’s still two holdouts from Toyota’s foray into the funky youth market: the Corolla iM and the Mazda 2-based iA sedan.

Across the Atlantic, the iM carries the Auris name, and there’s a next-generation model scheduled for a public unveiling at next month’s Geneva Motor Show. If Toyota deems the current iM’s sales sufficient, this third-generation Auris will become your second-generation iM.

When the Scion iM makes its way over to our shores in 2015, it will ditch the aggro-blue paint job and the import tuner bodykit. How do we know this? Logic dictates that a mainstream car would look, well, mainstream. Oh, and spy photos.

Well, we called it. Scion will be bringing its own version of the Toyota Auris over here as their next new model launch.

It’s the end of an automotive era, as the Scion xB (as well as the milquetoast xD) are set to die by the year’s end. In exchange, we’re getting a couple of new, world market Toyotas to shore up Scion’s lineup.

Auris Touring Sports. Full gallery here.

In a post by our managing editor about that part of the European automotive market referred to as the “C segment”, what Americans would call compact cars, some of our readers commented on how “Toyota Corolla” means different things in different parts of the world. In Europe, Toyota sells a Corolla branded car based on its subcompact platform. The car that Toyota sells in Europe that is most comparable to the North American Corolla is called the Auris there. While built on the same platform, the Auris comes with a multilink independent rear suspension, while the U.S. spec Corolla gets a less sophisticated torsion beam setup in back. At the ride & drive for the launch of the 2014 Corolla that I attended a few months ago I asked Paul Holdridge, vice president of sales for Toyota Division, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A, how come Europe gets IRS and we don’t. Holdridge said it had to do with differing driving styles, needs and expectations of American and European consumers. One might thing that means that American drivers don’t care that much about better handling, but it seems to me that the differences between the Auris and the U.S. spec Corolla may have more to do with the expectations of Europeans, than American driving styles.

Toyota may have become monumental on the basis of the midsize Camry’s popularity with American drivers over the past two decades, but that monument was built on the foundation of many, many compact Corollas. Before Lexus, before Camry, it was the Corolla that earned Toyota its reputation for reliability and quality construction. Forty million Corolla branded cars have been sold globally since the car’s introduction in 1968. For more than a generation, the conventional answer from both car enthusiasts and regular consumers alike, when asked to name a reliable small car, has been “Toyota Corolla”. Like Alfred Sloan proposed, Toyota knows that if you can capture car buyers when they are just entering the market, you can sell them a lot of cars over the course of their lives. While driving the latest Corolla isn’t on most car enthusiasts’ or automotive journalists’ bucket lists, the introduction of a new Corolla is indeed big news, at least as far as the car industry is concerned. Though the Honda Civic leads the segment in U.S. sales, the Corolla is close behind in second place and Toyota expects to sell about 300,000 Corollas this year. They’re hoping to increase that by 10% by selling cars to other than just traditional Corolla buyers, attracted by more exciting exterior styling and upgraded interior features.