Toyota has decided to kill off the US-only “youth-brand” Scion and rebadge its current vehicles as Toyotas by August 2016, which means the experiment to lure younger buyers by desperately trying to be hip has failed. Of course, that was something everybody could’ve seen coming from a mile away when the boxy first generation xB was replaced by something that might as well have been the replacement to the Toyota Matrix.
The Scion line-up currently consists of no cars which couldn’t just have been badged as a Toyota and sold in the regular Toyota showrooms in the first place. Except for the FR-S, which is known as the Toyota GT86 in the rest of the world, current Scions are totally forgettable: the IQ has flopped in the US, the tC isn’t halfway as sexy as a coupe should be, the iA is a rebadged Mazda2 sedan with an uglier nose and the iM is a Corolla hatchback in a market that craves crossovers.
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