Toyota Motor Corp. is bringing its Scion brand to Canada, saying the timing is finally right as consumer appetite gels for smaller, fashionable cars.
The automaker will launch the brand, which targets affluent urban youth, starting in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in 2010, said Stephen Beatty, managing director of Toyota Canada Inc.
“Obviously we’re pretty pumped about this,” Mr. Beatty said in an interview Sunday.
As recently as this summer, Toyota denied it was making plans to introduce Scion to Canada despite having filed trademark applications with Industry Canada to use the name. The company had previously said that Canada does not have the same demographic strength in urban areas to justify the costs of marketing and supporting Scion vehicles.
But an even greater shift towards smaller cars in Canada brought on by a rapid climb in gasoline prices earlier this year has changed the equation, Mr. Beatty said. Scion’s target market, the so-called “echo generation” or Generation Y, now represents roughly 24% of Canada’s population, he noted. They are the children of baby-boomers, born anywhere between 1976 and 2001.
The cars will be sold through Scion showrooms in existing Toyota dealerships, rather than standalone stores, said one dealer.
That’s a similar strategy to the one adopted by Mercedes-Benz Canada Inc., which started selling its micro-compact Smart cars in 2004 at separate showrooms set up inside existing Mercedes outlets. Scion would be the first new brand to enter Canada since Smart.
Scion dealers sold 130,181 cars in the United States last year, down 25 per cent from the peak of 173,034 hit in 2006.
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