Less than two months after going on sale, the new Scion brand is already asking parent Toyota Motor to raise its production for the US market, a Scion official said on Thursday, according to Reuters.
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Toyota launched the Scion brand, targeted to young buyers looking for stylish vehicles priced under $US16,000, in June with two cars for sale in California only, the news agency noted.
Sales of the boxy xB tall wagon, which remind some of a 1970s conversion van, have been nearly triple the company’s expectations, and the company is running short on supply, Scion vice president Jim Farley told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday, Reuters said.
“I was in Japan last week going to the plant asking for more cars,” Farley reportedly said.
Toyota makes the xB and the xA, a sleek, five-door hatchback, at the Takaoka plant in Japan, he told Reuters.
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By GlobalDataThe news agency said Toyota sold 1,351 Scions in California in June, including about 50 to people from outside California.
“We had one person fly in from Germany. I don’t know how they’re going to register the car there,” Farley reportedly said.
The more outlandish xB outsold the xA by a 2-to-1 margin, the opposite of what Scion officials thought would happen, Farley told Reuters, adding: “It shocked us.”
Reuters said Scion will expand to the east coast and the southeastern states early next year, and to the remainder of the country in the summer, when it will add a third vehicle to the lineup.
Farley told the news agency the the third car will be more sporty and said the car would share some design cues with the Toyota Concept Coupe Crossover (ccX), a multi-purpose two-door car shown at the New York motor show last year.
Scion is also considering adding a hybrid petrol-electric vehicle to the lineup in a few years, but there are no plans to add a pickup truck, as some industry officials have speculated, Reuters said.
“We want to be really a premium small-car brand. And trucks confuse that,” Farley said, according to Reuters, adding: “We’re going to stay away from trucks.”
