Flashback: The New York International Auto Show, June, 2002.
Gray-haired Jim Press joined Toyota in 1970. "For some time," said Press, Toyota’s chief operating officer in the United States, "we have been carefully listening to, and studying ways to serve, the new generation now reaching driving age and entering the car market.
"And like members of all fresh generations on the rise, they resent being studied, labeled and marketed to. So it’s a daunting task to develop products and a sales approach that ring true to them now and in the future."
And how did Toyota plan to do that? By studying young people, and labeling them, and marketing to them.
The campaign that Press announced in 2002 was Scion, Toyota’s entry-level brand expressly targeted at young buyers. That campaign entered its first phase in June in California, where Scion went on sale at the majority of Toyota dealers.
Scion has two cars: The xA and the xB. The xA is a moderately conventional four-door hatchback. The xB is, well, not conventional. If you have trouble remembering which car is which, think of the "B" in xB as standing for "box," because that’s what it looks like. Actually, it looks like the box the car would have come in, if cars came in boxes.
By next summer, Scion will have a third model, tentatively called the xC.
It’s a two-door hatchback, and will likely be bigger and more powerful that the xA and xB.
This is not an unprecedented strategy for Toyota. Realizing in the late 1980s that customers might balk at paying premium-car prices for a vehicle wearing the Toyota name, the company launched Lexus in 1990. To say it worked is an understatement.
Currently, the only hole in Toyota’s marketing plans is with young buyers.
The doughy little Echo was supposed to be embraced by the Y generation; their parents are buying it. On paper, the Corolla compares favorably with the Honda Civic, but kids buy the Civic, they don’t buy the Corolla. In the battle for the coveted younger market, Toyota found the average age of its customer climbing toward the upper 40s.
Of course, Toyota isn’t alone. Honda introduced the squared-off, two-tone Element SUV at the 2002 New York show, aimed at "those who surf, snowboard and mountain-bike," said similarly gray-haired Tom Elliott, Honda’s executive vice president, who joined the company in 1970. It’s for "a whole new generation of buyers, 71 million strong, who are entering the automotive market." The Element has been a success, but privately, Honda executives are a bit startled at its practical appeal to retirees.
Suzuki, known more for sport utes than cars, is going after young buyers with a vengeance. The new Suzuki Aerio SX, offered in colors such as "Silky Silver metallic," is a sedan-wagon combination that has a huge amount of standard equipment, including a spunky 141-horsepower, four-cylinder engine.
Mazda had substantial success with the 2001 MP3, a Protege model so named because it came with a factory-installed MP3 music player. The company is aiming at the same crowd with the Mazdaspeed Protege, which has a turbocharged engine plus a 450-watt Kenwood MP3 player.
Toyota and Pontiac partnered for the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix, two more sedan-wagon crossovers that share internal components but look quite different. Ford continues to target young buyers with models of its Focus, primarily the ZX3, the smallest of the three Focus body styles. And, of course, there’s the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Volkswagen New Beetle, and the template for them all, the Mini Cooper.
Taking a page from the Mini play book, the Scion models have a relatively low base price, with dealers hoping to make extra profit from add-on options.
The xA is the less expensive of the two, with a base price of $12,480, plus a destination fee of $485. What do you get for that? A lot — air conditioning, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, power windows and locks and a 160-watt Pioneer AM/FM stereo with a compact-disc player.
So why was our xA test car $16,955? "Accessories." Such as $650 for side and side-curtain air bags, $459 for a security system, $655 for alloy wheels, $59 for wheel locks.
Then it starts to get abstract. There’s an $879 "light package," which, at the touch of a button, shines blue lights in the front foot wells. Press another button, and the dual cup holders are illuminated by hidden LED lights. Keep pressing the button, and the light color changes. Other accessories are mostly ornamental, such as a faux carbon fiber cover for the gasoline filler door.
As for the car itself: Both the xA and xB are powered by the Echo’s spunky 1.5-liter, 108-horsepower four-cylinder engine. You can get a five-speed manual transmission or a four-speed automatic. Either works well with the engine, but I was surprised at how much more I liked the automatic in the xB than the manual in the xA.
In fact, I was surprised at how much I liked the xB, period. Toyota has been surprised at its success as well. When the brand went on sale in California, Toyota figured the conventional xA would outsell the boxy xB two to one.
It has been just the opposite.
A week driving the xA drew some polite inquires. A week driving the xB — well, I felt like I was on display, en route to the nearest parade where I would join my fellow Shriners. A tollbooth collector, who has not spoken in two years despite my consistent presence in a variety of much nicer cars, would not shut up about the xB.
A teenager hung out of the passenger-side window on a Volkswagen Gold GTI to ask about the xB at a stoplight. "Did you import that from Europe?" I gave him the story about how I built it with my own two hands from melted beer cans. "Crazy," he said.
Well, not so crazy. Toyota was already selling versions of the xA and xB in Japan (the xA is the Ist, the xB is the BB), so adapting them for Americans was cheaper than tooling them up from scratch. The dealer network is already in place. And since Toyota wasn’t selling many cars to the under-30 market, they aren’t cannibalizing their own sales.
And there are those accessories. The test xB started at $14,480 with the automatic transmission, and accessorized itself up to $18,895. Which, for the attention it receives, is cheap.
Both cars work well as transportation. The front bucket seats are excellent, and the back seat is roomy.
Toyota has stumbled onto something here. But they should be aware of something: That talkative tollbooth operator, who says he’ll buy the first xB in Florida, is 45.
