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July/August 2002 Issue

TOYOTA FACES THE MUSIC
The automaker turns its attention to the
next generation of car buyers: Gen Y.

Once upon a time, the koo-koo kids of youth culture filled airwaves with odes to their raging rides. From the first rock 'n' roll song, Ike Turner's "Rocket 88", to Johnny Bond's "Hot Rod Lincoln", Ronny & The Daytonas' "Little GTO" to Bruce Springsteen's "Racing in the Streets" -- these were anthems to the roadsters of Detroit's golden age, the faithful steeds of the cowboys of the restless era.

You just don't hear songs about tricked-out Camrys or souped-up Tauruses. The reason is self-evident. The legendary '57 Chevys and flat-head Mercs and muscle cars like 'Stangs and Cobras, all offered distinct designs and monster motors that served as manifestations of a driver's personality and testosterone level. Notwithstanding the auto industry's billions of dollars on advertising, personality is hardly something their products have exuded in the past 20 years. Flattened ovals on wheels have clogged an expressway of common sensibilities, eschewing the spirit of the vehicles that so juiced a generation of young buyers. Car makers now seem bent on recapturing that lost cool, and nothing puts as profound a stamp on the industry-wide rejuvenation as Toyota's new Scion. Toyota unveiled the line earlier this year at the major auto shows with a streamlined concept car called the ccX -- likely just a mock-ump of the kind of design cues a Scion sedan might take -- and a stunning hybrid vehicle, the bbX, that appears to be a cross between a car, an SUV, a pick-up, and a school bus. The broader Scion line will evolve between now and its launch in 2003, but Toyota will incorporate a unifying, sci-fi-esque aesthetic throughout. Unlike most mainstream car companies, which nurture each model as a distinct entity, Toyota will present the Scion as an overall brand with similar design elements.

It's become a common theme for the industry: Younger car buyers have their own needs, which seem to translate as a generally sporty design and some kind of modular, hatchback interior. Witness Pontiac's Vibe, Toyota's own Matrix and Honda's Element mini SUV, which one company exec has described as a "mobile dorm room". But only Toyota has created a new imprint for the market. "From our perspective, it feels a lot like 30 years ago, when we started addressing the needs of Boomers specifically," says Brian Bolain, Scion's national manager. "If you look at full-on manufacturers, you find median ages [of buyers] in the upper 40s and that's just kind of where the wealth of the population has been. We lost sight, to some degree, of how to satisfy a younger and maybe a bit edgier group. But as we look at the population shift over the next 20 years, we obviously need to grow with them."

The numbers are there, given the 72 million members of Gen Y. At the same time, more of America's young people are buying new cars and making their purchases earlier in their lives. Buyers aged 20 and younger accounted for 583,000 new car sales in 2001, up from 402,000 in 1996. Used-car sales, by contrast, have slipped every year since 1998 for this age group. When car makers have attempted dedicated youth vehicles, they have shown questionable judgment, as witnessed by Pontiac's launch last year of the Aztek. That car/SUV hybrid, intended to be the distinctive, go-anywhere, do-anything vehicle young buyers craved, tanked, mostly chalked up to the fact that it was too stylized.

Scion's first entry level could have problems in that same vein. Scion's web site defines the bbX vehicle as an "urban conveyance", not unlike the positioning of Chrysler's similarly eye-catching PT Cruiser. But there's good shock and bad shock, says David Morrison, president of consultancy TWENTYSOMETHING Inc., in Philadelphia, PA, and the boxy design of the bbX could inspire the latter.

"I saw a quote in reference to the PT Cruiser -- which ended up selling to much older buyers -- and it was, 'I'm not gonna hot-rod around in a four-door car," Morrison says. "The bottom line is that young buyers want something fun, but they don't want something that looks like the car that their parents [might be driving]."

Whether or not the bbX flies out of the gate, or whether Scion's fate trends more toward the wedgy ccX, it's pretty much a given that Toyota will keep loosing designers until the brand becomes the first stop for young car buyers, and a first contact for Toyota. At that point, Bolain and Scion can call their own tunes.

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Abbreviated Version
© 2002 Media Central/PRIMEDIA