Toyota wants U.S. dealers to spend $112.5 million to add Scion cars

December 11, 2002; Joe Miller writing for Bloomberg reports that Toyota Motor Corp. expects its U.S. dealers to invest a total of as much as $112.5 million to sell Scion vehicles, the new brand the automaker is adding to attract more customers younger than 30.

The world's third-biggest automaker plans to have as many as 900 of its 1,200 U.S. Toyota dealers selling Scions by 2005, said Jim Farley, manager of the new vehicle line. Each dealer adding the brand will invest about $125,000 to improve at least 400 square feet of showroom space and train salespeople, he said.

The first Scion model is scheduled to go on sale in California on June 9. The average age of Toyota's U.S. buyers is 48, prompting the automaker to create Scion, whose models will sell for less than $17,000. Under-30 consumers will represent 25 percent of the U.S. new-vehicle market by 2010, up from 5 percent last year, Farley said.

"If you don't develop a relationship with them, you won't have a business," Farley told reporters in Detroit at an Automotive Press Association luncheon.

Scion will add two more models by June 2004, when the company expects to begin sales in most major U.S. cities. Toyota expects annual sales to reach 100,000 vehicles by 2005, Farley said.