Remember Scion? Good times. For about 13 years, it made America’s roads a little weirder, a little edgier, a little more interesting. It’s been nearly a decade since the sub-brand disappeared into the ether, but now Toyota is reviving the name with a 300-horsepower hybrid side-by-side that seems to absolutely rule.
If you aren’t familiar with Scion, it’s Toyota’s dearly-departed youth brand that launched the first toaster car in America, the original xB. We biologically totalled one, it was great. Anyway, apparently the Echo wasn’t cool enough for people who wore their baseball hats backwards, so Toyota had a marketing agency craft a new name, plucked the bB and the Ist out of its Japanese product lineup, then brought them to America as the xB and xA. Over the years, the tC front-wheel-drive coupe effectively replaced the Toyota Celica, the xD replaced the xA and became the first car potentially named after an emoticon, the FR-S reminded the kids that oversteer is cool, and then the Auris-based iM and Mazda2 sedan-based iA were two of the cars of all time. However, through it all, Scion never lost touch with one thing: It loved to party.
Look, I’m not saying that Scion was an excuse for office juniors to throw ragers on the company credit card, but how else do you explain using car company money to start a record label that worked with the likes of Chromeo, Justice, and Danny Brown? If you walked up to the Pontiac stand at an international auto show, you’d get a brochure. If you walked up to the Scion booth, you’d get a branded mix CD of weird French house music, or a mix of dubstep before it was cool, or maybe even just a yo-yo. Perhaps sensing its offspring’s penchant for keg stands, Toyota performed a late-late-term abortion on Scion in 2016, merging existing models back into the Toyota lineup. Well, it turns out they still have original-formula Four Loko in whatever sort of purgatory Scion was confined to, because that name is now on a proper party vehicle in certifiably big-ass letters.
When you think about it, a side-by-side is like if the Jeep was invented to defend American valor in the X Games. We’re talking tube-framed cage-fighting off-road vehicles designed to hit jumps that would void your F-150 Raptor’s warranty before it even apexed its arc. You have to be lacking the fear gene to really get reckless with one of these things. My co-worker Mercedes has effectively written off at least one, and the people who made it didn’t seem mad. It’s through this scope of mechanized insanity that the revival of the Scion nameplate makes sense, even if it’s just for a one-off showpiece that dials things up to eleven.
If you want a really powerful side-by-side, you’d buy something like a Polaris RZR Pro XP, which makes 225 horsepower. The upper echelon, if you will. The Scion 01 decided that wasn’t enough, so it borrowed a turbocharged four-cylinder hybrid powertrain from Toyota’s light truck lineup to round things up to an even 300 horsepower. A nice round number, that. Sure, Toyota mentions efficiency and being able to silently glide along on electric power alone, but the big draw here is the same peak power output as a BMW 335i in a side-by-side finished in the sort of digital camo normally reserved for Call of Duty skins. Is there much more info on this build? Not really, but do you actually need any more?
It’s mental, it’s real, it has an FIA-compliant roll cage, and Toyota would be foolish not to at least consider small-batch production. If Lexus can get a yacht, Scion can get this sort of revival. It’s making its public debut at SEMA, and from the sheer personality of the thing, it would make a “SEMA nuts” joke if it could talk. The Scion 01 concept is outrageous, exactly as it should be. Welcome back, Scion. We missed you.
Top graphic image: Toyota
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