Toyota off brands

Not that I'm aware of.

Toyota's 'off' brands are the Prizm (sold as both Geo and Chevy), Scion, and Daihatsu (oh, Hino, too, but I doubt you want a 10-or-more wheel truck...)

Oh, and don't forget Lexus...!

Thanks for the input.

I'm fairly certain that the Vue - perhaps just for a year or two - had a Honda engine option (the 3.5, I believe).

There's the Geo Prizm (but some Geos are actually other brands, I think). The Pontiac Vibe is pretty much a Toyota Matrix (I prefer the looks of the Vibe). Friends have one - it's nice and they get good fuel economy with the stickshift.

A lot of the Geos were Isuzus...Isuzi?

I think the Geo Metro was a Suzuki Swift. I have no idea what the Tracker was.

the saturn vue uses hondas V6

Yeah, you're right! And the Tracker was a Suzuki Samurai, IIRC.

I think Scions in Japan are sold as Scions; I can't remember. Lexus' are sold as Toyotas; a lot of the Lexus models are JDM models that have been sold for a long time in Japan; Toyota never imported them because there were a lot of cross-overs (for example, Toyota decided to sell the Celica here rather than the Soarer(SC300) and dropped the Corona MKII in the US, but continued to sell it in Japan until they brought it back as the ES250). The reason for this is they thought nobody would pay that much for a Toyota here in the US, so they 'upscaled' them from their Japanese models and sold them with a new Brand name marketed as Luxury. I guess it worked.

Scion is a a USA-only brand. The current Scion xB was sold in Japan as the Toyota bB. The xA was the Toyota ist. The tC was designed as a Scion, although it of course borrows liberally from other Toyota platforms.

RichC

Ah-So! I remember about the bB now! Thanks! As far as I know, the tC is NOT sold in Japan; I believe they let the Celica be the speedster there, and only sell the tCs in the US. This is what I have been told, anyway.

I'll have to hit

It did work. I got tired of Lexus ads on TV, but I have to admit that most rich people in my area are now driving Lexus instead of Mercedes.

What about Scion, is it the reverse? Did Toyota decide that the USA is like a 3rd world country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so they had to offer a low-end car to compete with the Koreans?

Honda was the first Japanese manufacturer to come up with the idea of a separate brand for their high-end cars when they introduced the Acura brand . Toyota (Lexus) and Nissan (Infiniti) followed suit several years later.

I think it was Bill Tuthill who stated:

I don't know about that, but my understanding is that Scion was supposed to find acceptance with the "youth" market, an area that Toyota was having quite a bit of trouble with, especially compared with Honda.

It didn't quite work exactly how they expected, 'cause the xB turned out to be the biggest seller of the Scion line, and a lot of them were snapped up by people like me, a 50-something professional who knew a good deal when he saw it and got the xB as a nearly ideal commuter and a fun-to-drive "go fetch" car that stands out wherever it goes.

I actually got my 2006 xB because I had bought a Camry SE the year before and the salesman was waiting with the xB when I came in asking what he had that would be a good replacement for my clunky aging Grand Caravan conversion minivan . . . .

-Don

Scions are aimed at the 18-30 demographic, with some money to spend but not a lot. It's supposed to be a 'trendy alternative' to the usual stuff on the road.

Ha! That's exactly why two 50-something couples I know bought one (actually two). They told me the xB doesn't get very good gas mileage, mid 20s they claimed, but the EPA numbers are 30/34, better than the much smaller Cooper Mini, and better than any Subaru wagon.

Do you miss all the space and camping(?) conversion in your minivan?

I think it was Bill Tuthill who stated:

I've gotten right around 33 mpg each time I checked, which I'm pretty happy with for a combination of highway and city driving.

Never. There was only one time when the xB wasn't up to a hauling task that the GV would have done, so I had Menard's deliver the 4x8 sheets of plywood. The xB actually has more headroom than the GV and I

nope. thyre the toyota ist, and bB

Toyota matrix => Pontiac Vibe for the most part.