Bloomberg reported that the Kia Motors Corporation's Scion brand, created in 2003 to attract young buyers with quirky cars and low prices, is trying to revive flagging sales with the tiny iQ.

Scion is in need of a revival: Sales have fallen for four straight years, sliding 74% from a 2006 peak of 173,034. While deliveries of xB wagons, xD hatchbacks and tC coupes rose 27% in the first half, they totaled only 26,621, or less than half that of Kia Motors Corporation boxy Soul wagon at 54,987.

Ms Jessica Caldwell, an analyst with Edmunds.com, a Santa Monica, California based automotive pricing and data service, said that "Part of Scion’s problem is some others have cut into their market, and the Kia Soul would be the best example. In some ways, it's a better version of xB than Scion's."

Toyota, which sold more vehicles than any other automaker last year, relies on Scion to attract younger customers to dealerships that also sell the company’s namesake brand. The iQ, just 120.1 inches long, is two feet smaller than a Mini Cooper and may be the most efficient non hybrid car on the road when it goes on sale in early 2012. Scion's styling became more conventional when the xD replaced the original xA and the xB wagon was redesigned in 2007.

Ms Caldwell said that "The first xB was kind of funky and out there,” she said. With the redesign, they Camryed it, made it a bit mainstream. For El Paso, Texas, real estate agent Mr Rick Chumsae, who owns an original xB and an xA, the brand strayed from its roots. They both look a little funkier than what’s out there now, particularly the xB. In their quirkiness, they’re kind of timeless."

(Sourced from www.bloomberg.net)