A lengthy Automotive News [sub] story on Scion concludes with Scion VP Jack Hollis restating the brand’s basic myth:

Scion was not created for Scion’s sake. Scion was created for Toyota’s sake. It is an investment in Toyota’s collective future.

Hollis’s argument is bolstered by the scenario in which a youngster is attracted to a Scion store by the brand’s youth-oriented marketing, only to leave in a Corolla. Hollis argues that this model means Scion doesn’t have to worry about its sales volume… which is a good thing, considering the brand’s steady sales decline over the past four years. Hollis explains:

We still don’t go with a set [volume] number. Scion wants to be more influential. We want to talk to more people. We’re getting the right people, so the real question is: How do we get more of them?

I don’t know about you, but creating a brand to be “influential” and to “talk to more people” sounds like some vintage, dry-aged, old-school GM branding nonsense. And given that Scion’s sales decline coincided with the rollout of less-distinctive, more Toyota-like products, Scion’s apparent comfort with its recent declines smack of Old GM-style apathy as well (Scion execs respond with the old “but we gave customers what they wanted” chestnut). But don’t worry… Scion has a plan!

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Students: In this day & age of “smart shoppers” and below invoice deals, it’s not what you sell – it’s how many you sell! Time is money! Watch the FREE lesson by our Car Selling Techniques Master Educator Emeritus Speed Fellon. It’s a classic, and a classic will never go out of style.

After the zusammenhang of the bailout era, green car ads have juiced up the competitive battles in automotive marketing, with Chevy attacking “range anxiety,” Hyundai wrangling the asterisks and now, Nissan busting the Volt’s chops for enjoying the odd sip of gasoline. After leading off its Leaf marketing effort with a saccharine ad featuring a polar bear driven by global warming from his arctic home, Nissan is getting back on track by bashing its highest-profile competitor… and given that the EV market is still dependent on early-adopters in search of EV purity, the attack is a fairly shrewd one. Eventually the market will be less hung up on the novelty of pure-electric cars and will look at overall efficiency and capability. For the time being, however, Nissan’s got to make the most of its unmatched gamble on the pure electric car. Watch the ad after the jump

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Saab is on the hunt for a new advertising agency to take the creative lead on its estimated $114 million global advertising account. According to the U.K. advertising industry rag Campaign, the pitch “could be delayed following problems with production at the carmaker and reports of issues with paying suppliers.”

For more than 15 years, the Saab account had been handled by Lowe’s Swedish office Lowe Brindfors. US and UK advertising was handled by the old GM standby McCann. It is quite common that an account is put under review after such a long time, especially when new owners come in. However, the cause of the pitch was different this time. Lowe Brindfors took a hike. Read More >

“Ten Years Of Faith” is the title of Porsche’s press release. Faith in what? The M96 engine’s ability to stay sealed for up to 15,000 miles? The residual value of normally-aspirated $130,000 convertibles? George Michael’s career? No, in this case it refers to the giant “leap of faith” Porsche took when they decided to enter the Chinese market.

To celebrate this trustafarian, er, profitarian, um, onanistic, no, wait, humanitarian effort, Porsche has released a limited edition of ten very special cars for the Chinese market. Warning: the images below the jump are not safe for human consumption.

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Under the terms of its contract with the US Treasury, Fiat will get an additional five percent of Chrysler Group’s equity when it builds a 40 MPG (CAFE, not EPA, so actually about 30 MPG) vehicle in the US. But it turns out that Dodge already sells a car that might qualify… unfortunately, Dodge doesn’t actually build it, offer it in the US, or, starting with the 2012 model year, even bother to rebadge the thing. That’s right, you’re looking at a 2012 Hyundai Dodge Attitude… the only non-red, and one of the only non-Dodge-branded car in the brand’s Mexican lineup [the Hyundai Atos and H100 “Ram Van” are also badged with the Korean brand’s “H.”

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Surf on over to hyundaiusa.com and ford.com, and the two momentum-blessed automakers will greet you in a remarkably similar fashion: with a lineup of 40 MPG Highway-rated vehicles. Of course, Hyundai would, in its inimitable “asterisk-wrangling” style, point out that Ford’s 40 MPG requires more footnotes than a David Foster Wallace book. But then Ford might shoot back that Hyundai leaves out any reference to City or Highway ratings in its lineup, leaving consumers to play “hunt the legal disclaimer” itself. And as Autoobserver recently noted, highway ratings make for good ad fodder, but combined EPA ratings are much more helpful to consumers.

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Last January, Toyota’s Prez Akio Toyoda visited Salesforce.com CEO and cloud computing proselytizer extraordinaire Mark Benioff in Benioff’s sprawling compound on the Big Island of Hawaii.

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The story goes that an English gentleman was sitting in his London club and noticed that the man reading next to him was David Brown, star-crossed industrialist and owner of Aston Martin.

“Say, old chap,” the fellow asked Brown, “I do quite fancy that motorcar of yours. Don’t suppose you could sell a fellow one of them, do you?”

“Be delighted to,” Brown responded. “Simply have your bank draft me a cheque for forty-two hundred pounds.” The gentleman cleared his throat.

“Well, old chap, since we are both members of the same club, one doesn’t suppose it could be done at cost?”

“I would be even more delighted to,” Brown responded. “Simply have your bank draft me a cheque for fifty-two hundred pounds.”

Feel free to file that story, along with the well-known tales of a young Prince of Wales absolutely dusting his personal bodyguards whilst caning his DBS-V8 through the leafy B-roads of Merrie Olde England, in the dumpster of history where they belong. Today, Aston is simply another reanimated wanna-be luxury brand chasing the favor of an international class of nouveaus whose breeding and taste make the miniature-giraffe Russian gangster from the Direct TV ads look like Lord Mountbatten. The V-12 Zagato is simply a gilded lure dangled before their nighmarish deep-sea mouths.

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A study of  A.T. Kearney Management Consultants (for what such a study is worth)  foresees that 13.2 million cars will be sold in the U.S. this year. It could be more, but the consultants reckon that “in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, parts shortages will impact 2011 U.S. new vehicle sales by 200,000 units.” In the disaster, A.T. Kearney sees a golden opportunity: “Given what we know about production downtime, in 2011 we see 328,000 U.S. customers of the affected brands up for grabs, and more if the time to wait for a particular brand begins to extend.” Read More >

It started as a flippant Twitter comment, in which GM Global Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick agreed to champion a return for the “El Camino” if 100,000 potential buyers raised their hands for it. Smelling an opportunity for some publicity, Jalopnik quickly picked up on the “challenge” and urged readers to leave a comment in support of the trucklet. At first Ewanick tried to hedge, saying he needed 100k deposits, rather than blog comments, to approve an El Camino for the US market. But now the former Hyundai marketer has taken Jalopnik’s challenge to Chevy’s Facebook page, giving a surprising amount of credibility for a “challenge” that began with a throwaway tweet. What makes Chevy’s endorsement of the “El Camino Challenge” even more surprising: the total lack of apparent enthusiasm.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent much time and many rubles trying to turn around his nation’s struggling automakers, particularly AvtoVAZ, the makers of the infamous Lada brand. Putin is, after all, a deep believer in the national importance of automaking… which is why he drives a Lada himself. But Putin is also shrewd enough to know that automotive patriotism can have some nasty side effects, which is why his Lada has had its engine discretely swapped for an Opel mill. But apparently Putin hasn’t learned to completely insulate himself from the embarrassment that the Russian auto industry appears to manufacture with at least as much efficiency as it manufactures cars. At the launch of something called the Lada Granta, Putin’s struggles to even start the car were caught on video and posted at Jalopnik. The Moscow Times makes no reference to the humiliating episode, but mentions that Putin hinted darkly to the assembled journalists that the Granta’s trunk could fit “easily take two sacks of potatoes.” If you know what he means… and trust me, anyone who’s been to Tolyatti before does.

“Building on the well-received 911 Carrera GTS with its extra power, visual panache and extensive extras for an attractive price, Porsche today announced the 911 Carrera 4 GTS.”

“The extra all-weather performance, visual muscle and standard equipment of the 911 Carrera 4 GTS comes at an attractive price. On sale this fall, the 911 Carrera 4 GTS Coupe will be available in the US at a base MSRP price of $110,200 while the 911 Carrera 4 GTS Cabriolet will be priced at $120,100.”

Not even Hyundai mentions “attractive pricing” so often in their press releases. Click the jump for the details and a much better way to spend your money.

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Honda’s latest Civic may not have made a great impression on TTAC’s Best and Brightest, but the new compact isn’t targeting any one buyer anyway. As theinspirationroom.com reports [click through for new ad videos], Honda’s new Civic campaign is all about broadening the model’s appeal… to five specific stereotypes.

The campaign features five distinct characters, each representing a different model. The Urban Woodsman, Jack, lives in the city but is at home in the woods. He likes his Hybrid for its great fuel efficiency, which comes in handy on his many trips to the great outdoors. The Zombie, Mitch, is a salesman who’s into high-tech gadgets. His Civic Sedan is loaded with options like Bluetooth HandsFreeLink and navigation system with FM Traffic. The Monster, Teeny, is a bubbly and studious college coed. Her practical nature and frugal budget align with the fuel-efficient HF model. The Ninja, Aiko, is cute, innocent and deadly. A martial-arts phenom who’s partial to red licorice and arcade games, she pairs well with the high-energy performance of the Si model. Cesar, the Champion Luchador, is somewhat of a celebrity. He’s handsome, charming and a bit vain so he, of course, appreciates the Civic Coupe’s sleek lines.

Of course, Honda never needed this kind of segmentation silliness (which reeks of the “brand central studios” that Bob Lutz rips in his new book) in order to make its Civic one of the best-selling nameplates in the US market. Meanwhile, the requisite price of this kind of “personality profiling” is that the mass market “profile” (i.e. the people who buy the majority of Civics) gets a short shrift compared to the smaller but sexier niche profiles. As a result, Honda signals that it sees the bulk of Civic buyers as “zombies,” with no distinguishing characteristics besides a vague affinity for tech toys. Compare this to the legendary tagline “you meet the nicest people on a Honda,” and you’ll begin to get a sense of how far Honda’s marketing has fallen in recent years…

Detroit’s brand managers, particularly those at the resurgent premium and luxury brands, have made West Coast sales a high priority as they seek to bring new buyers into once-moribund brands like Buick and Cadillac. California, in particular, is a huge market for luxury and premium cars, and it’s generally an edgier, more youthful market that has long shunned domestic offerings. Everything from “lifestyle events” to no-cost hybrid drivetrain options on Lincoln MKZ have been introduced in an effort to get California’s copious yuppie population interested in Detroit luxury, but the results just haven’t shown up yet. According to Ford’s Mark “MKF” Fields [via AN [sub]], only about 25% of MKZ buyers were tempted by the free-hybrid deal in March, and meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Golden Gate City has just lost its final domestic auto dealership, a Ford/Lincoln store. Detroit may be California dreaming, but the Buicks and Lincolns of the world are still a long way from gaining ground in the West Coast.

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