Toyota Motor Corp. said three models formerly under the Scion banner will have new names when they’re sold as Toyotas starting in the 2017 model year.
The name changes come in the wake of Toyota’s announcement in February that it would scuttle the Scion brand after the 2016 model year and sell the Scion vehicles as Toyotas.
The Scion FR-S in the U.S. market will now be the Toyota 86, as the two-door coupe is known in Asia, South America and Australia.
"When we announced the transition of the Scion models to Toyota we hadn’t planned on changing the names of our cars, but by popular demand, for our sports car, we decided to adopt the global name of 86," Toyota’s group vice president Bill Fay said today in a statement.
In addition to the new name, the 86 also gets a light mid-life update that will debut at the upcoming New York auto show: front and rear bumpers are new, as are the LED headlights and taillights. The engine and transmission carry over, but horsepower is up by five to 205 total and torque rises by five pound feet to 156 pound-feet total.
Meanwhile the subcompact iA sedan -- built by Mazda -- will be called the Toyota Yaris iA and the compact iM hatchback will be known as the Corolla iM when the vehicles go on sale for the 2017 model year.
Going forward, Toyota plans to report the sales volumes of normal Corolla and Corolla iM together as a single unit, as it will for the Yaris and Yaris iA.
The upcoming C-HR compact crossover keeps its name when it goes on sale in the U.S. in 2017 as a 2018 model. Toyota plans to show the C-HR concept at the New York show, despite the fact that it revealed the production model for the European market last month in Geneva.
