Badge engineering has been a go-to cost-cutting move in the automotive industry for decades, even affecting nameplates previously considered sacred — looking at you, “Toyota” (or should we say BMW?) Supra. While most manufacturers still keep their flagships in-house, the most common form of badge engineering stems from an automaker’s need to fill a gap in its lineup while refusing to dedicate the resources to build its own solution. Repurposing another manufacturer’s car under the thin veneer of a facelift is much easier, less time-consuming, and most importantly, less expensive. It’s a Band-Aid approach to achieving market saturation but, in some cases, it does pay off.
Advertisement
Toyota and Mazda have been in a relationship for a while now, starting in 2015, when they vowed to “build a continuous partnership that would mutually benefit the companies…” That’s where the Mazda 2 entered the picture. Toyota wanted to add a new inexpensive subcompact car without having to design one, so Mazda gave Toyota the go-ahead to give the little city cruiser a makeover.
With that, the Yaris iA was born, sharing everything aside from its badges and gaping front grille. But the Yaris iA wasn’t even the Mazda 2’s first identity change — it was Toyota’s Scion brand that grabbed hold of the Mazda 2 first.
From Mazda to Scion to Toyota — all the same car
The Mazda 2 had a rocky time in the United States. Mazda decided to bring it across the Pacific in 2010, when demand for subcompacts reached a high point. But U.S. interest in subcompacts dwindled quickly, as crossover and small SUVs began to dominate. Mazda 2 sales in the U.S. were abysmal from the start, and Mazda pulled the plug in 2014, with the rest of the world getting a refreshed, dashing Mazda 2 in 2016.
Advertisement
With Toyota and Mazda making their agreement a year later, the Mazda 2 became a Scion. Toyota’s ultimately dissolved Scion brand, a youth-focused make, lacked a four-door subcompact. Building it on the Mazda 2 platform kept both development cost and sales price low. The Scion iA shared almost everything with the Mazda 2 except for its styling and badges. That worked in the Scion iA’s favor, as it was praised for being dynamically interesting, comfortable, and a great value.
The Scion iA lasted less than a year, though, before the entire company was folded back into Toyota. In the shuffle, the Scion iA was renamed the Toyota Yaris iA, which joined the Toyota-developed Yaris two-door and four-door hatchbacks as a separate Yaris model. Other than a new name and Toyota badging, the Yaris iA remained the same as the Scion iA, itself identical below its surface to the Mazda 2. Toyota dropped all of the Yarises after the 2020 model year.
Advertisement