Scion C-HR – LA debut, previews funky new crossover

The Scion C-HR Concept has been revealed at the 2015 Los Angeles Auto Show. If, however, you find that it looks all too familiar, well, it should be — this Scion concept SUV is effectively a rebadged Toyota C-HR which made its global debut at the recent Frankfurt Motor Show.

Also underpinned by Toyota’s New Global Architecture (TNGA) and wearing an identical diamond-inspired exterior design, the only differences between this and the Toyota-badged concept we saw at Frankfurt appear to be the allocated Scion badges, and of course, the new red body colour — previously, the C-HR featured a grey shade of metallic paint, while this deep red colour appears equally fitting.

The C-HR is of course a preview of a future road-going model that Toyota will introduce in 2016, while a Scion-badged version has also been confirmed for the US market. When it is finally revealed, the new Toyota compact crossover SUV will join a segment that includes the Mazda CX-3, Honda HR-V and Ford EcoSport.

Scion vice president Andrew Gilleland said, “Scion is known for doing things differently, and maybe even being a little weird. This C-HR Concept embraces that idea and wears it like a badge of honour. We couldn’t be more excited to add the production version to our line-up.”

In the past, Toyota also mentioned that it would be introducing a new-generation full-hybrid powertrain for the production version of this SUV. It claimed that the new hybrid system will be lighter and more compact, and will offer further reductions in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions that the current hybrid system.

Our spy photographers have managed to catch a glimpse of a Toyota test mule believed to be the road-going version of the C-HR. By those images, it looks like the production model could have a lot of design similarities with the C-HR concept here.

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