PROM NIGHT.(News)(Toyota's Scion division marketing to youth)(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

A short, corsage-laden excursion into the hearts and minds of Scion's target market

"How cool is this?'' ask- ed Caitlin Cherry, seeing the limo for the first time on prom night.

"Omigod! This is so cool,'' said her friend Nicole Anto-marchi. "This is so totally cool.''

Cherry and Antomarchi are teenagers, juniors in high school, perhaps ready to align their lifetime automotive marketing loyalties, perhaps receptive to a gentle nudge from an entry-level marketing effort by a major automaker. They and their handsome dates, Patrick Cento and Paul Bishop, are precisely the people at whom Toyota's newborn Scion division is aiming its multi-hip marketing big guns. And wouldn't those marketeers be happy to know the car deemed so totally cool was, in fact, a Scion?

This particular Scion is a bit off-spec from what you'll see in California Scion showrooms this summer. It's Japan-spec, "pure JDM,'' as the kids say, with the steering wheel on the right and the in-dash nav system still showing us orbiting Hokkaido. It's also a stretch limo, Sawzall-ed in half and rewelded with 3.6 feet of middle added by Scion chief engineer Tetsuya Tada himself at the Takaoka plant in Japan.

This very stretch bB (AW, May 19) made its U.S. debut at the SEMA International Auto Salon in April, the annual trade show that deals in all things sport compact and youth oriented. When we saw it at IAS we had to drive it. It didn't matter where or how, so we called Toyota and asked. Sure, said Toyota, where and how? Well, it wouldn't be fun just to poke around, would it? Certainly not as much fun as, say, taking the target demographic to their prom.