Often a comment sparks an entire blog entry. Nothing gets me going more than a discussion about US auto makers, especially if I can lay out my thoughts about “what’s happened to (insert brand here)”.
In a comment to my Auto Factoids for the Week of Aug 19, 2012 (http://wp.me/pKHNM-1fG) Bill wrote:
“If I were in charge of GM, I would not have left Oldsmobile for death. I liked the idea of ‘Saturn-izing’ Olds into a Lexus level car. There might have been only one, or two models under the Olds badge, but I would not have left the world’s oldest car company for dead.
Oldsmobile was GM’s ‘experimental’ division both in terms of engineering and product marketing. Many automotive firsts such as automatic transmission (Hydramatic), OHV V8s, and even the ‘self winding’ car clock……….Which brings me to the time I find myself saying in many of my comments in your BLOG:
“What happend to GM????””
I’ve mentioned this before, it never really made any sense to me why you would have so many divisions in a car company as GM did. Some say, it was to offer different levels of options that were affordable on up to expensive. But lets take the Chevrolet for instance. At one time they had the Biscayne, Belair, Impala and Caprice (and I think that was the correct order from lowest optioned to the highest) as option levels and pricing to reach everyone. This doesn’t seem too bad. But now add in the other divisions with Chevy being the lowest, then there’s Pontiac, Buick, Olds, and Caddy and I think that would be the correct order for options and pricing as well. A further break down in what as suppose to be different classes of automobile for different classes of society was the norm for those divisions as well. For example the Tempest and La Mans, GTO were basically the same car with different options.
I understand brand/model loyalty, especially at the initial merging/acquisition of a brand, but at some point that stopped being the only valid reason for keeping them separate. By the time the ’70s and ’80s rolled around they all started looking the same. For example take the Chevy Monte Carlo for 1978 and compare with the Buick and Olds of the same year:
78 Buick Regal
78 Chevy Monte Carlo
1978 Olds Cutlass
Minus the big tires on the Olds, tell me why I should purchase one over the other or purchase one at all (beside the fact they were fairly ugly)?
Frankly, I would have kept Pontiac over Olds any day but then again the difference between a Camaro and a Firebird in 2000 wasn’t much -but they are both gone now.
2000 Firebird
2000 Camaro
There just wasn’t much different. They diluted the brand and it became impossible to find any major differences – unless you were a gear head and most consumers were not.
The necessity to cut cost and share parts made it nearly mandatory to have them all made from the same cookie cutter.
Now don’t get me started on the purchase of oversea brands and becoming a finance/mortgage company to defray cost. (Did you know that at one time GM did more business in home/real estate loans then they did with their core car brands?
I rest my case.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
This is very fascinating, You’re an excessively professional blogger. I’ve joined your rss feed and look ahead to in quest of more of
your magnificent post. Also, I’ve shared your web site in my social networks
I read it somewhere that the only reason GM got rid of Pontiac, which was outselling Buick by a large margine in North America was that Buick is a big seller in China, thus selling more than Pontiac. May be I read it here.
As far back as the 30’s one can see the similarities between GM divisions in body style. The big difference was they all had their unique trim and drivetrains. 1981 was the beginning of the end when all V8s were Chevy including in Caddilacs. Lost was the Pontiac performance, Caddilac performance and smoothness, Olds inovation and the Buick engineered V6s. Buick even let Rover fully develop the 215 aluminum V8.
1959 was the last year that Chevy produced only one body, large. Then the compacts started. By 1961 even the compacts were division unique. Similar in shape but unique drivetrains.
Death to Pontiac, Oldsmobile and almost Buick began in 1981.
Your argument for ‘brand engineering’ is valid I think if you compared Plymouth to Dodge, or even Ford to Mercury, but GM was different years ago. In the case for Olds, there were many ‘exclusive’ options, and ‘industry firsts’ that appeared on Olds long before any GM car.
Many years ago, Brock Yates while at Car and Driver magazine, had a running series of articles that basically looked at GM’s divisions and then looked at how the General went from separate car divisions to ‘brand engineering’.
Brock wrote that when Chevy held 40% of the US market (just Chevy, not GM), they had only three platforms: Full size (Biscayne to Impala), Mid size (Chevelle), and Small (Nova Chevy II). Meanwhile the other divisions had just one, or two platforms. Brock said that dealers started complaining that they wanted to compete with eachother; in other words, Buick wanted a Nova variant (Apollo), Pontiac wanted their version (Ventura), and Olds had their Omega.
This led to the ‘dilution’ you mention, and in reality, GM just had competition within it’s own company while ignoring the ‘outside’ competition that eventually killed the company. Brock Yates mentions the Cadillac Cimarron (Chevy Cavalier) as the ‘end of GM brand differentation’.
My point is if GM had kept the platforms exclusive, and let Buick be affordable Cadiallics, and Olds be the engineering leader, and Chevy being the every mans car, and not let ‘brand engineering’ dilute, they could have been successful.
Final comment on Firebird vs Camaro. These cars used to be built in Norwood, Ohio (Cincinnati). I met a retired Manufacturing Engineer from that plant one day at a car show held on the plat’s grounds back in the 1980s. I basically said what you said about the Camaro and Firebird being the same car. He rebutted claiming that the suspension bolts of the Firebird had different (higher) tensil strength than the Camaro, and went on and on about details ranging from motor mounts to steering boxes, etc. True, or Urban myth, I do not know? I will say that SD455 exclusive to the 1970s Trans Am did indeed make it a different Muscle Car from the Camaro’s L48 350 smog motor.