General Motors Companion Make Program

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General Motors pioneered the idea that consumers would aspire to buy up an automotive product ladder if a company met certain price points. As General Motors entered the 1920s, the product ladder started with the price leading Chevrolet marque, and then progressed upward in price, power and appointments to Oakland, Oldsmobile, Buick and ultimately to the luxury Cadillac marque.

However by the mid 1920s, a sizable price gap had been created between Chevrolet and Oakland, while the difference between an Oldsmobile and a Buick was even wider. There was also a product gap between Buick and Cadillac. To solve this, General Motors authorized the introduction of four companion marques priced and designed to fill the gaps. Cadillac would introduce the LaSalle to fill the gap between Buick and Cadillac. Buick would introduce the Marquette to handle the higher end of the gap between Buick and Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile would introduce the Viking, which took the lower half of the spread between Oldsmobile and Buick. Finally, Oakland would introduce the lower-end Pontiac marque. This is often referred to as General Motors Companion Make Program.

It is interesting to note that all of the companion makes failed with the exception of Pontiac, which outlived parent Oakland and continues today as a GM marque. Today, GM has merged Buick, Pontiac, and GMC Truck together, intending all three to be sold together from the same dealerships as companion makes.

Rival Ford Motor Company briefly experimented with companion makes as well. The company added Lincoln-Zephyr as a lower-end marque for Lincoln in 1936, introduced De Luxe Ford as a companion make for its mainstream Ford line in 1937, and added Mercury to further fill the gap in 1939. This experiment was short-lived, however, with De Luxe Ford becoming a mere trim line in 1941 just as Lincoln cancelled all but their Zephyr-based line. Ford would stick with Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln through modern times, with the exception of the brief Edsel failure.