Plymouth – I cannot figure out what their niche was supposed to be. Apparently it was supposed to be entry-level, but were priced and equipped similar to Dodge. The Prowler was cool in its own way, but wasn’t exactly on-brand. Everything else was almost identical to other Chrysler products.
Mercury – Basically just decently equipped Fords, but not as well equipped as the Lincoln-badged Fords. The brand didn’t really carry any prestige by the time I was paying attention to cars in the 90s. It was the car for old people that didn’t have Lincoln money.
Eagle – The Talon was cool, but it was an Eclipse and Plymouth had their Laser. At least the later cars all could have easily been sold under the Dodge brand.
GMC – So you want a Chevy truck or SUV, but want it decently equipped and without the grotesque front end design style? I much prefer the looks of GMC products over their Chevy counterparts, but I don’t get it as its own brand. You can get a Chevy equipped to the nines. If you want it really loaded, all of the SUVs can be had in Cadillac.
BcuzRacecar
I understand the concept behind saturn but the whole thing is just funny looking back that they started a whole new brand and system under the reasoning oh we should try to do good business instead of just fixing their old brands
TrekChris
All originally independent car manufacturers, brought under one umbrella. At the time, brand loyalty was a very big thing, so to do away with the individual brands and just badge everything as a Ford, Chrysler, or Chevy would have hurt sales. They just continued doing it until it got to the point where they could no longer financially justify having them anymore.
bearded_dragon_34
Pretty much all of the brands you mention are victims of a changing market. The intermediate American brands made more sense when 95% of the cars sold in North America were American and fully half of them came from GM. When the influx of foreign brands began and the American automakers were fighting for market share, the intermediate brands made less sense.
It didn’t help that, around the same time, engineering and styling between corporate brands became unified. In 1964, it was easy to justify why an Oldsmobile was better than a Chevrolet, and why a Buick was better than an Oldsmobile, and why a Cadillac was the cream of the crop. In 1995? Not so much. Which is why, by course or by force, most of those brands no longer exist.
In the modern day, some of these brands have sort of existed as companion brands to other brands in the same corporate structure, and to sate dealer groups. Never mind that Chevrolet sold everything you could possibly want, they had their own dealer network. Buick and GMC and Pontiac—when it was around—together, more or less presented a full line-up, and were generally retailed in the same store. Even if the Pontiac Torrent *was* a direct clone of the Chevy Equinox, Buick/GMC/Pontiac dealers wanted to have something in that segment, too…hence the existence of both.
The exception is Eagle, which was a captive import brand. In part due to its allegiance with Mitsubishi, Chrysler wanted to capitalize on some of the would-be import buyers by selling the same cars. GM did a similar thing with Geo in the US and Asüna in Canada, and Ford with Merkur.
Stellantis continues to be messy, and especially the CJDR subset. With just Jeep, Dodge and Ram, you’d have a pretty full lineup, including some luxury cars. So Chrysler either needs to move sharply upmarket and reclaim their image from the decades of shoddy, accessible, non-differentiated cars they’ve made—and I think they could achieve this with the right products—or disappear.
Anteater_Reasonable
I think some of it had to do with dealership models years ago. I remember there were separate dealerships near my hometown for some of these brands that seem similar. Buick, Pontiac, and GMC were sold at one dealer and another sold Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. Plymouth and Chrysler were sold at one dealership. Dodge and Jeep were sold at another one. Lincoln and Mercury were sold at one dealership. Ford was at another one. I think it gave these dealers a way to offer vehicles at a wide variety of price ranges and styles without having to offer every brand under the parent company’s umbrella.
Such-Comfortable-118
The last car I thought I’d see today pop up on Reddit; my inferno red Plymouth Breeze that got me through HS and college. Well not mine, but damn near close.
Cars like Plymouth, Merc, and Olds made sense, as someone else mentioned, when American makes accounted for 95% of the total US car market.
You simply wouldn’t be caught dead driving a Jap or “Kraut” vehicle when they had just been the bad guys in a World War. There was plenty of room for these brands to have a niche, which have been replaced by your Kia’s, Hyundai’s, Lexus’, etc. Brand loyalty was huge back then, especially when you replaced your car every 3-4 years. Unlike what gramps tells you, cars either rusted to fuck or engines simply wore out in short order because of leaky carbs, bad oil, and poor machining.
They all suffered from the same fate. A Rebadge-happy Big 3, a poor transition to FWD/smaller engines, and a stodgy reputation.
Bubbly_Positive_339
These brands exist because of stupid dealer franchise set ups from 100 years ago that exist to this day
impreza77
Mercury and Lincoln. Especially Lincoln in the last 20 years.
Former_Specific_7161
I don’t see Mitsubishi here lol. They’ve had the most disfunctional family of vehicles for decades (for the US market at least) at this point.
thats__hot
GMC
huskerd0
Most of them
LightningFerret04
As much as I like talking about them, Geo
It’s just really funny to have seen GM create an entire brand to sell… rebadged cars
No_Welcome_6093
I understand GMC but then Chevrolet shouldn’t get a truck or large SUVs. But honestly the GM portfolio didn’t make any sense. Even worse 25yrs ago: Hummer, Saturn, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, Saab. It’s always been a bit of a cluster.
CaffeineTripp
Not necessarily brand, but badge engineering. All brands suffer from it. There’s nothing truly unique when every GM runs the same four engines, transmissions, etc. Same thing with Jeep, just rebadged Alfas.
Sonypony6
eagle was pretty much born out of a contractual obligation to make cars alongside jeeps after Chrysler bought out AMC, and to keep jeep dealers stocked with more options. once the obligation was up and jeep dealers consolidated with the other Chrysler brands, there was no reason to keep around a brand that had no real identity or unique offerings.
I do love my talon though, even if it’s a pain in the ass to keep it going.
lifegoeson2702
Pontiac should’ve remained while GMC should’ve been axed imo. Makes no sense.
MrBathroom
I don’t get the existence of Seat. They only ever made rebadged cars. First it was Fiat now and for quite a while actually it’s VW. They’re marginally cheaper than a equivalent VW model, but they’re much worse in interior quality. Seat Leon is supposed to be a Golf, inside everything felt like a VW Polo. I don’t get it. People buy them but they’re not even cheap or anything
e_subvaria
In the last 30 years? Olds, Mercury, Plymouth, Saturn. I understand the historical significance of O/M/P.
bannedUncleCracker
Plymouth was an established brand, I did not understand putting a “Eagle” badge in the successful Concorde/Intrepid lines Chrysler/Dodge had
RoseWould
They aren’t here anymore but AMC. They managed to make sports cars, and grandma barges, and the occasional weird looking hatch. Every single one of them usually looked completely different from each other, didn’t seem to have only one type of person targeted, just built everything they thought of.
EucaIyptus_Ieaf
Idg gmc if it’s basically a Chevy.. or a Chevy is basically a gmc..?
StinkomodeeBanned428
Gay man’s chevy
freezies1234
Anything Japanese. Even their supercars lack soul.
vampyrelestat
I’m surprised Oldsmobile lasted as long as it did. When I was a kid I honestly thought they were marketed for Old people due to the name, and I wasn’t totally wrong.
Advanced_Tomato5713
Never got Geo. Why not just rebadge Suzukis for the American market as Chevy in the first place? They eventually ended up doing that with the Tracker after the Geo name was dropped anyway.
No-Divide-175
oldsmobile, what was even the point?
followed up bu infinity, I know its a rebadged nissan, but they are so bad at it that I dont even think its worth it.
UnderwhelmingAF
Plymouth never made much sense to me. They were essentially just Dodges with slightly different grilles and taillights. The only unique-to-the-brand vehicle they had in their last few decades was the Prowler, and that was such a niche/limited production car that it didn’t really move the needle much for the brand.
Expert_Mad
Plymouth originally was supposed to be a low cost alternative to Dodge and DeSoto back when Chrysler was a 5 marque brand. They did the job well until the 80’s when they became just another brand.
Mercury was originally a performance based company in the early 40’s but went to entry level luxury and by the 90’s was just rebadged Ford for the most part.
Eagle was AMC but instead of making their own cars they did rebadged Mitsubishis eventually selling to Chrysler who had been doing the same thing since the 70’s
GMC was supposed to be the GM commercial line of trucks but evolved to be luxury trucks and uptrimmed Chevy
Most of the brands you mentioned are victims of evolution and a changing market where there just wasn’t really any call for them anymore and the Manufacturers shoe horned them into a role they weren’t really suited for
sillysided
Sable known for transmission problems
Zoroike
GMC
Zbinxsy
Dodge anything, my gf had a charger rental once and it was just big and clunky and the hood line was way to high. It seems like everything was designed for fat greasy fingers. There was no class or tact to the car. Also I just don’t get the whole line of thinking that civics are some type of drivers car. I drove a 6sp neawer Integra (civic si with an extra 8k on the pricetag) and the whole experience was underwhelming, it was fun initially but by the time I got back to the dealership I had enought of it.
Zbinxsy
Jeeps with massive off road tires and off road everything but they just get used for around town. That doesn’t seem fun to even drive.
Ilikeoldthings222
Oldsmobile was so similar to Buick, Pontiac was so similar to saturn. Also, why did Plymouth and Chrysler co-exist for so long?
BabyYodaIsGod42069
GMC. Its existence makes no sense. GM should have kept Pontiac and killed off GMC. If you want a Sierra, just get a Silverado. If you want a Yukon Denali, just get an Escalade. If you want an Acadia, just get a Traverse.
MeltingDog
Maybe it’s shooting fish in a barrel, but Jeep.
I get the old ones were pretty good but with the reputation of Chrysler and Stellantis I would not really want to be somewhere remote in one of those cars.
mini2003
I didn’t “get” the Scion brand. It was marketed as a youth brand. Yet did it really fit into the skateboarding, surfing, youth they wanted?
I remember the 2 door car (tc) was the most popular.
mob19151
Mercury is such a sad case of what could have been. When the stars aligned, they produced some of the most beautiful cars ever made: the original Cougar, the ’64 Marauder, the infamous ’49 coupe. Unfortunately, those moments of brilliance are overshadowed by decades of mediocrity.
Anyways, my pick is Merkur. Ford put themselves in a very weird spot with those cars. The niche they filled in Europe didn’t really exist in America at the time. Sales reflected this. The XR4TI was kind of cool, I guess.
LuxuryCarConnoisseur
Mercury made more sense back before the 80s, when Olds and Buick dominated the middle luxury market and Ford wanted to compete with both. Hence Mercury which was “more than a Ford but less than Lincoln”. Then in the 80s, thanks to badge engineering, foreign competition and the middle luxury market starting to grow smaller, that’s when the Mercury brand just turned into “Fords with chrome grilles”.
![Let’s play “real or nah”… Did I really just see a 1 of 50 [Lamborghini Aventador Miura Homage]?!](https://www.evshift.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/1lo6tzuf9msd1-770x515.jpeg "Let’s play “real or nah”… Did I really just see a 1 of 50 [Lamborghini Aventador Miura Homage]?!")
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38 Comments
Plymouth – I cannot figure out what their niche was supposed to be. Apparently it was supposed to be entry-level, but were priced and equipped similar to Dodge. The Prowler was cool in its own way, but wasn’t exactly on-brand. Everything else was almost identical to other Chrysler products.
Mercury – Basically just decently equipped Fords, but not as well equipped as the Lincoln-badged Fords. The brand didn’t really carry any prestige by the time I was paying attention to cars in the 90s. It was the car for old people that didn’t have Lincoln money.
Eagle – The Talon was cool, but it was an Eclipse and Plymouth had their Laser. At least the later cars all could have easily been sold under the Dodge brand.
GMC – So you want a Chevy truck or SUV, but want it decently equipped and without the grotesque front end design style? I much prefer the looks of GMC products over their Chevy counterparts, but I don’t get it as its own brand. You can get a Chevy equipped to the nines. If you want it really loaded, all of the SUVs can be had in Cadillac.
I understand the concept behind saturn but the whole thing is just funny looking back that they started a whole new brand and system under the reasoning oh we should try to do good business instead of just fixing their old brands
All originally independent car manufacturers, brought under one umbrella. At the time, brand loyalty was a very big thing, so to do away with the individual brands and just badge everything as a Ford, Chrysler, or Chevy would have hurt sales. They just continued doing it until it got to the point where they could no longer financially justify having them anymore.
Pretty much all of the brands you mention are victims of a changing market. The intermediate American brands made more sense when 95% of the cars sold in North America were American and fully half of them came from GM. When the influx of foreign brands began and the American automakers were fighting for market share, the intermediate brands made less sense.
It didn’t help that, around the same time, engineering and styling between corporate brands became unified. In 1964, it was easy to justify why an Oldsmobile was better than a Chevrolet, and why a Buick was better than an Oldsmobile, and why a Cadillac was the cream of the crop. In 1995? Not so much. Which is why, by course or by force, most of those brands no longer exist.
In the modern day, some of these brands have sort of existed as companion brands to other brands in the same corporate structure, and to sate dealer groups. Never mind that Chevrolet sold everything you could possibly want, they had their own dealer network. Buick and GMC and Pontiac—when it was around—together, more or less presented a full line-up, and were generally retailed in the same store. Even if the Pontiac Torrent *was* a direct clone of the Chevy Equinox, Buick/GMC/Pontiac dealers wanted to have something in that segment, too…hence the existence of both.
The exception is Eagle, which was a captive import brand. In part due to its allegiance with Mitsubishi, Chrysler wanted to capitalize on some of the would-be import buyers by selling the same cars. GM did a similar thing with Geo in the US and Asüna in Canada, and Ford with Merkur.
Stellantis continues to be messy, and especially the CJDR subset. With just Jeep, Dodge and Ram, you’d have a pretty full lineup, including some luxury cars. So Chrysler either needs to move sharply upmarket and reclaim their image from the decades of shoddy, accessible, non-differentiated cars they’ve made—and I think they could achieve this with the right products—or disappear.
I think some of it had to do with dealership models years ago. I remember there were separate dealerships near my hometown for some of these brands that seem similar. Buick, Pontiac, and GMC were sold at one dealer and another sold Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. Plymouth and Chrysler were sold at one dealership. Dodge and Jeep were sold at another one. Lincoln and Mercury were sold at one dealership. Ford was at another one. I think it gave these dealers a way to offer vehicles at a wide variety of price ranges and styles without having to offer every brand under the parent company’s umbrella.
The last car I thought I’d see today pop up on Reddit; my inferno red Plymouth Breeze that got me through HS and college. Well not mine, but damn near close.
Cars like Plymouth, Merc, and Olds made sense, as someone else mentioned, when American makes accounted for 95% of the total US car market.
You simply wouldn’t be caught dead driving a Jap or “Kraut” vehicle when they had just been the bad guys in a World War. There was plenty of room for these brands to have a niche, which have been replaced by your Kia’s, Hyundai’s, Lexus’, etc. Brand loyalty was huge back then, especially when you replaced your car every 3-4 years. Unlike what gramps tells you, cars either rusted to fuck or engines simply wore out in short order because of leaky carbs, bad oil, and poor machining.
They all suffered from the same fate. A Rebadge-happy Big 3, a poor transition to FWD/smaller engines, and a stodgy reputation.
These brands exist because of stupid dealer franchise set ups from 100 years ago that exist to this day
Mercury and Lincoln. Especially Lincoln in the last 20 years.
I don’t see Mitsubishi here lol. They’ve had the most disfunctional family of vehicles for decades (for the US market at least) at this point.
GMC
Most of them
As much as I like talking about them, Geo
It’s just really funny to have seen GM create an entire brand to sell… rebadged cars
I understand GMC but then Chevrolet shouldn’t get a truck or large SUVs. But honestly the GM portfolio didn’t make any sense. Even worse 25yrs ago: Hummer, Saturn, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, Saab. It’s always been a bit of a cluster.
Not necessarily brand, but badge engineering. All brands suffer from it. There’s nothing truly unique when every GM runs the same four engines, transmissions, etc. Same thing with Jeep, just rebadged Alfas.
eagle was pretty much born out of a contractual obligation to make cars alongside jeeps after Chrysler bought out AMC, and to keep jeep dealers stocked with more options. once the obligation was up and jeep dealers consolidated with the other Chrysler brands, there was no reason to keep around a brand that had no real identity or unique offerings.
I do love my talon though, even if it’s a pain in the ass to keep it going.
Pontiac should’ve remained while GMC should’ve been axed imo. Makes no sense.
I don’t get the existence of Seat. They only ever made rebadged cars. First it was Fiat now and for quite a while actually it’s VW. They’re marginally cheaper than a equivalent VW model, but they’re much worse in interior quality. Seat Leon is supposed to be a Golf, inside everything felt like a VW Polo. I don’t get it. People buy them but they’re not even cheap or anything
In the last 30 years? Olds, Mercury, Plymouth, Saturn. I understand the historical significance of O/M/P.
Plymouth was an established brand, I did not understand putting a “Eagle” badge in the successful Concorde/Intrepid lines Chrysler/Dodge had
They aren’t here anymore but AMC. They managed to make sports cars, and grandma barges, and the occasional weird looking hatch. Every single one of them usually looked completely different from each other, didn’t seem to have only one type of person targeted, just built everything they thought of.
Idg gmc if it’s basically a Chevy.. or a Chevy is basically a gmc..?
Gay man’s chevy
Anything Japanese. Even their supercars lack soul.
I’m surprised Oldsmobile lasted as long as it did. When I was a kid I honestly thought they were marketed for Old people due to the name, and I wasn’t totally wrong.
Never got Geo. Why not just rebadge Suzukis for the American market as Chevy in the first place? They eventually ended up doing that with the Tracker after the Geo name was dropped anyway.
oldsmobile, what was even the point?
followed up bu infinity, I know its a rebadged nissan, but they are so bad at it that I dont even think its worth it.
Plymouth never made much sense to me. They were essentially just Dodges with slightly different grilles and taillights. The only unique-to-the-brand vehicle they had in their last few decades was the Prowler, and that was such a niche/limited production car that it didn’t really move the needle much for the brand.
Plymouth originally was supposed to be a low cost alternative to Dodge and DeSoto back when Chrysler was a 5 marque brand. They did the job well until the 80’s when they became just another brand.
Mercury was originally a performance based company in the early 40’s but went to entry level luxury and by the 90’s was just rebadged Ford for the most part.
Eagle was AMC but instead of making their own cars they did rebadged Mitsubishis eventually selling to Chrysler who had been doing the same thing since the 70’s
GMC was supposed to be the GM commercial line of trucks but evolved to be luxury trucks and uptrimmed Chevy
Most of the brands you mentioned are victims of evolution and a changing market where there just wasn’t really any call for them anymore and the Manufacturers shoe horned them into a role they weren’t really suited for
Sable known for transmission problems
GMC
Dodge anything, my gf had a charger rental once and it was just big and clunky and the hood line was way to high. It seems like everything was designed for fat greasy fingers. There was no class or tact to the car. Also I just don’t get the whole line of thinking that civics are some type of drivers car. I drove a 6sp neawer Integra (civic si with an extra 8k on the pricetag) and the whole experience was underwhelming, it was fun initially but by the time I got back to the dealership I had enought of it.
Jeeps with massive off road tires and off road everything but they just get used for around town. That doesn’t seem fun to even drive.
Oldsmobile was so similar to Buick, Pontiac was so similar to saturn. Also, why did Plymouth and Chrysler co-exist for so long?
GMC. Its existence makes no sense. GM should have kept Pontiac and killed off GMC. If you want a Sierra, just get a Silverado. If you want a Yukon Denali, just get an Escalade. If you want an Acadia, just get a Traverse.
Maybe it’s shooting fish in a barrel, but Jeep.
I get the old ones were pretty good but with the reputation of Chrysler and Stellantis I would not really want to be somewhere remote in one of those cars.
I didn’t “get” the Scion brand. It was marketed as a youth brand. Yet did it really fit into the skateboarding, surfing, youth they wanted?
I remember the 2 door car (tc) was the most popular.
Mercury is such a sad case of what could have been. When the stars aligned, they produced some of the most beautiful cars ever made: the original Cougar, the ’64 Marauder, the infamous ’49 coupe. Unfortunately, those moments of brilliance are overshadowed by decades of mediocrity.
Anyways, my pick is Merkur. Ford put themselves in a very weird spot with those cars. The niche they filled in Europe didn’t really exist in America at the time. Sales reflected this. The XR4TI was kind of cool, I guess.
Mercury made more sense back before the 80s, when Olds and Buick dominated the middle luxury market and Ford wanted to compete with both. Hence Mercury which was “more than a Ford but less than Lincoln”. Then in the 80s, thanks to badge engineering, foreign competition and the middle luxury market starting to grow smaller, that’s when the Mercury brand just turned into “Fords with chrome grilles”.