Badge engineering and the demise of brands

[Ghoste]

How big a role do you think badge engineering played in the demise of Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Mercury?

I think a very large one personally.

[b5blue]

Agreed! 

[Kern Dog]

It goes back a ways too. LOOK at the 56-58 GM cars. The rooflines all look similar.
It was worse in the 70s and 80s when GM decided to cut costs even more and dump all Olds and Pontiac V8s in favor of the "corporate" V8, which was a joke of a name. EVERYone knew it was a Chevy mill.

[Ghoste]

I would count that as badge engineering too though, at least as it applies to GM.  Certainly a corporate powertrain was working for Chrysler and Ford but GMs inter-divisional rivalry was part of what made each brand stronger.  Definitely agree that the Chevy engine thing was a huge factor.

[Mike DC]

                                     
I think badge engineering was the symptom, not the disease.  

The BE got going at the same time that Detroit was losing market share to foreign brands in the 1970s/80s.  Detroit watched a bunch of foreign brands become major players in the American market but they refused to cut their own number of brands to compensate.  

Commercial logic says there is only room for so many different products in the marketplace.  The bean counters in Detroit were still obeying that logic even if the top brass refused to reduce the # of brands for other reasons.  Cutting the total diversity of a corporation's products w/o cutting the number of separate brands equals badge engineering.  

[404NOTFOUND]

It goes back a ways too. LOOK at the 56-58 GM cars. The rooflines all look similar.
It was worse in the 70s and 80s when GM decided to cut costs even more and dump all Olds and Pontiac V8s in favor of the "corporate" V8, which was a joke of a name. EVERYone knew it was a Chevy mill.

That's when I knew it was all over. I remember someone suing GM because his Cadillac didn't have a Cadillac engine.

[aussiemuscle]

i think BE goes back further than the 70s. weren't a lot of those independent companies that got bought by the big three just to increase their customer base. I don't know why they kept those brands going for so long (it just seems to duplicate administration). I think they'll all be better off with fewer brands.

[stripedelete]

I'm with Mike DC.  They were dead a long time ago.  The GM's brands were part of their cradle-to-grave strategy that blew up with the introduction of imports.   Ford just ignored LM instead of really focusing on a Lexus, Acura, Infinity, strategy.   Plymouth was just redundant (so was Olds).

IMO they were kept around too long because 1) incomplete product lines which made them to difficult and expensive to unwind at the dealer level.  Examples: They didn't drop Plymouth until there were no C/P stand-alones left.  GM bought out the stand-alone Olds dealers or slipped them into other franchises (medium duty truck, GMC truck, or other open GM points).  Many stand-alone Pontiac dealers ended up with Buick-GMC franchises.    2) from 1994 to 2005 everyone was fat, dumb, and happy.

[Ghoste]

Thats just it though, the Caravan and Neon were exactly the same no matter who you bought it from except for the badges.  I don't know about the stand alone dealers, at least for Mopar.  I remember mainly Chrysler-Plymouth and Chrysler-Dodge dealers here with no stand alone ones coming to mind ever.
Hmm, it seems like the Prowler and PT Cruiser came along just a little too late.

[stripedelete]

Thats just it though, the Caravan and Neon were exactly the same no matter who you bought it from except for the badges.  I don't know about the stand alone dealers, at least for Mopar.  I remember mainly Chrysler-Plymouth and Chrysler-Dodge dealers here with no stand alone ones coming to mind ever.
Hmm, it seems like the Prowler and PT Cruiser came along just a little too late.

You're correct on no Chrysler-only OR Plymouth-only.  I was reffering to C/P stand-alones as opposed to CP/D or CP/J duals.  (C/P together were considered a complete product line)

Prior to deleting Plymouth they gave Jeep stand-alones C/P and visa versa.   While that created some awkward situations, it made it simple to wack Plymouth later. (the awkward situations were taken care of by bankruptcy) 

Note: I do remember one Plymouth stand-alone in SE Ohio making it into the 80's.  They likely had a franchise agreement written on parchment.