{"id":2659,"date":"2005-10-26T02:06:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-26T06:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2005\/10\/brand-banishment\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:02:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:02:05","slug":"brand-banishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2005\/10\/brand-banishment\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand Banishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1966<\/a><\/p>\n

General Motors<\/a> has been prominent in the news lately, most recently regarding the bankruptcy<\/a> of Delphi Automotive Systems<\/a>, the recently-independent successor to the United Motors<\/a> parts subsidiary. The troubles of this emancipated child are only one symptom of a larger corporate struggle. It’s been popular lately for pundits to call The General a “health care company that makes automobiles.”<\/p>\n

Corporate cutoffs are nothing new at GM. In December 2000 it was announced that Oldsmobile, GM’s longest-lived marque and a founding division of the company, was being abandoned. Then followed a starvation diet of no new product development. Finally, on April 29, 2004, the last Oldsmobile<\/a>, an Alero sedan, came down the line.<\/p>\n

Things had long seemed oh, so promising. Ransom Olds’<\/a> popular curved dash model<\/a> propelled the marque to first place in sales until overtaken by Ford in 1906, and it remained in the nation’s mind in song<\/a> for years afterwards. Even during the rather unremarkable
\n1930s<\/a>, Oldsmobile trundled along in 5th to 7th place in the industry.<\/p>\n

Things picked up in 1940<\/a>, when Olds became GM’s “idea car,” introducing
\nHydra-Matic<\/a>, the first successful fully-automatic gearbox<\/a> (thanx to The Auto Channel<\/a>). Engineering continued apace with the
\nRocket<\/a> short-stroke ohv engine for 1949, making Oldsmobile the
\nNASCAR<\/a> champ for three seasons.
\n“Jetfire”<\/a> turbocharging of the intermediate aluminum V8 for 1962-3 foretold the rise of turbos in the 1980s, and the daring
\nToronado<\/a> of 1966 proved once and for all that front wheel drive was viable with big engines. (It must be said that the
\nconcept<\/a> for the
\ndrive package<\/a> did not originate at GM. It was patented by
\nFrederick Hooven<\/a>, an engineer under contract to Ford Motor Company, and was intended for the 1961-63
\n“cigar-shaped” Thunderbirds<\/a>.
\nBrock Yates<\/a> says GM licensed the Hooven\/Ford patent for the Toro and similarly-configured Cadillac Eldorado<\/a> of 1967.)<\/p>\n

Despite setbacks like the baroquely-styled
\n1958 models<\/a> and the ill-conceived
\ndiesel<\/a> conversion of gasoline V8s to campaign the energy-challenged late ’70s, Olds enjoyed halcyon days in which the
\nCutlass<\/a> became the best-selling single vehicle model in the United States. Even after it was deposed by the Ford F-150<\/a> in 1982, the front-drive
\nCutlass Ciera<\/a> copped the title for passenger cars. Alas, all good things come to an end, and the division seemed to lose heart. When the distinctive Aurora<\/a> was introduced for 1995 it was bereft of any external Oldsmobile badge. The rest is history.<\/p>\n

Many pundits feel that further brand-letting is in the cards. Buick<\/a> and Pontiac<\/a> are alternately rumored to be the next kids to be put on the block. My friend Paul Lashbrook thinks GM may cut the catalog back to simply Chevrolet<\/a> and Cadillac<\/a>. He may be right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

General Motors has been prominent in the news lately, most recently regarding the bankruptcy of Delphi Automotive Systems, the recently-independent successor to the United Motors parts subsidiary. The troubles of this emancipated child are only one symptom of a larger corporate struggle. It’s been popular lately for pundits to call The General a “health care….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3415,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions\/3415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}