Chart Of The Day: GM's U.S. Sales By Brand Over The Last Decade

Many thought the problem with "Oldsmobile" was the first three letters "Old." At one point in the majority of the country each brand had its own identity. Cadillacs (prior to volume at all costs in the 1970s) had an aura of exclusivity, quality, and flash. Buick was for those who could likely afford Cadillac but didn't want to show off their wealth as ostentatiously. Oldsmobile was the "engineering division" for many years where new ideas (like the hydromatic transmission & FWD) got tested out. Pontiac was performance and a youthful image. Chevrolet was an everyman's car - a slice of Americana. GM did many things to stab those brand identities in the heart.

@PrincipalDan Roger Smith's disastrous GM reorganization in 1984 basically took away whatever power was left of the individual brand managers. While all the mainstream GM products of that time were getting worse and worse, Oldsmobile's GM died of a heart attack. I cannot remember his name but he understood the Oldsmobile customer. From 1985 thru 1990, Olds managers steered the product portfolio from bad to worse and kept trying to change things and put their own mark on it. This included the awful "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" campaign. Of course a Cierra or Achievable weren't your father's Oldsmobile. He drove a good car. By then the mainstream W midsize cars were way behind Camry, Accord and yes, Taurus. Camry had become the new Cutlass. John Rock came in to shake things up as Olds GM. He kept GM's B of D from canceling Olds during the 1992 crisis, when GM almost went bankrupt and fired Stempel and the senior Reuss after only two years. in passenger cars, Saturn was GM's only bright light then. Rock wanted to echo that separate company's design and sales ethos. While the Aurora, Alero and others received good initial press, the car action had shifted away from GM and Olds sales tumbled further. Meanwhile, GM doubled down on trucks. Even the shutting of Olds was comically bad. GM made the announcement in November 2000 just as the new Olds Bravada SUV long lead press preview was happening. Then they updated the Aurora a few months later. Those cars were instant orphans. Worse, GM didn't have its shutdown plan for 300 standalone Olds dealers worked out, so they lost another couple billion toget out. Shades of the Fiat hookup disaster.. The brand limped along as rental car fodder another THREE YEARS before the last Olds rolled off the line in 2004.

@BklynPete Alero was not a bad car but quality was lower than competition. Interior had low quality plastics and crudely made, engine had ancient design. Olds interior quality was simply unacceptable. It might be a good car but apparently GM could not build good quality cars for some reason. I blame equally clueless US MBA management and stupid militant UAW. Coming from European market I was stunned by quality of USDM cars and not in the good sense. Anything close to Japanese quality-wise was a Lincoln Town Car (the last boxy design) which Ford screwed up it also later with redesign. The bankruptcy hopefully fixed problems with US domestic automakers. Unfortunately it happened under Obama's watch who kept time-bomb which is UAW and assigned idiots like Lt.Dan to run GM.

@BklynPete Oh god, the Unda-Achieva. A friend drove one against his will. Well, he bought it, but it was against his will after that.

Nostalgia and China, respectively.

Well, you're not going to sell humongous trucks everywhere (like, um, the populated coasts). For instance, Cadillac is the only GM marque getting any volume around San Francisco.