In light of the GM Logo discusssion...History of GM Brands

[Steve Moskowitz]

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2021/01/all-39-gm-brands-listed-in-one-article/

[Dave39MD]

Interesting, thanks for posting.

[8E45E]

Many of those brands didn't deserve to die.

 

Craig

[58L-Y8]

During the formation of General Motors by Billy Durant, and his years of control thereafter, buying many of those companies amounted to acquiring some potentially useful patent or production resource but little else of long-term benefit.  Too many were just plain duds.

[padgett]

Also got a bit overextended and wound up running a bowling alley.

 

List is interesting, have to get down to the seventh entry before mentioning a US car. In 1970 GMOO was there but not very interesting.

[joe_padavano]

Interesting that the article has gone from 39 to 41 to 43 brands in just a short period of time. Once again, why is anything on the interwebs assumed to be correct?

[TerryB]

The irony, the GM Authority logo appears at the upper left corner of the page....and next to it is an ad for a 2021 Honda.  

[Rusty_OToole]

2 hours ago, padgett said:

Also got a bit overextended and wound up running a bowling alley.

 

List is interesting, have to get down to the seventh entry before mentioning a US car. In 1970 GMOO was there but not very interesting.

Not a bowling alley, a chain of bowling alleys. He also owned a supermarket when he died. Not a grocery store, a supermarket. Durant always thought big, he made and lost 3 multi million dollar fortunes in his day. If you know anything about the fifties, bowling alleys and supermarkets were the  biggest retail fads of the decade. Durant would have been a multi millionaire again if he had lived until 1961. He would have been 100 years old.

Edited January 13, 2021 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[Mark Wetherbee]

The article is also lacking the fact that Sheridan didn’t disappear, but became Durant after said sale. I believe that it was Durant’s foresight in controlling as much of the raw materials as possible that eventually saved GM from going under in later years... I don’t think he was anybody’s fool.

[padgett]

Never said was a fool, more of a visionary who was infested by accountants.

[hidden_hunter]

So Holden was the oldest brand they ran into the ground

[wws944]

46 minutes ago, hidden_hunter said:

So Holden was the oldest brand they ran into the ground

 

I thought that was very interesting.  I knew that Studebaker was one of the few that had made it from horse 'n wagon days into relatively modern times.  But didn't know that Holden was also a part of that club.

[8E45E]

Just now, wws944 said:

 

I thought that was very interesting.  I knew that Studebaker was one of the few that had made it from horse 'n wagon days into relatively modern times.  But didn't know that Holden was also a part of that club.

So was McLaughlin also a part of that club who made the successful transition from horse-drawn to self-propelled, buy building bodies for Buicks and Rausch & Lang in Canada.

 

Craig

[wws944]

The other one I was thinking was a "swallowed up" GM brand was Lansden.  They made electric cars and trucks in the 1900s and 1910s.  However a little bit of internet digging showed that John Lansden sold his interest to Edison, before joining GM's GMC truck division (who also made some electric trucks in the 1910s.)  So the Lansden company was never part of GM, even though its namesake founder was.

Edited January 13, 2021 by wws944 (see edit history)