Canadian cars?

[CarlLaFong]

I have always wondered why the Big Three produced vehicles specifically for the Canadian market. Mercury and Fargo trucks, Meteors etc. Did they sell Merc autos How about Lincolns, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Cads? But we had Plodges Pontiacs with Chevy drivelines. The point of everything has always been the bottom line, money. Tooling up for these cars was not free, not horribly expensive either. Where were the bean counters?

Edited September 28, 2022 by CarlLaFong (see edit history)

[Oldtech]

My take on this is that they regarded Canada as a lower priced market than the U.S. therefore every dealer should have a low priced car. Now why they decided to make 2 lines and have 2 dealers everywhere I have no idea.  Maybe they thought the dealers couldn't make a go of it just selling Mercurys or Pontiacs.  In my smaller town in the 50's they had a Chev-Olds Cadillac dealer, A Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealer, a Ford Lincoln dealer and a Mercury Meteor dealer. I think we only had one Chrysler dealer then, we had 2 later.  Then... the Pontiac-Buick guys sold Austin and later Envoy (a rebaged Vauxhall) The Chevy store sold Vauxhall, and The Mercury Meteor guys had Anglia and Prefect. Later Consul and Capri.   Kind of an alphabet soup. 

[rocketraider]

Didn't it have to do with Canadian exchange rates and protective tariffs? Even now Canadian law requires a certain amount of radio airplay to be Canadian artists. I imagine it was similar with automobiles and machinery.

 

Canadian market wasn't much different than other non-US markets. All of the big three made cars specialized to the  markets outside America they were selling in. And some of those non-US market cars were pretty neat.

[8E45E]

There were many cars Canada never received from the US.  The 1962-65 Dodge Custom 880 was never marketed in Canada, and the Valiant was just a 'Valiant' until the end of 1965 with combined Dart and Valiant trim sold at both Chrysler-Plymouth and Dodge dealers.  Starting in 1966, there were separate Valiant and Dart models.  As well, the 1965 B-body Coronet & Belvedere were not sold in Canada.  In later years, the H-body Oldsmobile Starfire was a US-only offering, as well as the 1990's rwd Custom Cruiser station wagon.  

 

Craig

[rocketraider]

1 hour ago, 8E45E said:

In later years, the H-body Oldsmobile Starfire was a US-only offering

Never mind it was built in St-Therese.

[dictator27]

After WW2 Canadian Pontiacs used Chev bodies and only came with the Pontiac flathead 6 until 1954.  In 1955 things were reversed - Pontiac body sitting on a Chev frame.

[Oldtech]

For some reason Pontiac bore the main changes. Gm REALLY must have thought that Canada needed a cheap Pontiac. In 1940 They made a model that sold as a Pont that was a Chev with a Pontiac style grill and instrument panel with a silver streak down the hood only. It even had the Chevy engine.  As Dictator mentioned they were all Chevy based until the 70's when the autopact came in and leveled the playing field.  The frames in the late 40's and early 50's had the mount points for both the Chevy and Pontiac engines as the flathead was a bit longer.  Starting in 55 they used the chevy V8 but also had a great 261 CID 6 cylinder available. It was a car version of the truck engine. A real torquer.  63 and later just used the 230 / 250.

[1912Staver]

The Canadian market always puzzles me. Canadian and a car guy all my life. Much smaller market than the U.S. , but most of the U.S. models available in one form or another { probably 80% percent or better } plus a whole bunch of unique Canadian lines. I expect it was mostly due to Canadian dealership brand needs. Examples like the Canadian version of the Ford Falcon, the Frontenac.  Created so the Canadian Mercury dealers would have a car to compete with the Canadian Ford dealers Falcons. One year only , 1960.  They sold almost 8500 of them so I guess the tooling costs for the unique trim was paid for .  { around 17,000 Canadian Falcons in 1960 } Ford of Canada seemed willing to do whatever it had to to keep its various dealers happy.  Also Mercury trucks. I have owned a few of them over the years. But Canadian Ford trucks are much more common than the Mercury's.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by 1912Staver (see edit history)

[8E45E]

4 hours ago, rocketraider said:

Never mind it was built in St-Therese.

Pontiac Acadians were built in Ypsilanti, MI.

 

Craig

[8E45E]

3 minutes ago, 1912Staver said:

The Canadian market always puzzles me. Canadian and a car guy all my life. Much smaller market than the U.S. , but most of the U.S. models available in one form or another { probably 80% percent or better } plus a whole bunch of unique Canadian lines. I expect it was mostly due to Canadian dealership brand needs. Examples like the Canadian version of the Ford Falcon, the Frontenac.  Created so the Canadian Mercury dealers would have a car to compete with the Canadian Ford dealers Falcons. One year only , 1960.  They sold almost 8500 of them so I guess the tooling costs for the unique trim was paid for .  { around 17,000 Canadian Falcons in 1960 } Ford of Canada seemed willing to do whatever it had to to keep its various dealers happy.  Also Mercury trucks. I have owned a few of them over the years. But Canadian Ford trucks are much more common than the Mercury's.

This is the number one reason I maintain Edsel's 'failure' in the marketplace with the astronomical losses Ford Motor Company reported was a huge in-bred corporate hoax.  True, the Edsel never met FoMoCo's sales projections for 1958, but more Edsels were sold than Studebaker and Packard combined.  These Canadian-only cars with their special trim were marketed for years, with way less yearly production than the slowest selling Edsel, but they must have been making money for Ford, or they would have discontinued them.  Only when Robert McNamara insisted with the 'one body shell' for Ford and Mercury in 1961 was the Monarch and the Meteor considered redundant after that.   (After the compact Meteor was laid to rest after 1963, the Meteor name was revived on the lowest priced Mercury, which was essentially a Monterey with a Ford interior.)

 

Craig

[Gunsmoke]

I recall the strong brand loyalty pervasive among Canadian (please change spelling in topic title) car buyers/owners in the mid fifties to mid sixties where I lived (Eastern Canada). My dad was an auto mechanic (and Mercury/Monarch guy) and had his strong opinions on the matter, and many of his friends had equally strong opinions on their brand of choice, typically Chevrolet/Pontiac, or Dodge/Plymouth. The Big 3 dominated the market, and dealers no doubt maintained loyalty by good service and generous trade-in allowances. Even within corporate brands, you would find guys who loved Pontiacs but not Chevrolets, loved Dodge trucks but not Fargo, or loved Chevrolet trucks but not GMC. These loyalties drove the market and the maintaining of so many options. However, by the early 60's the foreign car market began to grow and compete with the big 3, first some British makes (Vauxhall, Consul/Zephyr, Austin, Rover and others) and of course VW. By the time the Japanese makes starting arriving, the big 3 realized they had to make better corporate decisions both in regard to models/sizes, and focus their marketing to compete, ultimately leading to fewer large cars, and more variety, the full size, compact and sub-compact ranges.  This led to new brands, Chevy II, Maverick, Valiant, Fiesta, Chevette, Omni, and later the pony cars. In my opinion, the Big 3 is still struggling to figure out what the market wants and responding with good options while the foreign makers eat their lunch.

[8E45E]

A strange move for Canadians was in the middle of the 1971 model year when Pontiac dealers on both sides of the border received the Ventura II.  It was 'new' to the US market, but in Canada, with the Acadian already on the market, one would have thought GM would have let it run its course until end of the model year, and introduced it for 1972.  FoMoCo waited until 1961 to introduce the Comet in Canada as the Frontenac was on the market for Mercury dealers to sell.

 

Craig

[58L-Y8]

20 hours ago, 8E45E said:

This is the number one reason I maintain Edsel's 'failure' in the marketplace with the astronomical losses Ford Motor Company reported was a huge in-bred corporate hoax.  True, the Edsel never met FoMoCo's sales projections for 1958, but more Edsels were sold than Studebaker and Packard combined.  These Canadian-only cars with their special trim were marketed for years, with way less yearly production than the slowest selling Edsel, but they must have been making money for Ford, or they would have discontinued them.  Only when Robert McNamara insisted with the 'one body shell' for Ford and Mercury in 1961 was the Monarch and the Meteor considered redundant after that.   (After the compact Meteor was laid to rest after 1963, the Meteor name was revived on the lowest priced Mercury, which was essentially a Monterey with a Ford interior.)

 

Craig

I second the idea the purported $250M Edsel losses were a corporate ruse.  All major platforms and components were shared with Ford and Mercury models plus Edsels were assembled in the same plants as those other lines.  Amortization and overhead was carried by Ford and Mercury production, the generation of engines continued into the late 1960's.  Only things unique to Edsels were front clips, rear quarter panels, decklids, dash stampings plus trim.   Although the initial promotion and sales organization consumed some, it was quickly folded into the Lincoln-Mercury Division.  

 
For comparison, "Tex" Colbert engineered a $250M major reorganization, modernization, manufacturing update and completely new 1955 Mopar lines across the board for the same amount. 

Now, had Ford admitted the millions lost on the Continental Mark II plus the unibody Lincolns and Continentals into the 1960's until sales volume surpassed 50K units, that would have been plausible.  Even in this case, increasing Ford Thunderbird volumes carried the Wixom overhead, allowing the Lincoln 'vanity project' to continue.  Ford was making plenty of money on other lines and models, could afford to support annual losses from Lincoln.  After all, no Ford executive wanted to show up at the DAC or country club in only a Mercury Park Lane...or maybe even a Thunderbird wasn't enough for some...  

 

Steve
 

[3macboys]

One of the reasons for the various Canada only models was the limited dealer network in mostly small markets - yes the large centres had all the offerings but most of the small towns only had one dealer for a particular company, or just one dealer of any make.  In the case of Ford the Ford dealers were looking an upmarket car and the Mercury dealers were looking for a lower line car and thus the Meteor and Monarch brands were born.  I can only guess that at the corporate level they did not want to create full line dealerships such as Ford Lincoln Mercury. 

 

With Chrysler I read that Dodge/Desoto/Dodge Trucks was a uniquely Canadian match up of product and meanwhile the Plymouth/Chrysler dealers needed a truck to sell and thus along came Fargo.   

[nzcarnerd]

2 hours ago, 3macboys said:

One of the reasons for the various Canada only models was the limited dealer network in mostly small markets - yes the large centres had all the offerings but most of the small towns only had one dealer for a particular company, or just one dealer of any make.  In the case of Ford the Ford dealers were looking an upmarket car and the Mercury dealers were looking for a lower line car and thus the Meteor and Monarch brands were born.  I can only guess that at the corporate level they did not want to create full line dealerships such as Ford Lincoln Mercury. 

 

With Chrysler I read that Dodge/Desoto/Dodge Trucks was a uniquely Canadian match up of product and meanwhile the Plymouth/Chrysler dealers needed a truck to sell and thus along came Fargo.   

Add to that, that Chrysler Canada built their own engines from 1938 on, which were all 25" blocks. In export markets as here in NZ we got a mix of Mopars from both the US and Canada (and from Australia post WW2) and ever since then people have been buying the wrong head gaskets.

[dictator27]

A small town with only a single dealership in it is not unusual today even close to a major centre.  The town of Hope BC is 2 hours east of Vancouver.  It is a junction point for 4 highways and has a population of about 6200 today.  There has been a single GM dealership there for 50+ years.  No others.

[8E45E]

13 hours ago, nzcarnerd said:

Add to that, that Chrysler Canada built their own engines from 1938 on, which were all 25" blocks. In export markets as here in NZ we got a mix of Mopars from both the US and Canada (and from Australia post WW2) and ever since then people have been buying the wrong head gaskets.

If I remember right, one was 218.1 cubic inches while the other was 217.8.  Lots of unintentional dyslexia came about over this confusion.

 

Craig

 

 

[nzcarnerd]

5 hours ago, 8E45E said:

If I remember right, one was 218.1 cubic inches while the other was 217.8.  Lots of unintentional dyslexia came about over this confusion.

 

Craig

 

 

There was a 201 version as well - not sure of the exact size relative to the 23 inch version.