There can be only one; or three or four, or so.
Business Magazine suggests that General Motors may have too many brands. There are currently Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab, GMC, and Hummer in the US market. The magazine suggests that the American car manufacturers pare back their brands significantly. From the article:
G.M.'s biggest problem, however, is its unwieldy collection of eight brands--Cadillac, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Saturn, Saab, G.M.C., and Hummer. Each product line has its own dealers, its own development costs, and its own marketing budget, meaning that all those resources are diluted to the point of impotence. If you're shopping for a midpriced sedan, for example, G.M. has six. Buick by itself has two. Toyota, by comparison, has just one--the Camry, which sells nearly as many vehicles each year as all six of G.M.'s offerings combined.and;
Some executives privately concede that G.M. needs only three or four U.S. brands: Cadillac, Chevrolet, G.M.C., and perhaps Saturn.Chevrolet and Cadillac would make the most sense. Toyota has three brands in the US; Toyota, Lexus and Scion, the latter is suffering from poor sales. By the same token I would not be surprised to see Holden become Chevrolet one day as car manufacturing and brands become more and more global and the local oddities and markets cease to become as important. It is interesting to see the reaction on car forums devoted to discussing General Motors' fortunes. I suspect most of these type of generalist forums are young kids, but even so, rather than car lovers forums, they are really marketing forums. All they want to discuss is what brand, what colour, what the car should be named. There isn't much on the 'car' itself. Quite amusing.
