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Originally Posted by 68gmsee
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is government involvement and "anti-trust" laws. Many years ago, a lot of companies had competing groups of wholly owned subsidiaries to stay ahead of government anti-trust laws. IBM was one of them. They had divisions that in some cases competed against each other.
In the automobile industry this may have played a role in the past but these days it may be a way for corporations to assess their wholly owned subsidiaries to see if they're profitable. If they're not, they can eliminate them.
Another possibility is customer loyalty and perception. To this day, I still hear people say that GMC vehicles are slightly better. Same with Mercury vs Ford, Plymouth vs Dodge. Most of these are pretty much identical but perception keeps the customers buying.
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The concept of GM was born from the fact that in the early days the public was clamoring for regulation of the new industry, a lot of people felt automobiles were a dangerous nuisance, GM was created with the thought that only large manufactures would be able to survive regulation or if the industry created it's own standards maybe the government would never get involved in the first place. Remember early on there was hundreds of car companies, if not thousands, producing very small numbers of hand fabricated cars.
Interestingly, what GM did in it's latest down sizing, brand reduction was less about what was profitable individually and more about reducing self competition. Pontiac was their 2nd best selling mark when they eliminated it, but was the greatest reduction in the distribution network aside from Chevy.
I suppose GM felt they could steer loyalty either towards Chevy or Buick. A lot of the stronger performing Pontiac dealerships became one or the other.
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Originally Posted by DT1
I'm curious...I always thought GMC trucks were suppose to be slightly more refined or had better upgrades than Chevy trucks. Lately, I have been told that the opposite is true, IE, Today, GMC is a notch lower than Chevy. Which, if any, is true?
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You are thinking too much in car terms, GMCs were intended to be perceived as more rugged or more commercial, luxury was not really a concept applied to trucks until recently. Actually now GMC is not a notch lower it still marketed differently, if not paradoxically, on the low end it's marketed as it always has been, towards fleet purchases and utilitarian, but on the high end it's marketed more in line with Cadillac, especially in crossovers and SUVs. What I find interesting is the confusion in direction GM seems to have with this. GMC was the division that got the RVs, so it's the adventurers mark, then it got the Typhoon and Syclone, OK GMC is the performance mark, oh wait Chevy gets the Extreme and GMC gets the Denali, so GMC is the luxury mark and Chevy is the performance mark, etc, etc...
The real problem is that there is heavy brand loyalty with both these marks, and trucks are a big seller. I think if GM tried to market Chevy trucks at non-Chevy dealerships the sales would severely tank. The sales may increase some at Chevy dealerships but probably not enough to recover the loss. In the same vein reducing the truck operations to simply a corporate wide GMC product would seriously upset Chevy loyalists. I doubt either case would send buyers running for Ford, but it may make them think about Toyotas and Nissans.
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Originally Posted by DeadheadNM
Good stuff here.
So back in 67-72, would an equivalent Chevrolet truck cost more, less, or the same as a GMC truck? Curious is one had a sales advantage in terms of cost over the other.
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List, nearly the same, but if you wanted 20 of them with utility boxes on the back, it would have probably been cheaper and easier from GMC. Like I said before, I bought my '91 Suburban from a GMC only dealership, and they dedicated more of their showroom space to heavy duty dealer installed options then they did to the vehicles themselves. They instantly knew how to order trucks for towing, plowing, heavy duty electrical systems, power take off pumps and such, the Chevy dealerships knew none of this stuff then. The Suburban needed to have 3 different options to get a mounted spare tire, a cover over it and a jack. Also the Chevy dealership didn't know how to order a solid color Suburban with a cloth interior or dual batteries on a non-diesel truck.