GMC Suburban and Chevy Suburban? I think Chevy is owned and operated by GMC but how can they both make the same car? The GMC Suburban is now called the Yukon XL. Also the Dodge and Plymouth Neon. How can they both make it? I don’t get it. Aren’t they competing against themselves?
I realize I’m generalizing here, but as in most cases, I don’t care.
-Dave Barry
They use the same assembly line. But there are a few differences, usually in the options.
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No, they are still competing against Ford. I think the idea is that if have only two roughly comparable cars in the market, you get half the business. If you have 2, and he has 1, for a total of 3, you get 2/3rds the business. I might be wrong.
It may seem illogical but there is no reason why two affiliated companies can’t sell the same named vehicle.
As for the Neon there is no more Plymouth division of Chrysler.
Come let us go, I’ve a cask of amontillado.
That’s why GMC is planning on having 99 different versions of the suburban, with different brand names. Then they will have 99% of the market, and Ford 1%.
It’s an old marketing ploy. The exact same Ford Taurus with the exact same options will sell for more as a Mercury Sable just because the name “Mercury” has more prestige. This is a spur from a lost era, but car companies play-up this “image” game. In general, the technique covers all strokes for all folks. The inside is identical, just slap a bigger sticker price on it.
The same is true with laundry detergents, for example. Different advertising schemes to target different “markets”, etc.
Believe me…there’s a method to the madness!
To understand the answer to this question, you have to understand the reason the Big Three still have divisions.
Don’t bother trying to understand it, no one else in the business world really does.
But the stated reason for keeping divisions is brand loyalty, the tendency of the consumer to buy another of what he already has. Thus, Chrysler kept Plymouth going on the assumption that regular Plymouth buyers wouldn’t necessarily buy Chrysler or Dodge branded cars if they 86’ed the Plymouth brand. We’ll see how right they were, now that Plymouth was actually axed this year.
Of course, it makes little economic sense for General Motors to design a car that only its Buick division sells, especially when you are talking about small cars on which the Big Three constantly take economic baths. Instead, they design one car, then make minor variations for Buick, Chevy, Pontiac, and, sometimes, even Cadillac. Same for Ford/Mercury. Tracers aren’t competing against Escorts, they are competing against Neons, etc.
I would guess that Buick is most likeliest to be the next casualty.
A lot of american cars have japanese parts inside.
And just as a counterpoint - both of my Toyota Camrys were built in Ohio, using a lot of (not a majority of, but a lot of) American parts.
Happens in many industries - e.g. the Harrier jet is produced by British Aerospace in the UK and (I believe) in the US by McDonnell-Douglas. Or the Blackhawk helicopter - Sikorksy in the US (I think) and Westland in the UK.
I never touched him, ref, honest!
Brand loyalty is only half of it. Let’s call the other half brand image. If I say Cadillac, the immediate image is “rich old people going to the country club.” No way in hell anyone under 40 is even going into a Cadillac showroom. So it makes sense for GM to take the same basic design, change the grill, stiffen the suspension, and call it a Pontiac. Toyota too middle-class for your tastes? Throw in leather seats and a really good stereo and call it a Lexus.
But what about when the exact same car is sold by competing companies with different names? Fer’instance I remember when the Ford Probe and Mitsubishi Eclipse were the same design…and I think I recall Consumer Reports saying one of the recent Toyota Corrolas was the same design as the Geo Prism or Metro from that same year.
“You’re only calling us a cow college cos’ we were founded by a cow!”
Everyone seems to be talking about mimic cars such as the Mercury Sable and the Ford Taurus–virtually the same car but made by different companies and the car’s names are different. I am asking how can two different companies make the same exact car. Plymouth and Dodge Neon are the same car, same name, same price. Why do that? Why not just stick to one company?
DSYoungEsq touched on the fact that Plymouth no longer exists, which could explain the switch from Plymouth to Dodge Neon. Plymouth is no longer in existence, so move the car from Plymouth to Dodge. But why were Chevy and GMC both making Suburbans when neither one of them was going out of business? I think they are now employing the Taurus/Sable tactic of having a Yukon XL and Chevy Suburban be almost the same car. Maybe I just answered my own question.
Let me try to explain a little more. Car dealers are franchises, and each franchise gets a little territory – no other Chevrolet dealer within 10 miles, or one Ford dealer for each 50,000 people, let’s say.
Maybe I don’t like my local Chevvy dealer, but I like the Suburban. Voila, I go to my nearby Oldsmobile dealer, and there’s a very similar GMC Yukon or Suburban. GM is happy because it gets the sale, the Oldsmobile dealer is happy, and the Chevvy dealer – well, he wasn’t going to get my business anyway.
VV, what you’re saying has occured, but the two examples you give are not accurate. The Probe and Eclipse use mauch different frames, powerplants and components, and are direct competitors. Corrola and Prism again are direct competitors sharing nothing significant other than classification.
Some good examples are the Mitsubishi 3000GT and the Dodge Stealth. Same car with slightly different options, mouldings, and interior arrangements. The companies however are not closely related, the details of the apparent sharing of products is confusing. The motivations however are clear, the companies both save huge amounts of money on R&D and are able to sell the vehicle. They actually compete more than the Ford/Mercury marriage because the profits aren’t shared AFAIK, it is a successful partnership because of the Import/Domestic biases of many consumers. Dodge has done this marriage with Mitsubishi in other vehicles as well, and I suspect it was a risk they took to pull them out of financial distress in the 80s. Odd considering Dodge may have the most parity in their line up with the Dodge/Chrystler/Plymouth triumvirate.
GM uses the same platform/different badge and options scheme in an international level as well. Not only are there similarities in the GMC/Chevy/Olds/Pontiac/Cadillac (where they make efforts to differentiate the models as much as they can) they also own many foreign makes which never get seen on US shores. They make very little effort to change things in the foreign/domestic platforms, for example the Cadillac Catera is a Opal. Opal is an Autrailian (IIRC) make owned by GM, and GM basically pirated the design to fill a gap in their product line up quickly and cheaply. Ford filled the same gap the traditional way by designing a new model, and introduced the Lincoln LS, but lost 4 years of sales revenue by developing a new vehicle from scratch.
Jinx, you are wrong about the Mercury Sable/Ford Taurus comparison, they are the same car, but there is much more in a Mercury than just the name. They are not the same option packages, and the more expensive Sables have many more options than the cheaper Ford. Its is not just paying for a name, people aren’t willing to pay more for the same car, it to high of a ticket item to do so. It is true however that Ford has begun introducing option packages in Taurus’ that are very similar to the Sables, the prices are however virtually identical. So people will pick the name they like better, but not pay more.
[nitpick]mattk, McDonnell-Douglas is now Boeing and no longer exists, and the Harrier is being phased out of production.[/nitpick]
Come let us go, I’ve a cask of amontillado.
VV and Padeye:
It was the Mitsibishi Eclipse and the Eagle Talon that were so similar.
As for the auto makers, they’re like a daytime soap. I read years ago about Chrysler and Lamborgini (sp?) coming together to build the ‘portofino’ which never happened. Basically Chrysler just wanted to get some knowledge from Lam. so they did.(something came from it that is on the road now, but I forget) Ford and Mazda trucks are very similar. Yamaha built the Taurus SHO. Only the body was American. Harley Davidson is no longer made in the USA. The engine is, but the rest is made/assembled outside the border. Suzuki and Honda. Both American made. (I know, these aren’t cars, but…) And, IIRC, GMC has never had a vehicle like the suburban. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so. GMC mostly has made work trucks. And paired down trucks. Oh, and let us not forget the Escalade. The Chevy Suburban for those who want Caddilac style. Sorry, but I’d buy the top of they line Chevy and get the same as the Escalade for a lot less. Oh, the leather might not be as nice, but the price is.
I know people who swear by Chevy or swear by GMC. Brand preference, i guess. They are essentially the same, and all fall under General Motors.
And let us not forget the K-car. Without that, there would be no Dodge today. Or convertibles for that matter. Check in on that one.
“I dream that she aims to be the bloom upon my misery”
Prior to the 1959 model year, Chrysler Corp. divisions all had completely different identities. They began to standardize their engines that year, probably due to economic necessity: the 1958 recession cut their production almost in half. Eventually they standardized their bodies and chassis to the point where a Plymouth was merely a Dodge with lower-quality trim. The Neon may have been an attempt to standardize names: it’s the lowest-priced vehicle Chrysler produces, so the idea may have been to save money by just using one name. I don’t know for sure, though: you’d have to ask Bob Lutz or Bob Eaton.
Dodge dealers usually sell Dodges exclusively: Plymouths are sold at Chrysler dealers. Since Plymouths are supposed to be Chrysler’s entry-level make, they’re priced lower than Dodges. So the Plymouth Neon and Dodge Neon aren’t really competing against each other. The Plymouth customer is looking for the cheapest vehicle, while the Dodge customer will spend a little more for a sharper-looking, more comfortable vehicle (relatively speaking).
You’re only as old as you look.
I owned a Plymouth Horizon. The only difference between it and the Dodge Omni was the tail lights.
Judges 14:9 - So [Samson] scraped the honey into his hands and went on, eating as he went. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it; but he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.
Chrysler used to religiously differentiate the names for Plymouth and Dodge products, despite being the same car. Examples include the Omni/Horizon and the O25/TC3 hatchbacks.
When the Neon came out, it was originally a Dodge car. Plymouth wanted to sell it (it was popular, and Plymouth dealerships wanted in on the take). Rather than lose the value of the name of the car, they simply ported the car to the Plymouth line, allowing those dealers to sell it as well.
Now, as to the situations where competing car-manufacturers sell the same car, that is different. In the 80’s, there was this big push by large companies to engage in joint ventures. For foreign companies, this provided import and tax advantages (we were really unhappy about imports taking jobs away, as you will recall). For American companies, it provided access to Japanese (primarily) auto developing methodology (in which they were, supposedly, superior). One such classic joint venture was NUMMI, located in Fremont, CA, which was between GM and Nissan or Toyota, I believe (I can’t recall, if anyone wants the details, ask and someone will look it up 
) The plant produced cars for both companies, sold under different names, but identical otherwise (except for option packages, trim, etc.). Mitsubishi and Chrysler had a similar joint venture, and that is why you saw those GT 3000’s that were identical to the Dodge Stealth.