IIRC from a 1980s issue of Motor Trend…
GM wanted it to be:
CPOBC
Chevy -> Pontiac -> Olds -> Buick -> Caddilac
Pontiac was supposed to be for Chevy drivers that wanted a ‘faster’ option.
As you got older, and if you kept getting raises as you aged, you were expected to go from either a Chevy or Pontiac into an Olds, then a Buick, then a Caddilac to die in.
In my personal view, Chevrolet is either trucks (commercial equipment) or cheap, unstylish, low-class crap. I don’t get why, after all this brand paring, GM would keep Chevrolet’s non-truck cars or why anyone would ever by a Chevy by choice. The whole brand just screams “shitty garbage” to me. I’d buy absolutely any other brand of car—American, Japanese, or European—before I’d buy a Chevy, based on my perception of the brand image. But that’s just me.
I totally agree and I don’t understand it either.
GMC is the commercial marque. Chevy is just the cheap 'n cheerful end of the line. 
Nothing wrong with that, as long as the cars, you know, work. I tend to agree that the only reason GM kept Buick around is the Chinese market. I suspect that if it was just a North American decision, they would have preferred to keep Oldsmobile and ditch Buick.
Got your history a bit mixed up. The original brands of GM were Buick (which was actually the founding brand), Cadillac, Oldsmobile (bought from R.E. Olds), Oakland, and Chevrolet.
Back in 1927, Durant decided that each of these brands needed a companion brand. These were:
Chevrolet (None)
Oakland: Pontiac
Oldsmobile: Viking
Buick: Marquette
Cadillac: LaSalle
All of the companion marques were suppose to be lower than the primary marque except for Viking which was priced higher than Oldsmobile. By 1940, most of the companion brands had petered out. The sole exception was the Pontiac brand which actually became more popular than the Oakland sister brand.
The five main brands lasted until the 1970s as intended. Chevrolet was the bargain priced “All American” brand. Pontiac was aimed at more of the car enthusiast (“The Wide Track Pontiac”). Olds were for the up and coming businessman, Buick were for the upper middle class aimed more towards the intellectual class, and Cadillac was what you bought when you wanted to flaunt it.
Things started to fall apart in the 1970s with the gas crisis. Suddenly, the Chevrolet Nova became available for all marques except for Cadillac. When the X-Cars came out, they were all built at the same assembly plant and, for the first time, all had the same engine and transmission in it. For the longest time, each division was at least responsible for its engine and drive train, but the X-Cars put an end to that.
After Chevrolet engines started appearing in all the brands, and GM spent two billion dollars creating their Saturn/Jupiter program and basically abandoned all the brands. In the 1980s, the brands were no longer even divisions of GM. They were merged into Chevrolet/Pontiac/Canada, and Build/Olds/Cadillac. The divisions were called CPC and BOC (which were mocked in GM as standing for “Cheap Plastic Cars” and “Big Overpriced Cars”).
For almost three solid decades, GM cars …what’s that technical term? oh yeah… sucked. GM ignored their brands, and pushed trucks which didn’t help Olds, Pontiac, Buick or Cadillac since they didn’t produce trucks.
Buick use to be in the 1960s a premiere brand. The Buick Riviera was a hot car and the other divisions copied it. The LeSabre and Skylarks were extremely popular with the “younger” crowd, and the Electra was what you bought when you though Cadillac was just tawdry.
The problem is that Buick hasn’t done much for their brand in the last two or three decades. That means people who bought their first Buick back when they were 45 now are 75 and buying Buicks. Meanwhile, newer customers haven’t been arriving. Thus, as once was said about Dodge not long ago, the age bracket for Buick drivers is 55 to dead.
Can Buick be brought back? GM had made some penitence over the last 5 years. Their cars were improving before they headed towards bankruptcy, and they do show some promise now. Too bad Olds and Pontiac were unable to be resuscitated. However, Cadillac does show that brands can be revived.
Not long ago, Cadillac was chasing Lincoln downhill in competition on who was the premier American brand. One day, they suddenly looked up and realized that their competition wasn’t Lincoln, but BMW and Audi. They completely redid their car line, lost most of their remaining customers to Lincoln, but managed to attract a much younger, hipper crowd. Maybe the same could happen for Buick.
Oldsmobile has been gone since 2004. In the recent bailout, GM was under pressure to get rid of Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn, and Buick, but they fought to keep Buick because of the Chinese market.
Do you consider the current Corvette (and, more specifically, the Corvette Z06 and the $100,000, supercar-beating Corvette ZR1) as cheap, unstylish, low-class crap and/or shitty garbage? Or does it get a pass in that it’s sort of its own brand?
That’s an honest question, BTW. 
If you read the Alfred Sloan book “My Years at General Motors” you’ll note that in 1920 the Chevrolet brand was positioned to give General Motors an introduction brand. In this case it was to rival the Model T Ford.
The Chevrolet did do this and caused Ford to drop the Model T and introduce the Model A.
Well, a lot of time has passed since then. There are a lot of introduction-level brands these days, and in my mind, any one of them has a better brand image than a Chevy.
I guess, to me the whole notion of sports cars, is, like trucks or commercial vehicles, a completely different realm. So maybe you’re right in saying that a Corvette has a brand image on its own.
On the other hand, if I think about it further, in my mind, a Corvette is the kind of car for Dirk Diggler or Wooderson in Dazed and Confused (moving up from a freaking Monza, or something).
We agree.
In answer to the OP question…the price of the car in many cases determines who can buy it.
Similar to me…my first car was a used 1983 Buick Regal that I got from an elderly couple that had traded it in at a dealership where my mom knew someone. I was 18 at the time, possibly the youngest Buick driver in America.
Speaking of car images: Growing up in the 40s and 50s I could never understand why anyone ever bought a DeSoto. It has zero image. When we talked about cars, which we did an awful lot since we didn’t have TV or computers or even portable radios to occupy our time, there were fans of Chevys, Mercurys, Pontiacs, Studebakers, etc., but noone ever said “Gee, have you seen the latest DeSoto.” or " Wow! I want to buy a DeSoto." Actually I never knew anyone whose family owned one and to the best of my knowledge I never even rode in one. Who bought them?
Practically nobody, apparently.
Hey, Wooderson had a Chevelle SS…give him a break
That’s the eternal struggle with Corvette ownership. They look good and perform amazingly well for the price…but, buy buying one, you join a certain club. A club where gold chains, exposed chest hair, etc. are common. You have to weigh that against the dollars per horsepower factor.
It’s probably worth it.
This is essentially correct, and in the correct order, given the few other cars GM produced over the years.
It was, and I guess still is, a way for GM to have you as a customer for life. Most chevys are purchased by folks on tight budgets and/or are young. The two obvious exceptions are the Camaro and Corvette.
Then Pontiac Olds, Buick and Cadillac.
In a way, Ford had a similar setup with Ford - Mercury - Lincoln. A model like the Crown Victoria = Grand Marquis = Town Car.
Even with all of the retirements of car lines, the idea still works in theory. In practice, I don’t think anyone really thinks about it anymore.
Buicks? I have been fascinated by these bland, personality-less cars for about 20 years. The LeSabre and Regal did not change significantly at all since the 80’s. It was like GM bought two designs, about 6 different colors of paint, and just started cranking them out. I have vowed to never buy a buick as long as I live. I don’t ever want to admit I’m old.
I took a look at the buick website, and they only have 4 models left. And they are all revamped. Clearly, buick is trying to change its image before it’s too late. Good luck with that. Even if they make a great car, Buicks are imbedded in my mind as a car for the old folks. I think Buicks future is bleak.
The Buick Boat was the Electra - anyone remember that thing? They were a step below a Cadillac.
Chevy’s boat was a Caprice Classic
Pontiac - Bonneville
Oldsmobile - Delta 88?
Buick - Electra
Cadillac - I don’t know… deville maybe?
I’m well below the mean Buick buyer’s age, but I’ve been happily driving LeSabres ever since I took on a 75-mile commute. Spend enough hours per day in a car, and you get to appreciate soft rides and creature comforts and the bulletproof reliability of the GM 3.8 V6. It wanders a bit on the highway, but the acceleration is there when you want it (Overdrive is geared *way *the hell down), and it gets 31 mpg on a level freeway too. So what am I missing?
Why should I give half a shake about a “youthful image”, anyway? Screw that, I’m not going to take on a perpetually sore back and a case of hemorrhoids because of what somebody *else *thinks.
The top-of-the-line fully loaded Olds boatmobile in the late 60s through late 70s was the Olds 98. Their Delta 88 was the stripper version of that and I think it was physically smaller or a slightly different shape most model years. By “smaller” I mean that the 88’s trunk could only hold 30 midgets, not 40 like the 98’s could. The 88 was still a boat by modern standards.
In that same era, the mainline Caddys were the Coupe De Ville & Sedan De Ville. They had a stripper model of each called the Calais Coupe & Calais Sedan, but very few were sold. The upper-end Caddy was the Fleetwood, with the max gross blingmobile being the Fleetwood Brougham.
It seemed like you could put a Toyota of the era in the Fleetwood’s trunk and still have room for your tassled white shoes & 2 sets of golf clubs.
What a lot of us have been trying to point out is that G.M. kept Buick because it is currently successful and has a promising future, because of the Chinese market. Its perception in the North American market is not really all that important any more.
In addition to the 88 and the 98, there was the Urinate for pissing around town in.
Which makes me wonder what would happen if GM started bringing Chinese Buicks to North America…