Brand Nostalgia

When we moved to Arizona we bought new, front-loading laundry equipment. The units carried the brand name of Frigidaire. This boggled my mind! Frigidaire, as a division of the General Motors Corporation, had been a pioneer in the refrigerator business and had been a leading brand for perhaps 50 years. I don't recall when GM abandoned refrigerators, but the current manufacturer is Electrolux. Another shock: Electrolux is a Swedish company that pioneered the use of tank-type vacuum cleaners in America shortly after World War II. Prior to Elextrolux it seems that all vacuum cleaners were uprights made by Hoover. In England Hoover became a generic term and one cleaned house by "hoovering". And so now we have a washing machine made by a Swedish vacuum cleaner maker and featuring a refrigerator brand name. Incidentally front loading washing machines were made in the forties and were popular among laundromats. They were made by a company called Bendix.

Our new refrigerator is not a Frigidaire, but a Samsung. Now we have Samsung, LG and Haier in the market, a market dominated some decades back by the likes of General Electric and Westinghouse. The GE brand is still around, it's just that GE doesn't own it. Westinghouse, once a large industrial conglomerate, has largely disappeared. There is a Westinghouse company involved in nuclear power, but it is foreign-owned, Japanese I think. The original George Westinghouse invention, an air brake for railroads, soldiers on as WABCO, the Westinghouse Air Brake Company.

As to automobile name plates, another story of lost brands. General Motors invented the nameplate for each market niche technique and by World War II it had Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, LaSalle, Cadillac and GMC for trucks. In the 1920's when the American industry made over 80% of the world 's automobiles and exported product worth billions of dollars, GM expanded abroad by buying Vauxhall in Britain and Adam Opel in Germany. It also had the Holden company in Australia. LaSalle didn't survive WWII but under attack from Japan GM developed a supposedly alternative car line, Saturn. It also bought into the Isuzu company in Japan and more recently bought SAAB in Sweden. Now as it struggles to survive, Oldsmobile has already been jettisoned and Pontiac, Saturn and SAAB are on the block. I don't think it is tied to Isuzu anymore but it did buy the manufacturing assets of a Korean company, Daewoo (Aveo). GM's most attractive market opportunity may well by China where it has done well.

Henry Ford was only comfortable making Model T's in the color black. But Ford Motor followed the trend in settting up Ford England and buying Taunus in Germany. It also came out with more upscale nameplates in Mercury and Lincoln. In Japan they tied in with Toyo Kogyo KK the maker of Mazda automobiles and went into upscale European companies by buying Jaguar,Land Rover and Volvo. Now things are looking pretty good as it avoided bankruptcy and has dumped its British affiliates. Volvo may well be the next to go.


Walter Chrysler put together the third ranking US automobile company starting with Dodge Brothers and eventually producing under five name plates: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial. Overseas Chrysler bought the English Rootes Group maker of Hillman automobiles and a French company, Simca. In Japan they bought an interest in Mitsubishi Motors. DeSoto and Imperial disappeared some years back but Chrysler bought American Motors, makers of the Jeep. The company's European operations were closed some years ago also and a few years back it became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler-Benz. I think the ties with Mitsubishi ended and today's Chrysler is owned by the US Government with a minority interest and operational control held by Fabrica Italiana Automovilistichi de Torino (FIAT).

But when I learned to drive 60 plus years ago there were lots of American automobile brands. Willys-Overland made small sedans in the 1930's but it's claim to fame came from successfully developing a general purpose (GP) vehicle for the US Army. Jeeps were made in the millions and made the transition to civilian life but the company didn't. Nash made small and medium sedans as well. It had one model in the 1950's that looked like an inverted bathtub. If I remember correctly it merged with Willys and possibly Kaiser to form American Motors, later acquired by Chrysler as noted above.

Packard was a well regarded luxury car that competed with Cadillac but in the 1940's it developed a defective engine and it just couldn't keep up with the costs of new car development given its small revenue base. It merged with Studebaker. This company had begun life in Indiana making "Conestoga" wagons. It tried to capture market share in 1949 with a Raymond Loewy designed car that had a pointed front end that looked like an aircraft nascelle. There were jokes about not being able to tell which end was which. But Studebaker-Packard didn't survive.

In college I drove a 1949 Hudson and the family had a 1952 model. My dad had liked Hudsons in the old days but this make didn't survive either. An Oakland, California industrialist, Henry J. Kaiser decided he could break into the automobile business and along with a partner, Fraser, set up Kaiser-Fraser. Kaiser was the lower priced nameplate with Fraser a bit more upscale. My Uncle Hank and Aunt Joyce bought a 1950 Kaiser which I drove on occasion. This company didn't survive either as none of the smaller firms could compete with the big three in terms of development and marketing money.

In contrast to the shrinkage of American made car brands, in Japan the same 9 nameplates that were in the market 50 years ago when I first went there still survive. These were Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda (Toyo Kogyo), Subaru (Fuji Kogyo), Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Suzuki and Hino for trucks and buses. Toyota dominates the local market with Honda probably second now. Nissan, which used to use the Datsun name plate in the US, is now controlled by Renault of France. I think there are ties now between Toyota, Fuji Kogyo,Hino and perhaps Isuzu. Japan has also dominated the motorcycle market with three brands, Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha. Of these, Honda has obviously been the most successful in transitioning from two-wheelers to cars, Suzuki is a late comer and Yamaha hasn't tried.

So brands, market players and market shares have all changed since my youth. For the better?