An Indie Auto reader asked me to explain what I mean when referring to the premium-priced field. More specifically, how do I rank General Motors’ brand hierarchy — and where do I put Pontiac, Olds and Buick junior and senior cars?
I find myself struggling to answer that question in a simple way for two reasons. This is partly because individual brands shifted positions at least somewhat over time. For example, Buick’s rise to third place in sales in the 1950s was arguably influenced by its increasingly aggressive pricing of the entry-level Special.
Another factor was that as product proliferation took off in the 1960s and 1970s, the traditional distinctions between the brands began to break down. This is why I think the term “premium-priced field” had the most meaning up through the end of the 1950s, prior to the introduction of the Big Three’s compacts.
In addition, over the course of the 1950s low-priced brands such as Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth began to eat into the bottom end of the traditional markets of premium-priced brands. We could also argue whether some brands straddled fields, such as Studebaker having a foothold in the low-priced field with its entry-level Champion and in the premium-priced field with the top-of-line Land Cruiser.
Finally, what classification system you settle on can depend upon what you are trying to analyze. For example, do you want to figure out which brands were strongest at a given price point?
Let’s look at price ranges in 1949 and 1954
Just as an experiment I thought I would compare the price spread of U.S. brands in 1949 and 1954. I picked those years partly because the premium-priced field was at the peak of its popularity and partly because there were still a fair number of independent automakers.
Note that the graph below separated out limited-production models that were priced significantly higher than volume models (such as Chrysler’s Imperial) as well as junior models (such as Nash’s Rambler and Metropolitan). Pricing for the 1949 Kaiser and Frazer were integrated because they were badge engineered.
Price ladder was less pronounced than you might think
My most obvious takeaway from the graph was that the “price ladder” wasn’t as pronounced as you might think — and deteriorated over time. For example, in 1949 the highest-priced Chevrolet was only a few hundred dollars lower than the entry-level Pontiac four-door sedan ($1,539 vs. $1,740). This was in contrast to a Ford and Mercury, where the price spread was almost $500 ($1,558 vs. 2,031). Chrysler’s pricing strategy was closer to GM’s, with a high-end Plymouth only a few hundred below an entry-level Dodge ($1,629 vs. $1,848).
In 1954 the top-end Chevrolet Bel Air four-door sedan still went for roughly $150 less than a bottom-end Pontiac Chieftain Special ($1,884 vs. $2,027). However, for $2,016 you could get a snazzy Bel Air two-door hardtop rather than a strippo Chieftain two-door sedan for $1,968. The cheapest Pontiac hardtop was the mid-level Deluxe, which was $300 more than the Chevy ($2,316).
Also see ‘Trajectory of top-end Buicks shows GM’s postwar strengths and weaknesses’
A similar pattern occurred at Ford, where a top-end Crestline four-door sedan was now only $350 less than an entry-level Mercury ($1,898 vs. $2,251). You could also get a Skyliner two-door hardtop with the see-through roof for $2,164, which was $30 less than a strippo Mercury two-door sedan.
The top-end Plymouth Belvedere four-door sedan was now priced only $90 less than a bottom-end Dodge Meadowbrook ($1,935 vs. 2,025). The much-weaker sales for the Dodge would suggest that more buyers preferred a well-trimmed car rather than the Dodge’s five-inch-longer wheelbase on four-door sedans.
All but Cadillac straddled premium and luxury fields
Another interesting aspect of the graph is that Cadillac was the only brand that didn’t field lower-end models which competed in the premium-priced field. In contrast, both Chrysler and Packard were primarily anchored in the premium-priced field but offered limited-production, high-end models. Lincoln moved upmarket by 1954 but still had a foot in both markets.
Today it is commonly assumed that straddling the two fields was a bad strategy — that you needed a dedicated luxury brand to adequately compete against Cadillac, which had become the market leader. That was plausibly the case with Lincoln, which had historical roots in the luxury-car field. However, I have argued (go here) that Packard was too small to field separate premium-priced and luxury brands.
Also see ‘Why did the 1968 Imperial sell so poorly in a booming market?’
In addition, I wonder whether Chrysler could have saved itself a huge amount of money by sticking with its early-postwar strategy rather than spinning off the Imperial as a separate brand. As a nameplate Imperial production hovered around 11,000 to 15,000 units in 1950-52. This was higher than after it was upgraded to a brand in 1955-56, when output was roughly 11,000 units per year.
More ominously, during the 11 years when the Imperial had distinct sheetmetal (1957-68) it averaged under 20,000 units per year. How could Chrysler have possibly earned a profit with such low volume?
NOTES:
Product specifications and production figures are from auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006), Flory (2009) and Gunnell (2002).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2009. American Cars, 1946-1959: Every Model, Year by Year. McFarland & Co.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
ADVERTISEMENTS & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: General Motors (1952, 1955)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chrysler (1954)
Chrysler: it takes a little research to check when Imperial was its own brand vs. when it’s a “Chrysler Imperial.” I was surprised to see its prices high compared to other makes.
Maybe one factor is exclusivity – a premium brand should be exclusive and expensive enough to have fewer sales. It should be less attainable and more aspirational.
The 1953-1954 Chrysler Imperials were truly luxury cars, in my opinion. While the styling was very similar to the Chrysler New Yorkers, the interiors were as good if not better than Cadillac or Packard. Once again, Chrysler’s dealer structure made Imperials seem less exclusive than Cadillacs or even Packards.
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how you could spend 7k on a Chrysler in 1954, about a grand more than the highest price Cadillac.
IIRC 1954 was in one of the Lincoln as fancy Mercury years. It also seems to have the narrowest price spread of all cars, way narrower than Packard or Cadillac. Also I notice about an $800 gap between the costliest Mercury and the cheapest Lincoln which seems to be a mid price sweet spot. Again Lincoln has only about a $159 overlap between the costliest Lincoln and the cheapest Cadillac. Then the Cadillac just shoots up to about 2k more. This is real cash cow territory. Ford is leaving so much money on the table you need to put in the extension leaves to hold it. I’m sure the Ford executives could see this also. These profit rich gaps are exactly where Edsel and the 58 Continental went. The expansion was more than just GM envy, it was common sense.
Ford’s attempted expansion in the premium-priced and luxury-car fields in the late-50s was enormously expensive . . . and a total failure. A smaller automaker might very well have gone out of business from such a debacle. The fascinating irony of the situation was that if Ford had maintained its more modest strategy from the first half of the 1950s — with the exception of adding a four-seater Thunderbird — that it could very well have ended the decade in a much better position.
The reason why is that the Thunderbird would be so popular that it competed quite favorably with GM’s high-end premium-priced cars in the late-50s and early-60s. Meanwhile, the Mercury had been doing much better than the Edsel in the lower rungs of the premium-priced field — which would prove to be the strongest price point once the field collapsed in popularity in the late-50s.
I think that the lesson here is that trying to copy GM’s hierarchy of brands strategy might not have been as effective of a strategy of covering the market as pioneering new fields, such as personal coupes (or, in the case of the 1961-63 Continental, personal coupe-sedans).
Note that I am not suggesting that GM envy always fails — look at the success of the 1969 Mercury Marquis — but that conventional wisdom is more problematic than automotive historians tend to acknowledge. And even in the case of the Marquis, Ford didn’t just try to copy the Electra and Ninety-Eight, but instead offered a lower-priced base Marquis model rather than a separate mid-level series. It proved to be a smart move in helping to move Mercury upmarket.
Moving a product upmarket, like moving Mercury up a rung on the ladder is very difficult. However, I think I know why Ford did it. It’s also difficult to create a premium (or luxury) brand out of thin air. Moving Mercury up seemed probably a good idea at the time. IIRC the Edsel concept started around 1954, a year or so before upmarket halo models of the low price three started turning up.
The great irony of Ford’s grand dreams is that the premium-priced field saw its share of the total domestic market fall EVERY year during the 1950s except for 1955. Who was the big winner? Low-priced brands.
So let’s take those two facts and add them up: What if Ford had taken a fraction of the money it spent on launching the Edsel and moving the Mercury upmarket and instead tried to expand the Ford brand by going somewhat upmarket with a two-tiered lineup (kind of like what they did in 1957-58 but sooner and more aggressively)? Might that have been the easiest way to either bump Chevy out of first place or destabilize GM’s brand hierarchy?
It might also be worth considering how much more structured the price ladder likely was before the Great Depression. In 1929, for instance, there was still a robust presence of clearly tiered marques, from entry-level to full custom-bodied luxury cars. Comparing the 1949 and 1954 price spreads with data from 1929 could show just how much the price overlap and market blending developed postwar.
Even more revealing might be a snapshot from the late 1930s, right before many luxury automakers pulled back from offering ultra-high-end, coachbuilt models. That was arguably the last gasp of the traditional prestige hierarchy — before economic pressures and mass production began flattening the distinctions. It could add useful dimension to the idea of when and how the “premium-priced field” became its own ambiguous category.
That would be some chart for 1929. There were about 25 independents then, although many were specialized or just playing out their string. The big 4 indies plus Graham and Hupp should cover the relatively healthy mainstream brands but they tended to have a larger price spread to cover more of the market.
That’s an interesting idea. I’ll see what I can do.
I have some note that are somewhat OT to this thread but may be useful. I’ll send it when I have some quiet time.
I always have to remind myself when reading on this site of your preference of calling the mid-price brands “premium.” Growing up, for me it was always low-priced, mid-priced (or middle-priced), and high-priced (which could also be called luxury or premium-priced brands).
Thank you for your research & graphics. I note the lack of price separation in the bottom of GM’s 3 mid-priced cars. One could ask why bother; but they were all selling fairly well for 10 years post-war, and they all had different engine types for most of that period.
Also, it looks like one could select the cheapest De Soto or the cheapest Chrysler for the same money.
For 1952-54, the Mercury was in another of its “fancier Ford” phases, but I was surprised at the price gap. No wonder that the FoMoCo guys wanted to address their medium-priced offerings and thought they should do it by placing the Edsel between the Ford & Mercury, rather than the Mercury & Lincoln. It didn’t work (for many reasons) pushing Mercury further up, but I kind of see why they did it.
Also, the top end Dodge appears to have retreated in price in 1954 vs 1949? vs almost every other make. Just with inflation, you would expect the opposite. Was some model dropped? The low-priced 3 all show something similar, although I would say less drastic. This is even with the addition of fancy hard-tops in the 50s, although I suppose that convertibles were always the most expensive body style, or station wagons (still with real wood in 1949).
Is the “Ford blitz” reflected here? Were Top-end Ford/Chevy/Plymouth prices higher in 1952 vs 54? Was the blitz reflected in MSRPs, or was it mostly borne by the dealers and transactional prices?
I was drawing from list prices in the reference books so they likely don’t reflect the Ford blitz. BTW, I have used “premium-priced” partly because that’s what I’ve seen as the most common designation in automotive literature and partly because I don’t want readers to get confused with the “mid-sized” field. I’m moving on to another project right now but will take a look at what happened with Dodge when I get a moment.
Well now I know why Pontiac was almost on the chopping block in 1954-1955-1956: Harlow Curtice, Ivan L. Wilks and Charles Chayne of Buick effectively lobbied the G.M. Executive Committee in 1953, to delay the introduction of the O.H.V. Pontiac 287 cu.-in. V-8 until 1955, which resulted in a dropoff of 30 % in 1954 Pontiac sales, all not to muddy the introduction of the Buick “nailhead” in 1953 ! The only bone thrown to Pontiac for 1954 was an 11-inch chassis extention for the elongated rear deck of the “Star Chief”.
My understanding of the “Ford blitz” was a decision made by the Ford management to abuse their dealers by forcing them to accept cars the dealers had not ordered through the zone managers. After all, the old plumbing adage that “S**t flows downhill” applies here. Many states responded in 1955 and 1956 by toughening up their dealer franchise agreements, which is why a similar “Ford blitz” never happened again without franchisees’ buy-in.
My maternal grandfather bought his brown top-of-the-line fully optioned Ford four-door sedan because of the major Louisville, KY Ford dealer’s effort to move his excess Ford inventory in the late spring, 1954 !
I am guessing that Jack Reith’s failure at Mercury and Nance’s failure with Edsel were the result of the difficulty of pushing excess Mercury and Edsel inventory onto dealers because of stiffer franchise laws in part resulting from the “Ford blitz”!