Model names are some of the most valuable assets that an automaker has: Companies spend millions of dollars per year on advertising in the hopes of building a durable brand that will stand the test of time. Properly nurtured, a model name can engender decades of customer goodwill over generations of buyers, like Corolla, Corvette, or F-150.
This is taken as bedrock in marketing circles today, but it wasn’t always so: One of the many peculiarities of the 1950s to 1970s era was the rapid debasement of model names, where US manufacturers regularly introduced new range-topping model names, gradually pushing the previous top-of-the-line model down to the bottom (and in some cases disappearing altogether) in a continuous revolving door of model names.
This curious phenomenon may not quite rise to the level of a deadly sin, but it certainly didn’t help matters when the buyer of last year’s midline model now finds the name of their car affixed to this year’s poverty spec model.
Chevrolet Bel Air
Perhaps there is no better poster child for this “barber-pole” effect of model name deprecation than the Chevrolet Bel Air. The Bel Air name was introduced in 1950 as the name for the new two-door hardtop coupes (to distinguish them from the lesser Styleline and Fleetline pillared roof models). In 1953, Bel Air became the top trim line of all Chevrolet body styles (as distinguished from the lesser 150 and 210 trim lines).
The Bel Air’s time at the top of the heap would be short-lived, however. In 1958, the two-door Impala would become the range-topping Chevrolet model, followed next by the Bel Air, with the Biscayne and Delray taking over for the 210 and 150, respectively at the bottom of the lineup. By 1959, Bel Air was officially a mid-range model, with the Impala gaining convertible and four-door bodystyles and the Biscayne taking over the bottom feeder slot from the retired Delray.
Midway through the 1965 model year, Chevrolet introduced the Caprice as the new range-topper above the Impala in response to Ford’s surprisingly popular LTD. This pushed the Bel Air name down to the bottom half of the Chevrolet lineup, just barely about the Biscayne.
1975 Chevrolet Bel Air
The Biscayne disappeared from US showrooms in 1972, reducing the Bel Air to entry-level model status. In 1976, Bel Air got booted entirely off the Sloanian ladder, leaving the one-time top dog Impala as the new base model. Note that Biscayne and Bel Air names were used a bit longer in Canada, but the end result played out the same, with both names being demoted before eventually being dropped completely.
1976 Chevrolet Impala
The Impala name itself would disappear after 1985, leaving the Caprice to be the sole name of full-size Chevrolet cars, having to span the entire range from cabs and police cruisers to pillow-tufted Broughams. It should be noted that both the Impala and Caprice names would be resurrected and killed off again in Lazarus fashion several more times over the ensuing decades.
All in all, the 20-year fall from grace of the Bel Air from riches to rags is pretty impressive, but certainly not unique as we shall see.
Pontiac Catalina
Catalina was introduced as the top trim level to the Chieftain hardtop coupe in 1950, much like the Chevrolet Bel Air. However, the Catalina’s fall from grace would be far quicker than that of its Bel Air sibling.
The Catalina name would be applied to all Pontiac two-door and four-door hardtops throughout much of the 1950s. In 1958, Pontiac introduced the Bonneville, available in both two-door hardtop and convertible bodies, as its new range-topping model. The Catalina became a full-fledged model in 1959, slotting in at the bottom of Pontiac’s lineup in place of the departed Chieftain and Super Chief models. The Catalina, top-of-the-line model just a few years earlier, would be Pontiac’s entry full-size model for the remainder of its existence.
The introduction of the full-sized Ventura in 1960, the full-sized Grand Prix in 1962, the mid-line Executive in 1967, and the new range-topping Grand Ville in 1971 all further cemented the Catalina’s position at the bottom of the Pontiac lineup.
The Catalina name would continue to anchor the bottom of Pontiac’s full-sized lineup until it got “Sloaned,” disappearing altogether in 1981.
Ford Galaxie and LTD
GM wasn’t alone in depreciating its range-topping model names before taking them out behind the woodshed. One only needs to look across town to Dearborn at the Ford Galaxie and LTD.
The Galaxie was introduced in 1959 as the top dog full-sized Ford, slotting above the various Fairlane and Custom models. By the mid-1960s, the Galaxie name had gained 500, XL, and LTD variants, but was ostensibly still at the top of the Ford pecking order.
By the late ’60s, the LTD and XL had spun off into separate models, placing the Galaxie firmly in the middle of Ford’s full-sized lineup (above the Custom and Custom 500), and signaling the beginning of the Galaxie’s decline.
The Custom disappeared after 1972, leaving the Custom 500 at the bottom to largely service fleet customers and pushing the Galaxie name ever closer to the bottom of the Ford lineup. In 1975, the Galaxie name was dropped altogether while the Custom 500 name was used only for special-order fleet customers, leaving LTD as the sole name for all full-sized Fords in the US.
While the victory of the LTD name in 1975 was total, it would be short-lived – Ford’s “Broughamance” with the LTD name wouldn’t last much longer than it did with the Galaxie.
Like the Oldsmobile Cutlass, the LTD name would suffer massive dilution in the late 1970s by being applied to everything from mid-sized cars (in the form of the LTD II), Panther-bodied cars (to which it would eventually cede the Crown Victoria name), and finally a Fox Body sedan before finally being put out to pasture in 1986, just over 20 years after the LTD name first appeared.
A wise marketer once told me that “A Brand is a promise a company makes to its customers.” It still baffles me to this day how Detroit would create and destroy so much brand equity in the 1960s and 1970s. I’ve never seen an adequate explanation for this model name deflation effect, but perhaps our readers will chime in with theories of their own.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1977 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupe – A Once-Storied Name’s Last Stand In Canada
Curbside Classic: 1965 Ford LTD – It Launched The Great Brougham Epoch
The Buick Skylark fell even further, from top of the top of the line to compact.
Calais fell from Cadillac to Oldsmobile
that’s crashing from one brand to another
Citation from from luxury Edsel to Chevy compact (and another Edsel in reality), a complete jump of companies
Calais continued dancing GM brands and landed at GMH in Aussie around 87 on high zoot Commodores
A bit of a flip on the title, but Dodge had a Suburban which Chevy grabbed and made into a big time cash cow.
And Plymouth got a Suburban too and Dodge also used Sierra for a wagon model during the Forward look era before GMC grabbed it. http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/media/1959-dodge-sierra-custom-station-wagon.3509/
Plymouth also got the Belvedere who started as an hardtop, a full line, then under the Fury but got a second chance when it was reassigned when the 1962 plucked chicken became the 1965 intermediate B-body but not for long with the Satellite name who’ll replace it completely in 1971. The same story could apply for the Fairlane name in North America.
I think Galaxie had the quickest fall of all – from top of the line in 1959 to base trim in 1962-63. It got a respite with the mid-year introduction of the fleet-level Ford 300 in ’63 and the appearance of the Custom and Custom 500 in ’64.
But for the 1962 model year, the Galaxie nameplate was used for the base models due to the Fairlane name applied to the new mid-size/intermediate model.
Weren’t the bottom-line full-size Fords badged as Custom 500 back then, not Galaxy ? It’s been a long time; maybe not.
1960-61: Fairlane, Fairlane 500, Galaxie
1962: none, Galaxie, Galaxie 500 (Fairlane name moves to new intermediate, bottom model dropped in anticipation that its customer base would now buy the smaller Fairlane, Galaxie moves down a notch, top level is now called Galaxie 500)
1963: 300, Galaxie, Galaxie 500 (bottom model returns under a new name after Ford realizes there is still a market for it)
1964 and later: Custom, Custom 500, Galaxie 500 (the two bottom models become Custom and Custom 500)
All of these model names now seem very short-lived compared to Corolla, Accord and Civic. Only Suburban as a GM brand, and Mustang beat them, I think.
Corvette?
Perhaps Impala and Thunderbird will reappear as EVs.
It looks like most of this shell-game with model names happens with the Low-Priced Three. Although there are exceptions (like the Skylark), the higher end divisions tend to stick with the proper hierarchy for their car names.
As to the reason, there’s good ‘ole Iacocca’s quote of “selling the sizzle, not the steak”. Moving a popular upper-tier model name slowly down the line seems like a calculated example by the marketing people.
Let’s not overlook Chrysler Corporation.
Newport was applied to all two-door hardtop Chryslers to be repurposed into being used on decontented Chryslers.
Coronet was a top tier Dodge only to be demoted to mid- or bottom rung status within five years; it was then on hiatus for a year or so before reappearing on a midsize.
Similar was the case with Monaco. From halo car to taxi fodder within eight to ten years.
Fury had to develop a split personality, being Fury I, Fury II, Fury III, and Fury VIP.
AMC deserves some credit…the Ambassador was their biggest car for a long time, with no name shuffling. But we won’t mention Rebel/Matador.
I think the whole marketing thinking during the ’50’s and ’60’s was to introduce something “new, exciting, different and special”. It was relatively well equipped, had flashy trim and was offered at a more premium price. After awhile it would be deconted and sold as “the same flashy model at a new lower price”. Then after it became common and the name equity was used up, a “new exciting, different and special” model was reintroduced. Rinse and repeat.
As this process continued the lesser common models would be reduced to fleet status, only to be dropped altogether. Of course there are exceptions, like F150, Mustang (the Mac E shakes that up) and the Corvette.
The Japanese companies seem to do a good job of building and nurturing their model names, although they may debase their model designations within each name.
LeMans
The name Crown Victoria going from a swank two-door hardtop with stitched band stainless steel overwrap on the roof to a four-door sedan has always disgusted me.
+1. Especially when they’re not a Victoria, and there’s nary a crown to be seen.
Body wise it’s a 2dr sedan with extra trim, trying to pretend the pillarless hardtop didn’t exist.
This is a side effect of the insistence that each trim level of the full-size car was its’ own “series” with its’ own name and identity.
Ford got it right for the future at the start of 1962 – all full-size Fords were Galaxies, the Galaxie 500 was fancier than the no-suffix trim – and then ruined it with the “Ford 300” which was the same basic car as a Galaxie but somehow not a Galaxie. It would’ve been better for that model to have taken over the no-suffix “Ford Galaxie” nameplate with the former base/now midline model becoming the Ford Galaxie 300.
It took Chevrolet until 1986 to unite all B-body Chevys under the Caprice nameplate. Even then the trim levels stacked like Discworld dwarven patronymics (“after a few generations you get Glod Glodsonssonssonsson”), with the line top-to-bottom being;
Chevrolet Caprice Classic LS Brougham
Chevrolet Caprice Classic LS
Chevrolet Caprice Classic
Chevrolet Caprice
Pontiac is an interesting case, Catalina proved durable because every attempt to place a new nameplate above Bonneville proved short-lived.
Modern nameplates used on an entire car lineup *inflate*. Today’s Honda Civic is two segments larger than the original.
The reason for name debasement is the product life cycle. https://hbr.org/1965/11/exploit-the-product-life-cycle and the fact that adding a new top model allows a skimming pricing model. https://www.sniffie.io/resources/pricing-academy/five-good-pricing-strategy-examples-and-how-to-benefit-from-them/ Skimming is the most profitable way to go and on cars name debasement was really the only tool they had to do that.
There will always be a subset of consumers that have to have the latest and greatest. Some just because they geek out at that type of thing but for many it is a display of wealth. So yeah replacing the Bel-Air with the Impala was designed to make the owners who use the latest and greatest as a display of their wealth to get that new top dog sooner rather than later, lest they loose their image of being the one with the latest and greatest.
The other benefit is that it allows consumers to feel they are climbing the ladder even though they are standing still. The buyer of that Biscayne feels he has climbed a step by moving up to the Bel-Air even though the Bel-Air is priced and equipped much like last year’s Biscayne.
The reality of course is that at that point the model names were really what we now call trim levels and at least with trucks the debasement lives on. The only real difference is that levels keep getting added on to the top w/o models dropping off the bottom. It is the ultimate in skimming pricing selling the same product to different people for as much as each person is willing to pay.
The same thing happened with Chevy pickups. After the C10-20-30 there was Custom then Custom Sport Truck in the 67-72 series. Later, Cheyenne was top trim, until Scottsdale came along. Finally, Silverado was the ultimate luxury Chevy pickup and small Cheyenne badges appeared on the base fleet ones. Today, Silverado is generic to all trims, the incomprehensible LS. LT, etc.
The shame is the supplanted names were so often better and by the 90s the latest names were old themselves but clearly a product of the brougham epoch/malaise era most people were eager to forget. I’m not going to suggest that they would have made the difference sales wise but when I was a kid Caprice Classic, Park Avenue and Crown Victoria sounded positively ancient and stuffy appealing to a very old demographic, yet the cars themselves (I thought) were quite modern and sleek looking, at least as much so as the midsizers of the time driven by much younger/non fleet demographics. Bel Air or Impala, Electra or Galaxie were all great youthful sounding names, I think reviving the Impala name alone was a huge part of what made the 90s Impala SS was such an instant cult classic, wouldn’t have had the same impact as a “Caprice SS”.
The Ford examples can be fleshed out a bit further.
Fairlane – the top dog in 1955-56. Then Fairlane 500 in 57-58 relegated Fairlane to Tier 2.
Galaxie in 1959-60 moved Fairlane 500 to Tier 2. Galaxie 500 in 1962 dropped Galaxie down to bottom trim that year, and it soon disappeared.
Fairlane then was the mid-sized line (which most still considered a “lesser” car than the big Fords) until the Torino of 1968 turned Fairlane into the stripper.
The Plymouth Belvedere was another that went from top dog down to mid-range after the Fury of 1957, then a step lower with Sport Fury of 59. Then to the mid-size B body car in 65, and then below Satellite.
And I always loved the way names like “Custom” and “DeLuxe” almost always eventually came to signify fleet specials.
Ford definitely played the name debasement game a little different than GM. The Fairlane shrinking from a full size to an intermediate is just one instance.
Ranger was at one point the low end model for the mid priced Edsel brand but it moved to being a top trim on a pickup from of course the low priced brand. It then followed in the Fairlane’s steps and moved from the top of the full size line to becoming the smaller model.
The F-series suffered a similar fate a few years later when the Explorer trim package moved to being the model name of the SUV based on that name thief the Ranger.
Speaking of Edsel Ford has finally resurrected the last of the Edsel names that hadn’t been reused, Corsair, as a compact Lincoln SUV.
Zephyr is another one that followed a strange path of hoping brands and moving to a lesser brand/smaller model starting out as a Lincoln, getting resurrected twice, first to a compact Mercury then climbing back up the ladder back to Lincoln.
Then you have the Meteor and Monarch, used as brands in Canada, but when they decided to make Meteor the model for the intermediate Mercury, Canada surprisingly used that name and the Meteor brand went missing for a couple of years. It eventually became the low priced full size Mercury model. Monarch also went from being a Canadian brand into a compact model of Mercury.
Consul Zephyr and Zodiac were the UK four and six cylinder range of cars launched in the early 50s and continuing until 70/71 Ford seems to use the same names in different markets on different cars and hope nobody notices GM did the same a few times and it works untill somewhere like New Zealand gets all of them and we see the trick.
But Ford Britain did some other weird stuff too, with the Consul name. Originally it meant an el cheapo four cylinder short-nose Zephyr, then some genius (not!) decided to muddy the waters with the so-called Consul Classic of 1961-3. This lunacy was even on the first Cortinas too; a friend’s daughter had one with CONSUL on the bonnet bulge trim piece.
Kind of like Oldsmobile’s later fixation on calling everything Cutlass. It rendered the name essentially meaningless.
Spotted Sgt. Carter’s 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix the other day on an episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. TV show. I don’t remember ever seeing that trim line before. It must have been a pricey option.
Called a Dodge Pioneer down here but only in fourdoor but the trim line is familiar.
The three trim levels of 1960-61 North American Darts were Seneca, Pioneer and Phoenix, which corresponded to the three full-size Plymouth models. Chrysler supposedly ran into a trademark issue over the use of the name “Dart” in Australia, so they used the North American trim level names as model names in that part of the world.
Let’s not forget the Studebaker challenger that dodge grabbed or the kor that Chevy was going to use, but I think it was shinoda kinda took it to ford when he went to work for them, and I believe that ford used the town and country name, then mopar used it for the vans. Here’s a bit of trivia…the 69 charger was about 4 inches shorter than the Chevy suburban!
The peculiar exception to this rule is that numbers don’t depreciate. In prices and commerce, inflation devalues numbers. But the Olds 98 never moved down, the Caddy 75 stayed on top, the Packard 160 didn’t move down, and even the Fairlane 500 stayed above the plain Fairlane. At various times Rambler and Dodge used specific numbers for their models (330, 440, 170, 270, etc) and those numbers stayed put during the time they were used.
Oh, I think it helped exactly what it was meant to help, as a highly effective lever for obsolescence not just planned, but goosed!
I always felt, especially with GM, that every time they introduced an under-baked model like the Vega, Citation, Lumina, Cobalt, etc. it earned such a poor reputation that they felt they needed to distance themselves from it with a brand new name for the replacement model. If they had taken the time to develop a well thought out and proven new model in the first place, like Toyota for instance with the Corolla, they could have kept the Nova name going for 50+ years too. With Japanese cars it only tends to be “trim level” depreciation, like when LE was the top of the line Corolla and now it’s at or near the bottom. But it’s still a trusty Corolla.
Well observed. From memory the Corolla CS was the top dog here in the mid 1970s, I think it ended up as bottom or mid level before it was retired.
Their Prado is still billed as “Land Cruiser Prado” on a tail gate badge. That is debasement.
Wanted to say exactly this, but my example was going to be the Camry. In the 80s, the top dog Camry was the LE. Then they added the XLE on top of it, but there was still a run below (DX, CE, etc).
Today, the trim levels of the Camry are LE, SE, XLE, XSE, and TRD.
The domestics differentiated trim levels of the same basic body by different names, but the concept is still the same and they all do it to some degree or another.
My aunt got a brand new 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air while my parents got a 1957 Biscayne. As far as I was concerned, both were classy looking cars and I’ve never seen a comparable model since.
There were no ’57 Biscaynes, despite Joni Mitchell having referred to such a thing in the song “Raised on Robbery.” The first Biscayne was ’58.
It seems that others have more or less said it: the name debasement came from an amalgam of planned obsolescence and using model branding to denote trim variations rather than distinct cars. Trim debasement appears to be alive and well.
Ford really liked that marriage metaphor. The ’59 Galaxie was “married in style to the Thunderbird”, and the ’77 LTD II “marries the quality and comfort of an LTD with the sporty flair of Mustang II.” Not sure the second marriage worked out so well.