The other day Paul Niedermeyer (2024a) of Curbside Classic discussed the decline of premium-priced big cars in the late-1950s. One of the points of contention in the comment thread was the degree to which these cars rebounded in the first half of the 1960s. I would like to add a few thoughts by drawing upon Indie Auto’s postwar auto production database.
As some of the commentators noted, things can get complicated once one takes into account a number of anomalies. For example, in the early-60s both Dodge and Mercury shifted their big cars downmarket. Should they be considered low-priced or premium-priced entries?
The above question is just one of the methodological choices one must make. However, in doing so it can be useful to maintain a sense of proportionality. Some of the finer questions don’t matter much when looking at overall patterns.
As a case in point, General Motors consistently dominated the premium-priced, big-car field to such a degree that questions about how to categorize specific products from Ford, Chrysler or the independent automakers are of lesser importance. In 1955 GM captured 58 percent of the field and through 1973 tended to hover around 69 percent. In 1963-64 the automaker peaked at 80 percent. Those are monopolistic levels.
Of course, to calculate those numbers I still needed to make some methodological choices. For example, I did not categorize the 1960-64 Dodge Dart/330 as premium-priced big cars but did include the 1961-64 Mercury Meteor/Monterey because their prices were more akin to the likes of the Pontiac Catalina than low-priced cars.
First a collapse and then a long, slow decline
During the postwar period the top-selling premium brands tended to be GM’s Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick. In addition, unlike Dodge and Mercury, GM’s full-sized cars never went downmarket between the years 1950-73. Thus, they are a consistent indicator of how this market segment did over that time period.
The graph below adds together production of the three GM brands and shows their share of the total U.S. market from 1950-73. I have separated out production of big cars from smaller ones and halo models.
Market share for GM’s big premium-priced cars peaked in 1955 at 26.4 percent and then collapsed in the late-50s. Total brand output revived in the first half of the 1960s and came within a few percentage points of matching the 1955 peak in the early-70s. However, this was primarily because of smaller and halo cars — which in 1972 surpassed big cars in market share for the first time.
Note that GM’s 1955 peak in sales mostly came at the expense of independent automakers. In 1949 their entries collectively made up more than 22 percent of the premium-priced market, which was a point higher than Chrysler’s Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler brands. By 1955 the independents had fallen to 4 percent. GM was the only automaker to benefit from that collapse because both Ford and Chrysler lost 2 percent of market share each during that time period.
Each brand’s sales trajectory was somewhat different
In the first half of the 1950s Buick saw the highest production of GM’s triumvirate, but in the first half of the 1960s fell the most. Between 1962-68 Pontiac experienced a boomlet but then Buick retook leadership in big-car production. Oldsmobile was often somewhere in the middle of the pack.
That said, you can see a general pattern of production peaking in 1955, tanking in the recession of 1958, hitting bottom again in a 1961 recession, but then increasing to varying degrees through 1973 — whereupon an oil embargo pummeled big-car sales (a topic that deserves a separate article).
By the same token, GM’s brands — much like Ford and Chrysler’s — saw big cars take up a varying percentage of total output as their product lines expanded in the 1960s and early-70s.
Buick had the most stable emphasis on big cars from 1962-71. Indeed, the brand actually saw big cars increase from 61 percent to 67 percent of its total production. In contrast, Oldsmobile and Pontiac’s big cars drifted downward from the above 70 percent in 1962 to under 50 percent by 1971.
The above graph also includes Mercury and Dodge, whose big cars tended to make up an even smaller percentage of total brand output in the 1960s and early-70s.
Even Buick’s big cars were overshadowed in early-70s
Since Buick did the best with big cars in the second half of the 1960s and early-70s, let’s take a look at how the brand’s sales evolved by market segment. As you can see in the graph below, even though the big Buicks saw their output mostly increase from 1962-73, so too did mid-sized cars.
This graph shows how the 1950s were much more volatile than the 1960s, when trend lines tended to be more consistent. As automotive fads go, the Buick’s popularity in the early-50s was something of a blip.
Another interesting wrinkle is that Buick’s high-end big cars — from 1959 onward called the Electra — took up an increasingly large proportion of the brand’s total output, hitting a high of 24 percent in 1969. This was in contrast to the mid-50s, when the high-end Roadmaster tallied under 9 percent of total production. This illustrates how, even back when GM’s brand hierarchy was more rigid, Buick’s volume mostly came from cars that competed against corporate siblings in the lower rungs of the premium-priced field.
When did the low and premium segments diverge?
Up through 1956 the output of premium-priced cars tended to rise and fall in rough parallel with their low-priced brethren. After that point the two fields diverged. By 1959 production of low-priced cars was off by less than 16 percent whereas premium-priced cars were down a whopping 47 percent.
The pivotal year was 1957, when low-priced cars narrowly beat their 1955 record — and almost hit 4 million units. In contrast, premium-priced cars were off by 16 percent. GM’s brands were the biggest losers, with Buick down by 29 percent, but even the all-new Mercury fell by 13 percent. Only Chrysler’s premium brands were up by 11 percent.
One of the hottest sellers of 1957 was the new Ford Fairlane, which offered more of the creature comforts of a premium-priced car but at lower cost. A fancy new Plymouth went in a similar direction. In 1958 Chevrolet would follow suit with a new top-of-line Impala.
Note that the low-priced field’s output was not bolstered in the late-50s by the rise of compact and specialty cars, which the above graph treats separately. However, I do classify Studebaker’s entire line of family cars (but not the Loewy coupes and Hawks) as low-priced rather than compact through 1958. Here I disagree with Niedermeyer, who in a comment argued that the “Champion was clearly low priced but the Commander/President were mid-priced” (2024b).
The premium-priced segment’s market share of total U.S. production fell from 40 percent in 1955 to only 27 percent in 1959. During that same time period the low-priced segment grew by 4 percent, compacts by 8 percent and both luxury and specialty cars by almost 1 percent each.
Although 1956-58 marked the steepest market-share decline, it actually began way back in 1950. Indeed, 1955 was the only time during that decade when the market share of the premium-price segment actually went up.
What can we learn from all this?
The story of the postwar premium-priced big car primarily involved General Motors’ steamroller campaign to dominate the segment. I don’t think it was a coincidence that GM achieved record-breaking sales in 1955 after having captured over the course of a half decade 18 percent of the premium-priced market from independent automakers.
In light of GM’s increasing dominance, is it any wonder the remaining competitors tried to copy GM’s “bigger, glitzier, more powerful” design ethic? The irony is that sales tended to go down as the cars got bigger in the late-50s (go here for further discussion).
It’s worth pondering the idea that buyers didn’t leave the premium-price, big-car segment so much as Detroit did (at least for a while). The “intermediate” Pontiac, Oldsmobile or Buick of the late-60s and early-70s was closer in size and utility to early-50s GM cars than the land yachts that the automaker produced in the late-50s . . . or 1970s.
So instead of calling a 1959-76 Buick Electra “full sized,” perhaps it would be more accurate to say “extra large,” “super tanker” or “Dinosaur in the Driveway” (Hyde, 2009; p. 186).
NOTES:
Production and market share figures were calculated from data published by the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006), Gunnell (2002) and Wikipedia (2013).
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.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Hyde, Charles K; 2009. Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson, and American Motors. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI.
- Niedermeyer, Paul; 2024a. “CC Chart: Mid-Priced Brands Market Share, 1955-1964 – A 37% Collapse, And Not Just Because Of The 1958 Recession.” Curbside Classic. Posted Jan. 8.
- ——; 2024b. Comment in “CC Chart: Mid-Priced Brands Market Share, 1955-1964 – A 37% Collapse, And Not Just Because Of The 1958 Recession.” Curbside Classic. Posted Jan. 8 at 7:41 p.m.
- Wikipedia; 2013. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures.” Accessed July 5.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- oldcaradvertising.com: Buick (1957); Buick Century (1973); Buick Electra (1968); Dodge (1971); Hudson (1949); Mercury (1961); Oldsmobile Cutlass (1974); Pontiac (1966); Studebaker (1956)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Buick (1955, 1959); Dodge Dart (1960)
It’s interesting to realize that GM’s increases in market share came out of the Independent’s hide.I remember reading stories in Motor Trend magazine that described GM’s hold on the market as a monopoly, and the government wanting to take steps to break them up. Having such a high market share also made them the trendsetter for American automakers, and the other guys had to conform to their template.
The automotive market is often described as a fashion industry, and the Big Three could set the tone. Many, if not most buyers accepted the style of vehicle that was produced and sold. When consumers are making a little more money they will spend it on luxuries, like cars that are stylistically obsolete every two years.
Really, what were the real advantages of the increasingly larger cars of the ’50’s and ’60’s? Were there any functional benefits? The public had bought compact cars like the Model T in huge numbers in the past. While cars had improved with fully enclosed bodies, there was obviously a point of diminishing returns. That’s when the automakers sold the sizzle, the dream, and the status. It’s no wonder that when the intermediates were introduced they replaced the oversize car for most people.They were a better value. Since then, even more compact cars from domestic and especially foreign manufacturers have made the oversized cars almost completely obsolete. Now the compact and mid size CUVs have become the new staus quo.
The “pivotal year of 1957” was actually the start of the “Eisenhower recession” that continued to get worse into 1958. Inflation reared its ugly head as the 1960s waned into the 1970s, thanks in part to the 1965 U.A.W. contracts which triggered higher wage contracts throughout the U.S. economy, followed by the 1970-71 U.A.W. contracts which fueled inflationary costs further. By 1970, only Mercury improved its styling to be more Lincoln-like (which may have hurt Lincoln sales) and Chrysler’s Dodge, Chrysler and Imperials were suffering with a myriad of build quality issues. Every manufacturer’s prices were up. The G.M. full-size cars were not much roomier than the G.M. A-body sedans and wagons, so why buy the full-size when the 1973-1977 intermediates were slightly less in initial cost and perhaps a bit more economical in terms of gas mileage. Pontiac lost its full-size car styling mojo after 1966 and tanked it in 1970 through 1976, in my opinion. Only the full-size Olds maintained clean styling continuity from 1963 through 1984 (with the exception of the poor homely 1967 Olds big car). The big Buicks were somewhat spotty with the 1962-1972s well-styled, but the 1973s and 1974s less so, then the 1975-1984 Buicks more mainstream. The real gamechangers were the 1964 G.M. A-bodies, followed by the 1968-1972 two-wheelbase restyles. Too bad the G.M. 14th-floor let the intermediates bulk up more for 1973-1977 and the 1971-1976 full-size cars become even longer, wider and heavier. This has all be noted before, however, part of the sales and specifications analysis need to be overlaid with the economic bottom-line trends for the years charted. Just like gasoline shortages and price increases affected car sales in 1973-1974 and in 1979-1980, so too interest rates for car loans, insurance premiums and m.s.r.p.s greatly impact what people buy. Lee Iacocca’s rise to prominence was $ 56.00 per month for a 1956 Ford. Were there any noteworthy new-car sales campaigns in 1958 or 1971 ?
“You Auto Buy Now” was the big industry-wide sales campaign during the 1958 model year. I’m only 7-8 at the time, but even to my young mind the advertising seemed a lot more forced than in following years, and that there was an advertising campaign that was in every dealership, no matter what they sold, definitely seemed odd to my young mind.
I came from an Oldsmobile family and my mother drove an Olds 98 as did her sister …….. I remember 63-66 being great looking cars and the best looking years as a teen 71-73 my mother had the 73 Oldsmobile 98 Regency, the second year for the Regency sedan hardtop and I remember when they brought it home, I was impressed ! Problem was soon discovered that the garage door wouldn’t close because the car was so long so my father had to remove a brace off of the garage door to get the door closed. After 73 it seemed the Olds 98 lost its way until 1977 when my parents bought another 98 Regency and then an 84 and the last was 84 ………. I was sad to see Oldsmobile fade into the past after so many years.
I grew up in a Chevrolet dealership, dad was the dealer (manager, not owner) of the Johnstown, PA franchise, 1950-1965. One of the things I remember very well over dinner table conversations was the possibility of breaking GM into two companies, just to let the competition actually compete. I remember hearing conversations where the betting was along the lines of one company consisting of Chevrolet and Cadillac, with Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick (and, I guess GMC) in the other corporation. Dad was definitely perturbed by this possibility, and could usually be found snarling about “the government” when the subject came up.
Keep in mind that, back then, Chevrolet and Cadillac WERE the GM marques that mattered. Chevrolet was pretty much matching the sum total of the other GM brands, and Cadillac owned the luxury market. It would have been interesting if the split had happened, with Pontiac having to go downmarket into a low priced brand, which Buick would have to raise itself a bit to take the top slot. Back then, I don’t doubt that GM1 could have made it work with just the two brands, although no doubt they’d have developed a third marque.