De-stinking badges
What prompted all this was a nifty piece at the Car Lust blog on one of the last gasps of Graham-Paige Motors, formally known as “Spirit of Motion” but for fairly obvious reasons referred to as “Sharknose.” It lost G-P a ton of money through 1940 and was abandoned, leaving the automaker with but a single model: the Hollywood, a variation on the old Cord Beverly, albeit converted to rear-wheel drive. The Cord dies were actually owned by Hupmobile, another dying marque, which was putting out its own version under the name “Skylark”; both Hollywood and Skylark were defunct after 1941.
The rest of the G-P story is pretty interesting — after returning to some semblance of profitability producing war hardware, Joseph W. Frazer took over the company, and in 1946 put G-P to work building the Frazer automobile, a twin to the Kaiser. G-P bailed out, selling its interests to Kaiser-Frazer, and went into the real-estate business, eventually taking the name of its major property: Madison Square Garden.
But what I wanted to harp on was “Hollywood” and “Skylark,” both of which were reused as model names in the Fifties by different automakers. Hudson’s two-door hardtop variant of the Wasp (1952-54) bore the Hollywood badge; Buick produced its first Skylark in 1953.
And it occurs to me that this process works better with automakers that are really most sincerely dead. Edsel, in its mercifully-brief three-year lifespan, offered seven series — four “cars” (sedans/hardtops/ragtops) and three wagons. Of those seven nameplates, four were ultimately revived: Citation (Chevrolet, 1980), Pacer (American Motors, 1975), Ranger (Ford, 1983, still in production), and Villager (Mercury, 1992).
Does this mean that somewhere down the line we’re going to see revivals of the Cutlass and the Fury and the Monterey and the Vue? I wouldn’t bet on it, but obviously weirder things have happened.
ak4mc »
29 July 2010 · 10:14 am
I just hope they spare us the Aztek.