Random thought on Arbitrary and Artificial
"Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can endure." Schwellenbach quoting Emerson. It's one of the quotes that I rotate in Polistra's top icon. Applies nicely to the American auto industry. As of two years ago, all the 'arbitrary' brands have disappeared, and only 'natural' brands endure.

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By 'arbitrary' I mean a brand that was purely created by a corporation, usually as a variant on an existing product.

Since the peak of arbitrariness in 1930, these arbitrary brands have disappeared from the existing corporations:

GM: Viking, Marquette, LaSalle, Pontiac, Saturn.

Ford: Edsel, Mercury.

Chrysler: DeSoto, Imperial, Eagle, Plymouth.

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'Natural' means a brand that had an independent existence as a company before it became a giant corporation or before it was merged into a giant corporation. Plenty of natural brands have disappeared. Oldsmobile was the most recent.

The remaining eight 'natural' brands can be traced back to seven founders. (I've included a minimum amount of biography to show the tangled traces.)

Brands: Ford, Lincoln, Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep.

Founders: Henry Ford, Walter P. Chrysler, Billy Durant, David Buick, Henry Leland, John & Horace Dodge, and John North Willys.

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Ford and Chrysler are direct and obvious, from founder to existing company. Unsurprisingly, Ford is the healthiest of the Big Three. Ford was a private family company until 1956, and Henry's direct descendants are still on the board of directors.

Billy Durant started GM by buying out David Buick, then picked up Olds, Oakland and Cadillac in 1909.

Cadillac had been (more or less) created by Henry Leland. He soon got tired of Durant's management and founded his own company called Lincoln, which was then bought by Ford in 1922. So Leland is responsible for two of the surviving brands.

Chevrolet was started by Billy Durant after he was kicked out of GM by the stockholders, using French racing driver Louis Chevrolet as a frontman. Durant then used the new company as a springboard to recapture GM. (So Louis doesn't count as a founding father, but Chevrolet does count as an original company.)

The Dodge brothers began as a supplier for Ford and quickly became (more or less) partners with Ford. They got tired of Ford's management and started their own company in 1914, directly competing with the T. After the brothers died of influenza in 1920, the company drifted until Walter Chrysler bought it in 1927.

John North Willys started his company in 1912, making mostly big cars with sleeve-valve engines. Like Durant, he was a high-roller who enjoyed dealing more than building things, and his company ended up in bankruptcy in 1933. Bankruptcy was its salvation, leading to specialization in small cars. In 1941 the company became synonymous with the military Jeep, but the current line of Jeep models descends more directly and continuously from the Willys Station Wagon of 1947.
  ¶ 5:37 PM