>>28828337
I've seen Ford, Dodge, Plymouth and at one point a Studebaker too in Zürich. But Studebaker is a dead brand if I'm not mistaken.

>>28828340
Studebaker has been dead for a very long time. Parts are difficult to obtain and the vehicles themselves have tiny interiors.and shitty ergonomics.

>>28828337
Cadillac was. Is this bait?

>>28828349
No? I only ask because I always see Americans using Chevys as a sign of wealth, and it's always frequently mentioned more than Ford or whatever other brand. Or is it just the poor-mans Cadillac?
>>28828347
Just looked, been dead for almost 60 years

>>28828337
I'm German and the only classic American car I seen in your country was 1970s Buick.

>>28828349
youll notice that cadillac doesnt spell chevrolet

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>>28828360
in the 80s, a ford granada 2,8 v6 auto/manual 50/50 wagon was more expencive, far better quality and about if not faster than a malibu wagon with a 5.0 v8 and auto on all. most fords sold here where german made, and more of them survived than their cheaper chevy counterparts.
both where wide, low and long, but if you closed the windows in one during rain you remained dry, if you did so in the other you where wet. still the wet, cheap, slow car had some status...
people are dumb.

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The Impala is a ghetto icon.

>>28828337
chevys weren't a status symbol in and of themselves, status was associated with what model chevy you had

>>28828337
Chevrolet itself? No. A corvette, impala, Camaro, Monte Carlo, etc.? Yes.

Chevy is just merikan Opel for all the good and the bad.
Do you see an Opel as a status symbol? An Omega maybe, a Senator definitely, not a vectra or a zafira.

Back when GM had market share (50s onward), Chevys were the entry level brand in their portfolio. As you moved up in life, GM marketed to have you move up in brand from Chevy to Oldsmobile and Buick and eventually to Cadillac. Pontiac was the sportier entry level brand and GMC was considered a commercial truck brand.

From the 80s on, only Corvettes and the large Chevy SUVs were seen as a sign of wealth, and even then, the SUVs weren't as "much of a status symbol as Cadillacs or Lincolns.

Even now, certain models of the GMC SUVs (Denali-branded models) are seen as more upscale than their Chevy counterparts even though Chevy and GMC are supposed to be equals as to fit and finish.

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>>28828337
>Chevrolet
no that's Lincoln which is owned by Ford.

>>28828337
No. Chevy's were an Everyman car.

>>28828337
no, chevrolet was literally the bottom rung on the ladder
europe posters, do you have Google over there?

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>>28828337
It would help if OP (fag) would specify what era you're wondering aboot, as multiple posters have pointed out, Chevrolet was founded in 1911 fyi
>>28828397
>>28829082
Mostly this
Lincoln Continental Mark V

>>28828391
This. GMC is by far the most confusing though, since they are allegedly upscale but have as you say mostly the same fit and finish. If you go on their website and try to build a truck there are minor variations in trim and paint, etc. but I don't know how they reasonably survive as a separate badge, especially now that they don't make the Topkick or any true commercial vehicle.

>>28829153
I live in a truck heavy area and GMC is what many guys get to show they can afford to blow more on a truck than their neighbor. Or what the foreman gets to show the guys on his crew who's boss

>>28829082
This, the only exception would be the corvette due to how advanced it was in comparison.

Actually. The other exception would be the B body 90s Impala SS. Those were a huge flex no matter if you're white or black.

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>>28829330
Isn't the '57 Bel Air considered a classic too?

>>28829339
Considered a classic yes, but in the context of pure status/clout/aura farming they were overshadowed by its competitors of its time. You will get attention however you won't be sung super high praises from muscle enthusiast autists. (Which are the people who influence the value/significance of the car)

Chevy is the everymans ride, cadillac was the top of the GM penthouse. If chevy was never the one to make the vette then it would've probably ended up as a cadillac exclusive model.

>>28829339
tri-five chevrolets are considered classics solely because of a self-perpetuating boomer ideology. any car can randomly become a classic. at the time, there was absolutely nothing special about them, they were the fuck-all slightly upscale everyman car compared to a 150 or 210 but your ass was still driving a chevy and not a buick. gm sold over one and a half million A-body chevies in 1957 alone.

>>28828347
Parts aren't bad at all.
https://www.studebaker-intl.com/
https://www.studebakerparts.com/

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>>28828337
Sure, depending on the car. A 64 with a 409 was a high status ride.

>>28828337
Many US cars got over there through being cast off by servicemen who didn't want or need to bring them back. I'd bet a lot of those Chevrolets you see were part of those.

>>28829153
>GMC is by far the most confusing
On the face of it yes, but then when you think of dealer franchising it becomes more clear. GMC is simply there so that Buick/Cadillac dealers have a truck and don't have to buy a Chevrolet franchise. That's no doubt why they lean into the "luxury truck" idea too. Don't want a bunch of downmarket Chevrolet trucks shitting up their precious luxury car lot.

>>28829153
GMC was made so Buick and Oldsmobile could have a truck to sell.

>>28828356
>I only ask because I always see Americans using Chevys as a sign of wealth
Cite an example of this.

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>>28829428
NTA but.....

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>>28829428
And the obvious....

>>28829446
what about this screams wealth to you? it's not even a Nomad, just a regular 2 door wagon

>>28829450
So I'll try to break this down for the Euro friends. Hang on. I know you guys have Ford of Europe and weird shit like Opel but I'm ignoring those, they're separate entities in all but name.

In the US, the big two of domestic autos have pretty much always been Ford and General Motors. Chrysler exists too to make it the big 3, but they're perpetually on the verge of one bankruptcy or another and always under-funded and corner cut to hell so I'm focusing on the other two. Ford has often been the progenitor of various car classes and types- personal luxury cars with the Thunderbird, pony cars with the Mustang, sport compacts with the Falcon, etc., and it means GM always has to play second fiddle and catch up.
Now, Ford is in a unique spot because, with few exceptions, their big show cars and name-makers are always under the main Ford brand itself, right up to their race cars and the road-going GTs. Ford IS Ford, the direct lineage from Henry Ford. The blue oval is ubiquitous and Joe Schmo can point at his LTD and truthfully say, "Yeah, that's built by the same guys who race at Le Mans." Lincoln is Ford's top-dog marque, but they've more or less always been a pure luxury brand, and even their more interesting offerings like the Mark series of coupes were Thunderbird sisters and slotted into the same personal luxury segment. The idea is that Ford is 'for everyone'- both the Le Mans winner in his race car and the truck driver in his F-series hauling the trailer. Lincoln-Mercury is just kind of there, Edsel is long dead, and Ford never really did the solid price-prestige pyramid that GM did. Even today, Lincoln doesn't do 'trucks' anymore (see: Navigator and the other one I can't forget) and the boss man at the job site drives an F-150 with a $162,000 price tag so he can still be seen as 'one of the guys' with a Ferd.

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>>28829487
Now, over at GM, you've got a bit of a conundrum: you have at minimum five separate makes competing not just against Ford for the buyer's wallet, but against each other, too. The engineers are dead-set on slipping performance bargains past the noses of the bean counters, and they instead have to be shunted into bringing out something to compete with Ford's latest offering, like the F-bodies that showed up two years after Ford was already making big bucks with the Mustang. Your top of the line brand is Cadillac, and everyone knows it as the most luxurious car in the world that carries statesmen and presidents. Everyone below that is in a very specific order: Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick. You're supposed to buy in at the Chevy and upgrade as you get older and richer (hah!). So you bring out your fancy Corvette to compete with the T-bird, and over time it evolves into a proper sports car instead, but Chevrolet isn't really the sports division. Pontiac was chomping at the bit to make a sportster and shut down multiple times, Olds and Buick were making deals behind corporate's back, and Chevy just got the cool projects because management said, "No, we need XP-whatever prototype to be a Chevrolet, because it has to compete with Ford."
The important part is that General Motors itself is not a car manufacturer, it's more like a basket holding five brothers (minus one or two now) who fight each other. You ever seen those shitposts about the 'GM Corvette' being a hairdresser's car? They aren't entirely wrong, the Corvette is as much a Chevrolet as the Fiero was. It's all just marketing, and like the other anon said, if it was truthful it would have been a Caddy or a Pontiac from the start, but GM has spent decades trying REALLY HARD to keep the blue oval/bowtie war going because they fucked themselves with the brand hierarchy 80 years ago.

>>28829490
slight correction: the thunderbird came after the corvette and made the PLC segment to avoid competing with the vette (a 'sports car') but the first gen vette was never really sure what it was anyway

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>>28829387
>>28829395
I'm not saying your wrong, because our local Olds dealer also had GMC, but the truck market 25 years ago really wasn't like it is today; crew cabs were a noteworthy, rare option and most trucks were utilitarian.

>Additionally, from 1955 through 1959, the less than 2-ton, domestic GMC gasoline trucks were equipped with Pontiac V8s, and Oldsmobile V8s—whereas the Canadian models used Chevrolet engines. GMC dealerships were partnered with Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick dealerships.

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>>28829446
kek ford made station wagons too what's your point?

>>28828337
Only if you had a Corvette or the most powerful SS models.

Not in my lifetime. it was always meant to be the economy brand.

>>28828337
Yeah, lots of people see Ford as the first ones to implement shit customer fucking ideas and dodge as third rate trash. The sbc was ubiquitous and is still the most supported engine in the world for parts and power. The 3800 sucked and most people don't want to hear that but the 229 and 2.8 were far superior engines to have until gm finally got it right in the late 90s. GM simply couldn't figure out small cars and peddled trash until they made the cobalt with the revised ecotec. It's been downhill since '08. Dodge axed their big block and shacked up with Mitsubishi to make compacts in the late 70s, they were low quality shit boxes that sold like hotcakes, basically what Nissan is now. They made innumerable shittier cars in the 90s trying to appeal to higher classes and failed, they axed the rest of their sales when Mercedes killed the small block and contractor vans in favor of a cut down Mercedes V8 and sprinter vans which were short lived. Ford had a more productive partnership with Mazda in the late 80s and figured out how to make decent compacts, they copied the Mercedes design and spent years spoofing how much power it made before just ignoring it, unlike Chrysler this engine was actually reliable, until Ford decided people weren't buying enough cars and started axing production of common failure points, copy protecting parts, sabotaging contracts so the faulty aftermarket ones become the only option, and designing new parts to fail, the epicenter of 'the radio makes my car not start' bullshit everyone does now started in 2005 with Ford, and everyone rightfully hates them more for it.

>>28829428
Literally every fuckin Mexican ever and their “Cheyenne”

>>28828337
Chevy was middle tier as a status symbol
Better than Ford but not better than Cadillac