How many Marques do you use?

[flyersfan18]

How many Marques to you normally use and what are the focus or thinking behind that organization?

In my current game I am focus on just sporty models so I have three Marques, a mass market focus on middle income and lower, an upbrand market and finally a super high end & racing marque.

I considered adding a fourth luxury market brand, but im stick with my focus and just these three for this game.

I had mentioned in another thread about sometimes using a sister marque to focus on different geography. (ie Europe and North America) I find it is easier to balance supply and distribution that way - I just make a carbon copy using the trims option and save to the other Marque. (rebadging at its finest) I know you can set different shipping distances but I just find it easier to manage having all my factories and sales clearly delineated this way.

[DuffBeer]

Right now I am using four on sandbox mode. I have a parent company that has never released a car, but owns all of the designs of the three companies under it. Pretty much exactly how you're doing it. The high end stuff (selling for $450k+ in the year 2000) is kept separate from the lower brands, they use exclusive platforms, some of the high end cars share drivetrains but nothing gets shared outside of that brand. Exotic suspensions and engine types go here. Volume isn't needed with the ridiculous markup.

The midtier stuff covers everything from $50k-$250k, most of the racing trim cars, the widest variety of vehicle types, and the smallest margins. Three platforms, FF small cars, FR platform for everything large that isn't expected to be F4, the platform for SUVs and Trucks. An cheap engine/gearbox combo for the lower trim cars, V6 turbo for the FF, V8 for the bigger platforms. A 1.6L V12 Hybrid Turbo handles all the European/Asian hatch/sedan/coupe race requirements with an exclusive gearbox.

The lowest level brand is one chassis, one engine, one gearbox for the most popular market segments, even if the vehicle takes a hit in ratings vs competitors. The cars are priced so affordably that they still eat a lot of marketshare in the $15k-$40k range. This brand is also useful for the oddball vehicle types that only get a handful of sales per month, as long as it takes sales from competitors, it's worth selling for me.

After further inspection of my save file, all of my competitors are wholly-owned subsidiaries. It all flows back up to the parent company that holds the IP, but will never manufacture a single vehicle. The illusion of choice is a free market, right?

[flyersfan18]

Sounds like you have a good and well defined roadmap for your designs. I like it

I assign my parts to the different brands just to help keep track of what the thinking was when I design the part. Purely for convenience, unless you are plan to spin out a marque I dont see where it matters one way or the other.

BTW if anyone want to recreate a historical General Motors roleplay I believe you would want to go with

Chevrolet - low end cars and trucks
Oldsmobile - lower middle
Buick - upper middle
Cadillac - high end / luxury
Pontiac - different rankings over time, once part of oakland, or slotting between Chevrolet / Oldsmobile or a performance experimental brand. I think in GC it makes sense to make them the sports car marque.
GMC - commercial or heavy duty trucks

OR if you REALLY want to go crazy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_companion_make_program

[Excalibrrr]

I've never used a marque because I dont understand why I would. My main company sells good and less-good cars, and everything works out perfectly.

[Shady Ed]

Originally posted by CJ:

I've never used a marque because I dont understand why I would. My main company sells good and less-good cars, and everything works out perfectly.

Because Rolls-Royce selling compact cars targeted to low income youth would damage the brand.

[Excalibrrr]

That's what I would have figured too, but so far there's no problems for me. All my cars sell out as number 1 every time

[flyersfan18]

Game is very open ended in terms of strategy. I suspect what you are doing is fine, but it is not likely optimal.

As mentioned you can use Marque to divide up your company geographically as well as by product line.

What basic settings are you use, basic strategy (starting city) and game year are you work with?

Also a whole different strategy is to create a Marque with the plan to build them up, spin out the company and slowly sell your shares to make tons of money. Haven't tried that myself but having made profitable subsides I am pretty sure it would work (ie start a company in Australia) one issue I have had though - is the new company will share HQ city as parent, so alot of times AI will build new branched in area that isnt what you were hoping.

(In your case start writing down your brand image <quality, luxury, racing> at the start of each year, and see what happen if you spin out the low end brand and focus just on high end) You can find that info by going to stock market and clicking on your own company then Marques. It will however take a few years for your old models to disappear from the average for you lineup)

[Excalibrrr]

I can't remember what settings I'm on, but I always pick somewhere in the medium difficulty range. I started in New York in the 1930's with random history and everything, so the US ended up in a war that Europe wasn't in and I moved all my operations to UK and France. Eventually I expanded to Germany and Australia, and then the US war ended so now I built new huge factories because cars are selling like crazy there.

Those are cool ideas though, I'd like to try them out for myself now.

[flyersfan18]

When I do the globe spanning - dominate every segment type game, I find it is much easier to keep track of my operation with specific Marques for europe and US. When I make a new model I just design a new trim and save a carbon copy for sale in another market. I just find it is much easier to balance production and shipping that way - without let my shipping costs sneak up too much.

You can still make whatever in your mega factories for export, but at least you always know where they are being made and then shipped

Yes the US is very lucrative, it is hard to build your factories fast enough to keep up with the ever expanding demand.

I will say build up a successful AI controlled subsidy does take some practice, you cant just do a little work and spin it out with alot of money - it needs its own designs, factories and branches to hit the ground running. The first few times I try to do it was a few flops before I master the process. And make sure you dont give away a key blueprint that you still need

I misspoke in my other post, I meant to suggest manage 2 Marques (high end - low end), when I wrote spin out that was a typo

[Excalibrrr]

It sounds like I'll maybe want to practice the AI controlled subsidies then before I try it in my main file, so thats cool because it gives me something to do today. For factories, I've just been having one in the largest city of every country in order to have less shipping costs and import taxes. I'm wondering if there might be a better way

[flyersfan18]

If you are play with import taxes, factory in largest city is the way I would go as well.

Is a number of Marque options / strategies with spin off into a new company or create subsidy. It really depends what your overall goals are. You could even transfer all your assets into a Marque, create a subsidy and it would be like starting from scratch, but in your current save file. (and with a ton of money) Lots of possibilities

[JC Denton]

The number tends to gradually expand with my company, and as I acquire competitors. Traditionally, three to five main ones with perhaps some oddball ones as well.

In my current game, I only had one marque until after WWII. It sold cars ranging in price from $500 to $5600 in 1929. But around 1950, I merged with Gordon-Brull, which I made my luxury brand, and acquired Donut, to be my entry-level brand.

I'll also have a sports brand or a truck brand fairly often. Sometimes I'll try geographic oriented brands - e.g. a secondary brand for eastern Europe and western Asia to keep shipping costs in check. I'm not sure it's really worth the player overhead for just a few sales though. This game, I used the District Shipping Lock feature and Autoproduction (after 1920 or so), and just didn't build branches in remote areas with few sales, to keep costs reasonable.

I skipped the sports and truck brands in my current game, after having them in the previous one. But I did brand out and acquire a few more marques. Durack is my diesel brand. Alpleon is my autogas brand. Calboni is ultra-low-end, use-old-parts-to-cut-costs brand - not so much a money maker as a prevent-other-companies-from-making-money brand. I bought Dorunt as well but only have one microvan being sold through that marque; it's probably going to be retired.

Alpleon and Durack are just rebadged of other marques with different engines. Having the separate marque makes it easier to track how my plans to elevate alternative fuels are progressing. Geographic marques, when I use them, are also rebadges. Otherwise it's more segment-based.

I'm still split on whether a sports brand makes sense. Last time I used it and it worked out, but this time my "mainstream" brand has the sports cars as well. The latest one is a 1964 model that hits 235 mph and does 0-60 in 3.3, and the marque has a racing image of 82/100, whereas the next-best competitor marques is 55/100. So it might be better having that halo affect the entire mainstream brand. I suppose that's why brands like Toyota, Dodge, and Ford make race cars, and the top-end model I sell under the mainstream marque would basically be the equivalent of a Ford GT.

[flyersfan18]

82 racing image is impressive. How many different series do you have a race team in currently to get that kind of rating?

I like the race aspect, is a nice little side game you can completely ignore, or spend a fortune on trying to dominate every season.

[Soul Binder]

Originally posted by matthew_w_lees:

82 racing image is impressive. How many different series do you have a race team in currently to get that kind of rating?

I like the race aspect, is a nice little side game you can completely ignore, or spend a fortune on trying to dominate every season.

Performance rating isn't just gained from running race teams. You can build some performance image without ever racing or supplying race contracts.
With that being said it is much easier and faster to build performance image if you do have factory sponsored race teams that win and also fill a bunch of racing contracts for non factory teams.

Note a marque that is dedicated to building high performance vehicles, components for race contracts and sponsoring factory race teams will grow its performance image a bit faster than if you do same with a marque that also produces other types of vehicles and components.
Just like you can build Luxury rating faster if you place a Luxury marque and build any budget cars under a different marque.

[JC Denton]

Originally posted by matthew_w_lees:

82 racing image is impressive. How many different series do you have a race team in currently to get that kind of rating?

I like the race aspect, is a nice little side game you can completely ignore, or spend a fortune on trying to dominate every season.

Currently, six. One with the top tier car I mentioned earlier, one with the previous gen of the same car that has won the Turgo Florida 17 years in a row and is going to keep racing it until it loses, three with a smaller sports car to meet engine size limits, and one with an autogas version of that same sports car to try to boost that brand's image a bit.

[ee]

Originally posted by JC Denton:

The number tends to gradually expand with my company, and as I acquire competitors [....]

Sometimes I'll try geographic oriented brands - e.g. a secondary brand for eastern Europe and western Asia to keep shipping costs in check. I'm not sure it's really worth the player overhead for just a few sales though [....]

Durack is my diesel brand [...]

Alpleon and Durack are just rebadged of other marques with different engines. Having the separate marque makes it easier to track how my plans to elevate alternative fuels are progressing.

That's actually a really good suggestion and has a lot of advantages over my current system (I designate diesels with a postfix 'D' model name).

I suppose one might do the same in this case for 2nd popularity transmission model variants (niche model trims). For example, if sports cars are typically MT, and you want to offer an AT niche trim for that, one could do it in a quirky niche brand.

The geography brand tip makes good sense too, that makes an easy way to filter the models in the mega menu.