LaSalle

LaSalle was an American brand of luxury automobiles manufactured and marketed, as a separate brand, by General Motors' Cadillac division from 1927 through 1940. Alfred P. Sloan, GM's Chairman of the Board, developed the concept for four new GM marques - LaSalle, Marquette, Viking and Pontiac - paired with already established brands to fill price gaps he perceived in the General Motors product portfolio. Sloan created LaSalle as a companion marque for Cadillac. LaSalle automobiles were manufactured by Cadillac, but were priced lower than Cadillac-branded automobiles, were shorter, and were marketed as the second-most prestigious marque in the General Motors portfolio. LaSalles were titled as LaSalles, and not as Cadillacs. Like Cadillac — named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac — the LaSalle brand name was based on that of another French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. General Motors companion marque strategy The LaSalle had its beginnings when General Motors' CEO Alfred P. Sloan noticed that his carefully crafted market segmentation program was beginning to develop price gaps in which General Motors had no products to sell. In an era when automotive brands were somewhat restricted to building a specific car per model year, Sloan surmised that the best way to bridge the gaps was to develop "companion" marques that could be sold through the current sales network. As originally developed by Sloan, General Motors' market-segmentation strategy placed each of the company's individual automobile marques into specific price ranges, called the "General Motors companion make program". The Chevrolet was designated as the entry-level product. Next, (in ascending order), came the Pontiac, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Viking, Marquette, Buick, LaSalle, and Cadillac. By the 1920s, certain General Motors products began to shift out of the plan as the products improved and engine advances were made.