On this day, December 12, 2000, General Motors pulled the plug on Oldsmobile.

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3. GM's 3 middle brands, Pontias, Oldsmobile and Buick were all somewhat redundant...

in size, look and price ranges...overlapping Venn diagrams. Olds had to go, as did Pontiac a few years later, leaving GM with a more sensible line-up of cars...the lower priced Chevrolet, the mid-range Buick and the top of the line Cadillac.

Their ladder market strategy of selling loyal customers to move up through the GM line from Chevy to Pontiac to Olds to Buick to Cadillac worked for years but the redundancy finally caught up with them as customers got wise, build quality declined and actual engines were being interchanged in the middle three brands (re-badging)...not to mention some horrendously ugly designs like the Pontiac Aztek.

Voila...death knoll for Olds and Pontiac.