Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadeTreeMech
I like my Mercury Villager quite well. Funny thing is, it's not a rebadged Ford, but a rebadged Nissan with extra goodies; kind of the Cadillac of the Nissan Quest.
Never could understand why companies would homogenize their products so much. I've never owned a Saturn, but I always thought it was cool how they were nothing like other GM cars.
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L-series was an Opel, and their smaller ones shared drivetrains with a few other GM compacts.
Also, it's cheap to platform share. The days of companies truly competing against each other in their respective groups are gone. GM says "You have this platform, these engines, and this goal", and it goes from there. Back in the day though, there was always great competition with in GM to one-up the other brand. Buick vs. Olds vs. Cadillac, or Pontiac vs. Chevy, as well as GMC Trucks and Chevy trucks (up until the 70s, both has widely different drive train options).
This of course, costs lots of money to develop each brand's unique items.