Viking (make of car)

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Viking Eight Sedan (1930)

Viking was a brand of automobile made by General Motors . The registered office is Lansing in Michigan . Construction time was from 1929 to 1930.

background

Viking was conceived as one of four subsidiary brands with which the parent company tried to close existing gaps in the model range and to embody the corporate philosophy of "A GM model for every market segment". Pontiac was the first to be introduced in 1926 . The success initially proved the concept right. The special thing about these subsidiary brands was that they were not directly subordinate to the group management, but one of the brands already established at GM. In the case of Pontiac, this was the traditional manufacturer Oakland . Pontiac's successful start promoted this development so that Cadillac followed suit with the LaSalle in the 1927 model year .

After a successful start at LaSalle, two other brands launched products with correspondingly positive expectations: Buick the Marquette and Oldsmobile the Viking . But it should turn out differently. Towards the end of the 1929 publication year, the stock market crash as a result of Black Tuesday (October 29) radically changed the automobile market. All manufacturers suffered from this, but most of them not established manufacturers and those with more expensive products. Both were true of Marquette, and more so of Viking.

Models

In several ways, Viking held a special position among the subsidiary brands. Technically, this was a new V8 engine that had little in common with the earlier Oldsmobile V8 from 1916 to 1923: For the first time, the engine block was cast in a single cast piece ( monobloc ), the valves were arranged horizontally. The car developed 81 HP (60.4 kW) and cost from US $ 1,595. Unlike the other GM subsidiary brands, the Viking was priced above the parent brand, positioning it in the upper middle class. Three equipment levels were available: Standard, DeLuxe and Special. A conventional ladder frame with a wheelbase of 125 in (3175 mm) was used. Two four-door closed bodies were ex works: a sedan and a close-coupled four-door Brougham, a particularly luxurious closed variant similar to today's 4-door coupés. There was also a convertible coupe (cabriolet with two seats and two mother-in-law seats instead of the trunk). These bodies were manufactured by Fisher exclusively for Viking.

In the 1929 model year, 4058 Vikings were sold. In 1930 the crisis took hold; sales collapsed by more than a third. Just 2813 units could be sold. GM then pulled the emergency brake and stopped production of the Viking and the similarly battered Marquette at the end of the 1930 model year. 353 Vikings were still assembled from pre-produced parts and sold as a 1931 model, so that ultimately 7224 copies were built.

The crisis forced GM to abandon the concept with the subsidiary brands. The gaps in the program were covered by new models from the existing brands. The LaSalle was abandoned in 1940 because the differences to the smallest Cadillac were becoming increasingly blurred. But Pontiac had such sustained success in the lower middle class that its parent company Oakland was discontinued in 1931. Pontiac existed until 2010.

literature

  • Beverly R. Kimes (Ed.), Henry A. Clark: The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. Krause Publications, 1985, ISBN 0-87341-045-9 .
  • Tad Burness: American Car Spotter's Guide, 1920-39. Motorbooks International, 1975, ISBN 0-87938-026-8 .

Web links

Commons : Viking  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beverly Rae Kimes, Henry Austin Clark Jr .: Standard catalog of American Cars. 1805-1942. Digital edition . 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola 2013, ISBN 978-1-4402-3778-2 , pp. 1502-1503 (English).
  2. ↑ George Nicholas Georgano (Ed.): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile . Volume 3: P-Z . Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , pp. 1679-168 (English).