Canadian Cousins With Fleur-de-Lis and Mixed Genes
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Version 0 of 1. OTTAWA TO Americans, they look familiar, yet strange. Their brand names don’t ring a bell: Mayfair, Frontenac, Acadian, Meteor, Monarch, Fargo, Laurentian, Beaumont. These are among the cars once created specifically for Canada, and usually built in Canada, by the Detroit-based automakers. In their heyday, from the end of World War II until the late 1960s — a period of true mechanical distinctions between, say, Chevrolets and Pontiacs — the Canadianized cars shamelessly borrowed parts and styling from their sister divisions. Once common on Canadian roads, such cars have become, even here, largely forgotten historical footnotes. When Denise Côté, a retired government secretary in Ottawa, went to register her 1957 Monarch Lucerne, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation would have no part of it. Until Ms. Côté commissioned an auto historian to provide the government a history of Ford Canada’s Monarch brand, the license bureau would register her car only as a Mercury Monarch, a model that wasn’t produced until the late 1970s and was sold on both sides of the border. “It is a Monarch Lucerne; it is not a Mercury,” said Ms. Côté, a longtime car fancier. Referring to the bureaucrats, she said, “They wouldn’t change it for the world, and they eventually had to call Toronto to do it.” A variety of factors inspired the Canadian subsidiaries of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to create Canada-only models. But the sometimes oddball results came into being, and then faded away, largely because of import tariffs. Until the United States and Canada signed an agreement in 1965 creating cross-border free trade in cars and auto parts, vehicles imported to Canada from the United States were subject to duties of as much as 35 percent. To avoid the duties, automakers struggled to find economical ways to squeeze a wide range of models onto single assembly lines in their Canadian factories. The models were not adapted to Canadian roads, which aside from the snow and ice, were generally poorer, at the time, than American roads. “Was there any design or engineering done?” said Sharon Babaian, curator of transport at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. “No, not really. It was very, very cosmetic. I think they probably put more money into the marketing than they did into the actual changing of the style of the vehicle.” Canadians’ disposable income has generally lagged that of Americans, but the gap was particularly wide in the 1950s and ’60s. So automakers created less costly premium models for Canada even as they sold more or less the same base models in both countries. General Motors of Canada and Ford Canada often took the same approach: they would drop a mildly redesigned body of a more costly Pontiac or Mercury onto the chassis of a similar Chevrolet or Ford. The less expensive car’s engine and drivetrain would be kept, along with most of its interior. Chrysler Canada often went with a hybrid approach, grafting the front end of a Dodge, then considered a more premium model, onto a Plymouth. American Motors and Studebaker largely dealt with the situation by offering fewer models, although Studebakers continued to be made and sold in Canada after the company ended American production in 1963. The mix-and-match approach had some disadvantages. Starting with 1959 models, the wheels of American-market Pontiacs were set further apart in what was heavily promoted as “wide track” design. As a result, Todd St. Clair of Ingersoll, Ontario, who runs Canadian Poncho, a site for Canadian Pontiac enthusiasts and collectors, said that when Pontiac body shells were placed on Chevrolet chassis in Canada, the cars’ wheels were noticeably, and awkwardly, inset. Mr. St. Clair added, however, that although Chevy powertrains were seen as more prosaic, Canadian Pontiacs offered a wider range of engines, including high-performance versions. And Canadianized Pontiacs often outsold Chevrolets in Canada. “We had better choices than buyers of American Pontiacs,” said Mr. St. Clair, who grew up in a Pontiac household but is now a service consultant at a Chrysler dealership. Pontiac dealers also carried a separate Acadian brand, comprising compact Chevys that had been slightly reworked. Joe Lizon, a collector in Ortonville, Mich., owns two Acadians and bought two others for his adult children. He said the absence of a Pontiac badge meant that “I can go to Pontiac shows and the Chevrolet shows” to exhibit them. While the Canadian models were primarily a product of trade restrictions, they also helped the American automakers counter a sentiment in postwar Canada that the United States held too much sway over the national economy. A television commercial heralded the 1960 Mercury Meteor Montcalm, a modified Ford Galaxie, as “Canada’s idea car of the year.” An announcer repeatedly boasted that it was “distinctively Canadian,” without further explanation. For most manufacturers, making a car “distinctively Canadian” amounted to screwing on some token symbols. In an apparent homage to the nation’s British roots, the exterior door locks on Ms. Côté’s Monarch Lucerne have covers shaped like tiny gold crowns; there are more crowns on the hood ornament, steering wheel and trunklid. Other favored additions to hubcaps or steering wheels were maple leaves or the fleur-de-lis symbol of Quebec. Grilles were often redesigned and headlamps got distinctive, though not necessarily prettier, housings. Where those designs originated is unclear. But R. Perry Zavitz, the author of “Canadian Cars, 1946-1984” (Bookman Publishing/Motorbooks International), said most of the design and engineering changes came from the head offices in the United States. Mr. Zavitz said that several of the designs seemed based on styling cues from concept cars that were ultimately rejected for the American market. That seemed particularly true, he said, of the 1960 Frontenac, a reworked Ford Falcon with a bizarre grille: it featured a circular bull’s-eye, two chrome spears and lozenge-shaped sections with, of course, an ample scattering of maple leaves. “The Frontenac only lasted a year, which is some credit to Canadian consumers,” said Ms. Babaian, the curator. Canadianization was not limited to cars. Chrysler revived the Fargo name from its distant past to rebadge Dodge trucks for Canada’s Plymouth dealers; Ford offered a line of Mercury trucks that were not sold in the United States. After the auto trade agreement was signed, Canadian auto plants were integrated with their American counterparts and gradually began producing just a single line of vehicles, most of them destined for the United States. Many Canadian models, however, persisted long after the trade agreement came into effect, if in ever less distinct forms. Eventually, Mr. Zavitz said, Ford started rebadging some Mercurys as Meteors and shipping them north from American factories. “I don’t know the reason why,” Mr. Zavitz said. “It seems kind of silly to ship a Canadian model from the United States.” Because the Canadian models were generally budget versions of American cars, Mr. St. Clair, the Canadian Pontiac admirer, said they were long ignored by collectors, particularly in the United States, who viewed them as inferior. Ms. Babaian said that like many economy cars, they were more likely to be scrapped than saved, so they are relatively scarce today. The paucity of surviving Canadian models and their novelty factor has led many collectors to re-evaluate Canadian models, Mr. St. Clair said. “In the years past, the Canadian Pontiacs were kind of shunned,” he said. “Now we’re starting to see more interest.” Interest is also coming from collectors in Australia and Britain, where Canadian models were often exported. Scarcity is a significant attraction for Mr. Lizon, the American collector of Canadian cars. His two 1965 Acadian Beaumonts were fitted with optional 350-horsepower V-8s. G.M. Canada’s records indicate that only 23 such cars were built, he said. But even more mundane models were produced in relatively low numbers, reflecting Canada’s smaller population, making surviving Canadianized cars quite scarce. Ms. Côté bought her Monarch in 2006 because she had fond memories of the 1957 model she had bought secondhand after she got her first job. Through the Internet, she found one in Saskatchewan. Though the days of Canadianized styling and borrowed powertrains are long gone, automakers have more recently made occasional exceptions to the rule of cross-border commonality. After General Motors introduced the Buick LaCrosse for 2005, it abruptly changed the car’s name in Canada to the Buick Allure; in Québécois slang, “la crosse” is a vulgar expression. But by the 2010 model year, when Buick introduced an all-new LaCrosse, it didn’t bother to rebadge the car in Canada, perhaps reasoning that its French-speaking customers could withstand the potential embarrassment. |