For just a single model year in 1930, the Buick division at General Motors offered a lower-priced companion brand called the Marquette.

Buick’s short-lived Marquette brand was one more puzzle piece in the General Motors companion makes program, in which CEO Alfred P. Sloan sought to position a GM brand on every perceptible rung of the pricing ladder. Each companion make was paired with an established GM brand: LaSalle with Cadillac, Pontiac with Oakland,  Viking with Oldsmobile, and Marquette with Buick. Pontiac was far and away the most successful of the companion makes, eventually replacing its Oakland parent division. The Marquette, meanwhile, which was intended to slot in below Buick and Viking but above Oldsmobile in the price heirarchy, was the least successful. It was produced for only a single model year. (The Marquette name itself dated back to Buick’s early days, but that’s a story for another time.)

Priced right at $1,000, considerably less than the senior Buick line at $1,300 to $2,100, the Marquette offered considerably less in the way of features, too. In place of Buick’s signature Valve-In-Head engines, under the Marquette’s hood was a capable but nondescript L-head six of 212.8 cubic inches rated at 67.5 horsepower, coupled to a conventional Hotchkiss driveline with leaf springs and an open driveshaft.

The wheelbase was a petite 114 inches, four inches shorter than the smallest Buick, while body styles were limited to the basic six: a two-passenger Coupe, a four-passenger Sport Coupe with rumble seat, Two-and-Four-Door Sedans, a Roadster, and a Phaeton. If there was such a thing as a poor man’s Buick, the Marquette certainly fit the bill.

When it was introduced in June of 1929, the Marquette’s timing couldn’t have been much worse, in hindsight: The stock market crash was only a few months away. (Due to the early launch date, some Marquettes were titled as 1929 models in their respective states.) Sales volume wasn’t a total bust at approximately 35,000 cars in the introductory year, but as the Buick division and GM began to slash costs and trim operations, the Marquette junior brand was an easy and obvious target. The Marquette was cancelled for the ’31 model year, and its six-cylinder L-head engine was shipped off to GM’s German operations to power Opel trucks.