The beginnings of an automotive giant.
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CANADIAN MOTORS,
the company built upon the ashes of another.
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In 1972, after the fall of Premier Automobile, CM was left on it’s own, with no financial backing. This was a very rough patch, considering the company just got founded.
Now, about Premier. Premier was an automotive giant that served with the Big Three since 1923, which were GM, Ford and Chrysler. In 1971, a big economic recession hit, one similar to the '08 recession, and as a result, despite a government bailout, Premier had fallen in 1972 shortly after the recession hit, after CM had been founded under Premier in 1970, and they hadn’t even made their first car. What now?
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First, the then CEO of Canadian Motors, Stewart Eddel, had tried to strike a deal with FSO, a Polish vehicle manufacturer, to make a car to be shared across the two companies. Stewart had tried to get the deal going for two years, but to no avail. After this failure, Eddel had decided to turn to Fiat to get the rights to manufacture the 126, and that had succeeded. Now, another issue had risen. How could CM get a vehicle out the door by 1976, at the least to save themselves from bankruptcy? Well, I’ll cut straight to the chase.
A book closes and the narrator reaches for another, turning to a seemingly random page. His face had grown to a satisfied look.
Correct page on the first try! Nice…
Anyways, back to the story. They had made the wildly popular, for small towns, at least, CM Banff. There were many different models, like the underpowered 730 and 900.
1200 pounds and a zero to sixty in at the very least, 20 seconds… bah.
The models did come with fuel injection and stereos, which are fairly important features, and they improved fuel economy by a nice margin. There was another version, however… that catered to the sports car driver. Say, you wanted a cheap, fun car. You’d probably hit the Toyota or Nissan… Datsun at the time, dealerships for a 2000GT or maybe a 280Z. But, there wasn’t a cheaper car than the Canadian Motors Banff. You’re probably thinking, “But Aaron, how can such a tiny, stupid car based off of the 126 can be a cheap sports car?”
Thank the insane people at CM. They wanted a share in the sports car market, not too big, but a share nonetheless. Why not use the Banff? It’s a small, lightweight car with a rear engine layout, and rear-wheel drive. Seems good. Not to mention the agility because of how tiny the damn thing is. So, then came the CM Banff 1100i. The name standing for 1100cc Injected. For fuel injection, but mayyybe steroids. There is an off-chance.
Anyways, the major changes were new headlamps that integrated the turn signals, the new 1100cc inline 4, an absurd amount of vents, tuned suspension and black body trim instead of the chrome. All of the trims together netted them around 3.4 million sales across the Americas and Australia, where it was sold under both the CM and Sceptre (Sceptre founded in 1987) nameplates, and made the corporation a ton of money until they pulled the plug in 2002. My God, was it a good car for what it was.
The narrator closes the book, puts it in the nearby bookcase and leans on his desk, sipping his coffee before doing so.
Now, a bit of an off-topic story here. Because of the naming scheme that Canadian Motors was using, for example, 900c, 1100i, all that, it got them into a bit of… forgive my language, but this is just the correct term, shit.
BMW had decided to try and sue CM because of the naming scheme. Now, that was complete and utter bogus, because the BMW naming scheme was, series number first, and the last two numbers as displacement, and a letter at the end for the type of fuel system, like “c” for carbs and “i” for fuel injection. I will admit, CM was kinda similar, but their scheme back then was displacement, like “900”, then “c” or “i”, for the same reason as BMW, referring to fuel systems. Why they had wanted to sue CM for that, I don’t know, so yeah. Ultimately, CM won the lawsuit and made BMW look like a circus, and that indirectly led to the creation of another car, but that’s for another time.
The narrator stands up from his chair.
Well, nice to be with you. I’ll meet you again tomorrow, then, {YOUR NAME}.
He gives you a firm handshake and heads to the door, opening it. He lets you exit first while he grabs his belongings, and he heads the opposite way towards the employee parking lot while you go the opposite way.
Aaron (narrator): That was a long-ass day… ugh.
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You return with your camera crew to the production office in Downtown Dallas, and the camera crew gives the footage to the editing crew. Estephen, the lead editor of the editing crew, then thanks you for the footage and starts to work on it right away.
Estephen: Thanks for the footage.
He turns around to the crew, and claps fairly loudly.
Estephen: Day one of the recording is done, time for editing… let’s get PAID!
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