But of the two thousand companies, from just a few years ago, only three automobile companies survived.

Just to be a jerk I’ll point out that the number of survivors was more like a dozen, maybe 20, at least for long enough to interest investors. GM was an amalgam of several different companies: Chevy, Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile. Even Hummer started out as an independent brand and was bought out by GM early in its (Hummer’s) trajectory. If you owned Buick you did’t get wiped out, you just got GM shares instead.

Chrysler, of course, was Plymouth and Dodge. Ford stood solo, at least until it started farting around with Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover. (That’s 13, so far). Yeah, they had Mercury and a couple other badges, but those were just nameplates, not separate companies.

Nobody thinks about Checkers, but they had a bazillion taxicabs on the streets, didn’t they?

And then there was American Motors, with Nash, Hudson, the little known Metropolitan, and even Jeep. Who can forget Studebaker or Packard? Stutz, of Bearcat fame lasted 30 years, a decent run for an industrial firm, and had a second life of another 20 years later in the century. And hey! Duesenberg! It’s a doozy!

If you want to include car companies you could invest in but who were not Native American, you could list Peugeot, Volkswagen, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Renault, Fiat, Toyota, Honda, Land Rover, Saab and many others, some unknown in the US but who had a decent run in their own countries.

Three? Don’t be silly. There were a fair number of survivors, at least for a while. If we’re going to say “who survived for a century”, well, we should do that same for things like Dairy Queen, See’s, and everything else. Pretty tall hurdle, I would think.

(Oh, that’s 33, for the record, which is likely incomplete. You’re welcome.)