Cadillac division's output, it narrowly outsold the Cadillac brand in 1929 and its sales contributed to the survival of the division during the Depression. Nevertheless, as the economy improved , LaSalle's niche dried up as the gap between narrowed. In its final model year of 1940, LaSalles comprised about 65 percent of Cadillac's total output, but it was replaced in 1941 by the Cadillac Series 61. The LaSalle name has been occasionally floated for revival; a 1955 concept car was titled the "LaSalle II", and the name reappeared in 1963 and 1975 as proposals for what eventually became the Buick Riviera and Cadillac Seville, respectively. Earl, having gotten his start with the 1927 LaSalle, was later acclaimed as the "dean of design" of automobiles. Pontiac had the opposite destiny. Selling more than 75,000 units in 1926, Pontiac saw a rise to 140,000 units in 1927 and more than 200,000 in 1928. Oakland was discontinued in 1931, a victim of the Depression; its final model, which had been based on the Viking V8, became the Pontiac V8 for 1932. Pontiac earned the distinction of being the only GM make that was not an outside acquisition that survived for a significant amount of time. The marque remained in production until 2010, when it was discontinued in the aftermath of the Great Recession as part of GM's reorganization from recession-caused bankruptcy. The companion make program as a whole was described by automotive historian Bill Vance as a "short-lived experiment" in a retrospective of the Marquette. Vance unfavorably compared the program to Sloan's earlier paring down of GM's line after the Durant ouster. A report on the Viking referred to the program as "several 'in-between' cars introduced by General Motors while the Twenties still roared and the stock market hadn't crashed." See also List of GM factories Notes References Works cited General Motors marques