ultimately used the new company to regain control of GM in 1918. Finding himself president of GM once more, Durant fell back into old patterns; by 1920 he had grown the number of GM divisions from five to seven. GM stock, meanwhile, had fallen precipitously during Durant's second stint as president, and by 1920 the GM board decided they had enough. In November of that year Durant was forced out of GM for the last time, at which point the company was almost bankrupt. He was replaced as GM president by Pierre du Pont of DuPont. One of du Pont's main assistants was GM vice president Alfred P. Sloan. Sloan recognized that GM was ineffectively utilizing its various brands to fight against Ford, which at the time commanded more than half of the automobile market. Of all the GM vehicles available at the time, none were a competitive alternative to the immensely popular Ford Model T; the GM marques themselves also lacked a coherent framework that would make it easy for buyers of entry-level models to upgrade to a more premium car within the GM fold. Instead of complementing each other, different GM brands found themselves competing for the same customers, ultimately cannibalizing sales for GM as a whole. While du Pont believed that direct competition with the Model T would be GM's best opportunity to gain market share, Sloan instead decided to pursue Durant's idea, albeit without crediting Durant, of a "car for every purse and purpose". Sloan discontinued Scripps-Booth and sold the Sheridan brand, then reorganized the remaining five marques into a price hierarchy that positioned Chevrolet as the most entry-level line, Oakland, Buick, and Oldsmobile as the mid-tier brands, and Cadillac as the flagship marque. However, the order of the marques' pricing was fluid, and by 1929 Oldsmobiles were cheaper than Buicks and Oaklands. The idea of pricing cars on a ladder - in concert with other innovations by GM at the time, including providing credit to prospective car buyers - was tremendously successful in expanding GM's market share during the 1920s. The company surpassed Ford in market share in 1927, the same year that the Model T was discontinued in favor of the updated Model A. Launch Sloan, who had replaced du Pont as GM president in 1923, decided to create various "companion makes" to fill the variety of gaps that had developed in the original