Marques are additional vehicle brands your company owns. You have complete control and operation of these brands, and they act as part of your company even though you sell them under a different name and logo.

Marques have their own image ratings and seemly operate as a different company in the public's eye, even if they're really just part of your company.

There are many reasons to start a marque, but in general, it's to separate different categories of vehicles. So they do not negatively impact the image ratings of the brand.

What do we mean by that? Let's say you operate with only one brand, your parent company. Every time you make an economy car, it will offset any luxury image gains you make from your luxury designs. Every time you make a fuel economy car, it will pull down your racing image, which will hurt your sports car sales.

Marques solve this issue by using a specific brand for your luxury cars, a specific brand for your economy cars, and a specific brand for your sports cars. With this setup, you can maximize the benefits you get from the marque's image ratings.

Another situation where Marques can be helpful is if you want to separate brands by region or if you want your marque's production to be limited to factories they own. For both of these situations, you can use marques to shape production and shipping on a regional level. For example, creating an American and European marque and only selling the American Marque vehicles in America and the European Marque vehicles in Europe will prevent cross-ocean shipping and allow variance in the models' ratings and specs.

One of the more common methods of acquiring a marque is to purchase other companies. The game offers several ways to do this.

If you purchase a company, you're buying all their assets, including the factories, branches, designs, and marques. All marques that the company owned, including the parent company, become marques of your company. This action is the most common way of gaining marques. But it's primarily done to gain assets from the parent company.

To purchase a company, you'll need to access the stockbroker window in the Financial Room (Safe). Next, you'll need to select the company you wish to take over from the list and then click the “Acquisitions” button (#1). This button will pull up the Acquisition panel, which provides information about the company and its purchase price. If you're able to purchase the company, click the “Acquire Company” button (#2).

See the Financials GUI page for more information about the UI.

If you want to purchase a marque from a company, you open the stockbroker window and select the parent company. Next, you click the “Marques” button (#1). The list will now populate with marques of the parent company (#2). Select a marque from that list. The price and information about the marque will appear in the center panel. Finally, click the “Acquire Marque” button (#3) to purchase the marque. If the marque is not for sale, this button will not appear.

See the Financials Room page for more information about the GUI.

Finally, you have the option to consolidate with another company. When you consolidate, you merge the two companies together. You retain a portion of the new company equal to the value of your current company. This action creates a new parent company that you control. Your old company becomes a marque, the company you consolidated with becomes a marque, and any marques they owned become your marques.

To access the consolidation system, select the company you want to consolidate with from the list. Click the “Consolidation” button (#1). If the company is willing to consolidate, you'll be able to click the “Consolidation Merger” button to complete the transaction (#2).

See the Financials Room page for more information on the Consolidation GUI.

The cheaper way to get a marque is to create one yourself. To do this, open the stockbroker window and select your company from the list. Next, you'll need to click the “Marque” button (#1). If you already have marques, you'll need to select your parent marque from the list (#2). Finally, click the “New Marque” button (#3). This will open the Marque creation window.

You now have to fill in information about the new marque. You'll need to enter the name and select a logo at the top (#1). While creating a marque is cheaper than buying a company, it still costs money. Those start-up costs are found in the middle section (#2). Finally, to create the marque, click the “Create” button (#3).

If you want to get rid of a marque, you have several options. First, access the list of your marques in the Stock Broker window by selecting your company from the list and then clicking the “Marques” button (#1).

Next, select the marque you want to manage.

The game gives you four different options to stop managing a marque (#2, #3, #4, #5). These are covered in the next sections in order from top to bottom.

For more information on the Marque Panel of the Stock Broker window, see the Financials Room page.

A Spin-Off will make the selected marque an independent company. You retain an equal percentage of the spin-off as you own of your own company. For example, if you own 28% of your company's shares, you will own 28% of the Spin-Off's shares. The remaining shareholders of your company will own the other 72%. The Spin-off will manage its self with its own CEO. You will have no input in the company unless you own 50% of the company's shares. If you own 100% of your company, then your Spin-off is classified as wholly-owned, which we cover two sections down.

Upon clicking the Spin-off button, the Spin-off window appears. At the top of this window are two checkboxes (#1). When enabled, these boxes include the factories and branches that the marque has ownership of with the spin-off. If left unchecked, you will retain those facilities.

Companies need seed money, and a spin-off is no exception. You can use the slider in the middle section (#2) to adjust the starting funds for the company.

You can also adjust the behavior of the spin-off using the Focus drop-down box (#3). This setting allows you to change the behavior variables for the AI company to a predefined value. The behavior variables affect which type of vehicles they make and their slider preferences when designing vehicles. It does not give you complete control or restriction over the company, nor do these variables do the same. It's merely a way for you to influence how the company designs models before you set them off on their own.

Finally, to spin off a company, click the “Spin-off” button (#4). The company will now operate as an independent company free of your influence. If you own more than 50% of the company, platform sharing is still an option. You can also adjust dividends and be automatically approved to reacquire the company.

Selling your marque will give you the maximum short-term gains. Select a marque from the list and then click the “Sell Marque” button to sell the marque.

A new window will appear. At the top of this window are two checkboxes that allow you to include the factories and branches the marque owns along with the sale.

Below that is the amount of money you will be paid for selling the marque, and just below that is the name of the company purchasing the marque. If it is the name of an existing company in the game, the marque will become one of their marques. However, if the name is an investment firm, the marque will become an independent company.