A marque is a famous brand name, most often for cars, and most often when the name itself feels special or expensive — Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, that kind of name. In car writing it is the ordinary word for the maker’s name: people say “a Japanese marque” or “the history of the marque,” meaning the name and the company behind it, not one particular model. Though actually it is not only for luxury cars. Trade magazines use it for quite ordinary makers too; the tidy idea “expensive brand” is the centre of the word, not the whole of it. Outside cars you will sometimes hear it for watches or motorbikes, but that already feels like stretching. In everyday talk most people just say brand. Marque sounds British, a little posh, and at home in magazines rather than in the market. It is not the same as a mark on the paintwork, and it is not a marquee (the tent, or the sign above a theatre).