The Life and Death of Pontiac: RCR Car Stories

for over 80 years Pontiac was an icon in the American automotive industry with fleets that over the years were simultaneously niche and widespread it's kind of a strange thing really I've spoken before about the emergent car culture of the mid 20th century and how it shaped what car culture eventually became and Pontiac was instrumental in that development because it represented a quintessentially American approach to mass-market appeal sure you reach out with cars for a particular segment but for the most part you're trying to have your hand in every jar throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks and for all its mrs. Pontiac had plenty of hits plenty of cars that endure in the public consciousness and automotive rhetoric today it's seen so much history as a brand from the rise of muscle cars to the decline of the big three in the late 70s into the early 80s and the recession of the decades later years all the way through to the second automotive bailout in the late 2000s its beginnings were humble for a footprint so large and yet here we are talking about them today and it's hard to imagine car culture without Pontiac the good and the bad because for better or worse it occupied that middle ground between what people wanted and what they could afford Pontiac went through any number of changes throughout its time as a household name because it was a household name it was absolutely prolific a brand of immense highs and cratering lows of diehard brand loyalty and mass-market and corporate abandonment but at the end of the day it's all part of painting a picture of what Pontiac meant to American car culture the Firebird the GTO the Fiero The Tempest the Grand Prix the Grand Am the Bonneville the Aztec the vibe the g6 the g8 not all of it was good but most of it was memorable and really that's what this story is about how Pontiac came to be what it was how it came to mean what it meant and how it came to as it did this is the life and death of Pontiac the tale of Pontiac begins in the 19th century in Pontiac Michigan because of course it did Edward Murphy not that Eddie Murphy founded the Pontiac buggy company in 1893 selling horse-drawn carriages and buggies a fine endeavor but nothing all that cutting edge in fact while the business did well enough to stick around for over a decade it would take 13 years before Murphy would meet the man who'd kick his business to the next level you see in 1906 Murphy met a man by the name of Allanson brush a Cadillac designer turned engineering consultant based out of Detroit at the time brush was fresh off having his proposal for a two-cylinder Cadillac rejected but Murphy who wanted to grow his business beyond horses believed in brushes idea at the time Murphy's horse-drawn vehicles bore the name Oakland and he decided that the brand name would stick for this form of motorized transport all the men had to do was put the plans in motion and get this two cylinder off the page and onto the road easier said than done of course but again here we are summer 1907 was when Edward Murphy created the Oakland motor car company with the hopes of taking brushes to cylinder counterclockwise rotating engine and making it the wave of the future the wave of the future the wave of the future the wave of the view however the problem in this approach is that while Cadillac wasn't exactly wrong to reject brushes engine they had their ear to the ground and figured it wouldn't sell and the eventual production of that engine and its subsequently lackluster performance proved Cadillac right it was a significant blow to the business interests of brush and Murphy whose Oakland motor car company was already in dire straits now this is typically where partnerships dissolve and both men go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before without risking any more than they had to in order to get by because hey it was the early 20th century and while the future titans of industry were making their bones out there in those mean streets it wasn't exactly written in the stars for every would-be entrepreneur I mean it still isn't today but still hardwork counts for a lot but hard work doesn't always guarantee success of course with that being said when you pair hard work with a dash of luck you might find yourself with a leg up over the competition case in point a series of falling dominoes that led to brush and Murphy's fortunes turning around let me elaborate businessman William C Durant had become a success story in those burgeoning days of 20th century industry having founded General Motors while based out of Flint Michigan back then Jim was little more than a holding company for Buick but it didn't take long for GM to absorb other automotive companies such as brushes former boss Cadillac during this period Murphy and brush remained together at Oakland Motor Car Company with plans to introduce a four cylinder 40 horsepower car with a sliding gear transmission unlike the two cylinder motor brush and Murphy's new car was a success beyond anything they had actually produced before so much so that they landed on Durant's radar before long plans were put into place for Oakland to be acquired by GM in 1909 but this was a bit of a good news/bad news situation yes brush and Murphy's car was ahead and they were in line to become notable businessmen themselves with this acquisition but unfortunately Murphy didn't live to see the buyout as he died from a stroke in 1908 at the young age of 44 it was a sudden and tragic end to a man who set the wheels in motion for the creation of one of the most iconic brands in American automotive history yeah yeah I'm doing the hyperbole thing but I still feel like that's far off in the years to come Oakland would become a household name under GM well a household name beyond just being a place in California or Alabama or Florida or Nova Scotia or Pennsylvania would do whatever you get the point it's just a shame that Murphy never got to truly witness the fruits of all his labor but life is just like that sometimes under GM Oakland vehicles were situated at a price point above Chevrolet but below virtually every other model in their wheelhouse however this proved to be a good thing because it made Oakland vehicles more accessible to the average consumer who is just getting the hang of this whole driving thing a v8 engine hit the market in 1916 with production hitting 35,000 units in 1917 but it wasn't an entirely upward trajectory Oakland was averaging sales of around 52,000 units in 1919 which was good enough to rank them 6th in the United States and overall sales but quality control issues soon led to their cars getting a bit of a bad rep for build quality granted this is long before the era of message boards and auto blogs where the failings of a car spread like too much butter on not enough bread but word-of-mouth could be a fleet killer especially if you didn't nip the issue in the bud long before it got out to the market at large so what did GM do well they did damage control naturally particularly with keeping down on rush orders yeah cars were selling hot and fast but repopulating lots with new models would mean jack if haste led to a crappy end product so to make a long story short jams general manager fred hanim helped sort out the production schedule to keep things running smoothly basically he normalized the schedule so that they weren't rushing but they also weren't dragging and as I say that I'm already shuttering at the vague notion of JK Simmons standing right behind me anyway Oakland had its situation properly sorted and by the 1920s they had arguably their biggest success yet with the 1924 Oakland 650 for a four passenger coupe leash that's a mouthful otherwise known as the true blue Oakland six due to the engine but also the paint job from DuPont subsidiary do Co this paint resulted in a distinctive visual flair for the upstart vehicle offering the kind of style befitting the Roaring 20s as it looked like a prettier version of something a bank robber might die in you know get that high rollin folk hero aesthetic under the hood the true blue Oakland Six offered an automatic spark advance four-wheel disc brakes and a brand-new 177 cubic inch L head engine making 44 brake horsepower sales figures for the 654 a jump to 37,000 eighty units and Oakland's brand identity started to ship closer to the mid upper tier of GM's offerings less common man more luxury brand which sounds good in theory but wasn't so great in practice as it put a ceiling on what Oakland was capable of achieving you see the brand didn't have the sort of lead time in public perception that Cadillac Buick and Oldsmobile did and it was no longer viewed as the affordable sensible alternative that Chevrolet was despite actually putting out a car called the Oakland sensible six in a macro sense Oakland was never going to overtake the top tier of GM's luxury offerings so it's not surprising that the mid twenties saw Oakland's gradual decline which was concurrent with the rise of Pontiac the GM brand named for a legendary Ottawa chieftain who was also the namesake for the Michigan town in which the cars were produced originally introduced in 1926 to fill the gap Oakland had vacated as a middle ground between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile Pontiac now replaced Oakland all together offering cars with six-cylinder engines that went for four-cylinder prices with both coupe and sedan models being produced and unveiled at the New York Auto Show that year check out my RCR story on the history of the New York International Auto Show for more about its importance to automotive history but enough plugs for now as time rolled on Pontiac was incorporating some of the Oakland implementations such as four-wheel brakes and various engine sizes among other aspects of GM's broader fleet at the time GM introduced a Pontiac straight-6 along with additions such as independent front suspension hydraulic brakes synchromesh transmission and the first column mounted gear shifter the idea being that one could for leisure rather than necessity as a result Pontiac took a more commanding presence in the market with the $825 straight-6 earning the moniker the chief of the sixes by 1933 Oakland was deader than a 360 no scoped dragon as the brand fell into a relevancy in the wake of slumping sales for mid-level and luxury cars but even with Pontiac on the upswing it didn't mean GM didn't still have issues they needed sorted enter Alfred P Sloan also known as the father of the modern corporation who looked to unite the separate GM divisions to make for a more interconnected corporate structure under Sloan the divisions were still allowed certain freedom at an engineering and design level but in the grand scheme of things his goal was similar to that of general manager Fred hanim to keep production running smoothly except taking it to the next logical step to create product at a level commensurate with demand while reducing expenses wherever possible because even though Pontiac was doing better than Oakland it still wasn't performing at the level of a car brand with a long shelf life thus Sloane put cross divisional manufacturing practices into place at GM in essence brands were pulling from a shared pool of resources cutting down on costs and production time when the Great Depression hit this is what helped keep Pontiac viable as the brand's manufacturing was merged with Chevrolet's with platforms body styles engines and all sorts of things being used interchangeably because in GM's mind the cost cutting benefits of badge engineering outweighed the risks of inner brand cannibalization of course this would come back to bite them but that's for a little later down the line by this point Pontiacs were utilizing three different bodies as part of the merging of production with other GM brands there was the a body that they shared with Chevrolet the B body split between Pontiac Oldsmobile and Buick and the bigger Oldsmobile C body sure it led to a lot of similar cars with different badging and you could argue that the reckoning costs were likely higher as a result of having to market each similar car separately but hey as long as the brands were still afloat it seemed the cloudy distinction between them was low on the totem pole of concerns especially during this time of nationwide economic strife for a man like Sloane who lived by the approach of quote a car for every pocketbook Pontiac needed to be a brand that set ideally between Chevrolet's most expensive model and Oldsmobiles least it was pretty much a baller on a budget brand as you were getting something that looked cool but at an entry-level price point for instance take the Pontiac economy straight-8 of the early 1930s with the iconic stainless steel Silver Streak band that gave that art deco panache to match the smoother more luxurious driving experience now this was the period at which cars were starting to become more commonplace and consumers were beginning to come to terms with what they wanted in a car and not just that either they were coming to terms with what they expected in an automobile people had work nice luxury needs even defense needs as the nation entered the Second World War for instance by 1941 Pontiac was manufacturing anti-aircraft guns for the Navy along with tank axles cannons and countless engine parts for military vehicles the world was changing and commerce along with it but the automotive world was changing at an equally fast clip as the mid 20th century gave us the birth of car culture as we've all come to know and recognize not just for cars as status symbols but as a passion unto themselves okay so Pontiac was on the rise and this is due in no small part to the efforts of our aforementioned GM head Alfred P Sloan and this is important because according to author James O'Toole in his book leading change overcoming the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom great title salon ran a tight ship that privileged policies systems and structures over people principles and values now you might be thinking well of course loans values didn't value values he's a businessman and a businessman in the paraphrased parlance of jay-z but the problem is that the environment Sloan created resulted in workers who were scared to rock the boat Sloan kept to a hard production schedule that included annual changes to the styling of vehicles encouraging users to buy new which then fed into his pricing structure that had cadillac at peak expensiveness and chevrolet in the most modest pricing range with a car for every budget and every style the notion was that none of GM's brands would be in direct competition with one another but overworked underappreciated employees were quick to unionize in the years prior to the war staging a 44 day sit-down strike at GM plants in a bid for union recognition now that was 1937 and although the Great Depression was in America's rearview mirror it still very much informed the conditions of the workers at that time because well it's not like the effects of the Great Depression were in the rearview mirror entirely there was no love lost for the corporate American businessman industrialists and living high off the hog while their employees struggled to make ends meet Sloan argued that the strikers were unlawfully holding his manufacturing plants hostage this prompted Michigan Governor Frank Murphy to bring labor and management into direct negotiations to get everyone back to work easier said than done of course not that this did anything to amend Sloan's reputation as a corporate fat cat from what I could find in his New York Times obituary from 9:00 1866 Sloan ended up in trouble with the Treasury just one month after the strike when a congressional committee found that he failed to disclose nearly two million dollars in income taxes over the course of three years that roughly 1.9 million dollar figure in 1937 comes out to over thirty three point five million dollars today but Sloan's excuse was that he and his wife's income for 1936 mostly went to federal and state income taxes and that they had split the roughly 1.7 million dollars that remained half for themselves and the rest to charity so there were never any charges brought against Sloan although this was a PR nightmare for the guy which is why it's not that surprising many made strides into philanthropy with the Alfred P sloan Foundation Sloan himself would declare having been connected with industry during my entire life it seems eminently proper that I should turn back in part the proceeds of that activity with the hope of promoting a broader as well as a better understanding of the economic principles and national policies which have characterized the American Enterprise down through the years the move bought Sloan some goodwill but even though GM was at the top of the food chain world war two was on the horizon and with it came substantial challenges as the Second World War would essentially freeze production in the auto industry so that by the time America entered the post-war years there was a backlog of change to push through which was about in line with Sloan's own predictions for the future of the auto industry he would write in his memoir my years with General Motors they so-so titled but at least is straightforward that he expected remaining number one to be far more difficult than reaching that goal in the first place there have been and always will be many opportunities to fail in the automobile industry the circumstances of the ever-changing market and ever-changing product are capable of breaking any business organization if that organization is under therefore change indeed in my opinion if it has not provided procedures for anticipating change in General Motors these procedures are provided by the central management which is in a position to appraise the broad long-term trends of the market as the industry has grown and evolved we have adhered to this policy and have demonstrated an ability to meet competition and the shifts of customer demand but Sloan's approach to corporate management clashed with that of sociologist Peter Drucker who was given in-depth access to GM for a book he planned to write about corporate business in writing and researching the book which he eventually titled concept of the corporation cool title Drucker had nearly unrestricted access to GM facilities even joining Alfred P Sloan on business meetings it was interesting to think of how ideologies differed even in spite of the close contact between the two men Drucker felt management was a more personal element of business less about blindly following orders and more about collaboration although the book praises the management infrastructure Sloan created which maintained a sense of autonomy among divisions and a continuous flow of information throughout Drucker suggestions to improve business were met with resistance Sloan hated the concept of quote federal decentralization which suggested GM run its company as an organization of mostly autonomous businesses which was kind of a little bit like what they were doing I mean he did allow for certain autonomy between the brands but I think what Sloan wanted was more of a sense of corporate unity so that the righthand always knew what the left was doing which a plan of federal decentralization wouldn't really allow for he wanted GM to be part of a vast automotive continuum since this is how they got to the top spot to begin with and why wouldn't it keep working but then Sloan had other issues with how he ran his business as his accounting methods obviously weren't the greatest considering his issues with the government you know that stuff already talked about never minding the tax foibles Sloane had essentially kept a structure that placed inventory on the same pedestal as cash which is kind of crazy I mean okay it doesn't sound that crazy in theory except if you have a surplus of cash then great a surplus of inventory then not so much especially if you're not moving that inventory but in Sloane's view it was better than the previous method of restricting the build-up of inventory to prevent filling lots with unsold cars because in cases where people actually want to buy your cars supply can't fulfill demand still as GM entered the post-war years it made less sense for an accounting system that privileged slow turnover on inventory because no matter which way you sliced it inventory did not equal cash in hand now for his part Sloane tried to keep all his scandals and shortcomings in the past such as the great American streetcar scandal in which public trams were replaced by buses a scandal which was blamed on Sloane but resulted in only five thousand dollars in fines for antitrust violations in addition to a fine of $1 for each convicted executive there was also the accusation that GM collaborated with the Nazis during Hitler's rise to power Albert Speer otherwise known as Nazi Germany's minister of armaments and war production claimed that Germany could never have achieved its 1939 invasion of Poland without the technology provided through their collaboration with Sloane and GM in this latter scandal Sloane defended himself rigorously by claiming that the GM mobile plant that produced bombers landmines trucks and other instruments of war from the Nazis had been nationalized and that GM essentially had no involvement or contact with Opel for the duration of the war granted this does nothing to change that Sloane had defended the partnership to shareholders in 1939 as a profitable relationship founded on sound business practices ultimately things worked out for GM in the postwar years they introduced a stream line or fastback sedan as the first post-war Pontiac in 1946 and in an attempt to to a wider demographic Pontiac would eventually offer smaller hydra-matic equipped models before the 40s came to a close it was gradually becoming time for Pontiac to move in a bolder direction for all that Sloane did in getting the company rolling into the mid 20th century he's far from the only executive with a clear eye for what Pontiac should be or rather what it could be bunkie Knudsen the GM exec who took over as general manager in 1955 became one of Pontiacs key figure heads in the mid 20th century while Pontiac was enjoying fruitful business there was Interbrand competition with Pontiacs suffering by comparison to the less expensive Chevrolet models and losing out on pricier business to the slightly more upscale Oldsmobile Chevrolet introduced a lightweight v8 so Pontiac introduced one of their own hoping to appeal to a different more enthusiast crowd you know the pros of the 1950's but their leather jackets and their cigarettes held limply between their lips as the embers fell from the tip and dissipated in the dying throes of amber light their knuckles rough from labor and youthful aggression and their hair styled with pomade thicker than your aunt's denial over her son's sexual preferences wait where was I oh yeah Pontiacs 1955 offerings you see they carried a more ostentatious look than previous efforts so that while they couldn't appeal to those in search of a luxury experience nor those simply looking for something modest they could at least try and strike that sweet sweet middle ground truly the tootsie roll pop of automotive brands except that probably takes way more licks to get to the center of a Firebird now bunkie was taking over as general manager in a position his father once held during the 1930s they were big shoes to fill since his father was not only a successful businessman as former president of the Chevrolet Division and later General Motors itself but also as a three-star general in the United States Army William s Knutson was a GM legend and his son planned on living up to the mantle it was bunkies relative youth at the time that put Pontiac on a focus towards performance rather than faux luxury and everyman accessibility it was a restructuring of the Pontiac identity this was going to become a niche brand for people who liked driving no for people who loved driving actually no people who needed to drive because the 1950s brought us a wider proliferation of car culture and people who loved driving for its own sake rather than for pragmatic purposes although you could argue that joy is pragmatic in its own sort of way at around this same period in 1956 John DeLorean joined JM as the director of advanced engineering for Pontiac suddenly the brand went from the sole purview of older men to a more youthful oversight tripower carburetor was implemented with the tripower 389 landing in 1959 suddenly Pontiac went from a brand that was doing a great job of just getting by to a brand who might actually seek out specifically for what they provided and now I think it's time to really get into the cars I mean I've talked enough about the people and if I haven't I'm sorry but I feel like we really need to get in a Pontiac proper and I would be remiss if I didn't start in earnest with the rise of the Pontiac Bonneville the car was created as a fuel-injected luxury performance convertible version of the 1957 Pontiac star chief before being spun off into its own model as would be the case for some of Pontiacs most iconic offerings after becoming its own mark in 1958 the Bonneville took a proud spot in the public eye as a pace car at that year's Indy 500 which is very much on brand for a car that supposedly earned its name from the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah where legends like Mickey Thompson and countless others sought the glory of land speed records and this is where I do another plug and say check out the RCR stories on Mickey Thompson it's five parts but I promise it's good now when the Bonneville was first offered as its own mark in 1958 it was only offered in a two-door model with convertible and hardtop variants however by 1959 the options were extended to 2-door 4-door and station wagon varieties with the standard 370 cubic inch four-barrel carburetor and dual exhaust and the option for the fuel-injected 370 cubic inch tempest engine that bumped horsepower up to 310 over the 255 horsepower of the standard engine the fuel-injected model was a real peach and made these first year Bonneville extremely collectible why well it's because the tripower option was four hundred dollars cheaper than the fuel-injected version and so it sold better and thus Pontiac didn't we receive an e to build more than a couple hundred of those fuel-injected v8 not that any of this prevented the Bonneville from becoming beefier into the 1960s with 1963 giving you engine choices that included a Super Duty 389 tripower v8 a 400 cubic inch v8 or a nerection fattening 421 Super Duty v8 making nearly 400 horsepower of course the Bonneville is also significant for its introduction of a new logo for Pontiac the iconic red Arrowhead emblem also known as the dart replacing the Native American headdress logo Pontiac helped from its debut until 1956 it was a small but important change as Pontiacs reach spread particularly with the release of the Bonneville there are offerings were becoming more and more prevalent as the 50s came to a close and by 1959 the Bonneville had earned its place as one of the top line entries into the Pontiac fleet with its split grille and wide track configuration in addition to further body styles that included convertible 2-door coupe 4-door sedan 4-door station wagon and 4-door hardtop models so why not inaugurate the whole launch of this vehicle with a new logo - just say hey we're Pontiac we're here were young were vibrant we're new and we're taking things in a different direction and come take this ride with us but let's back up real quick because we need to talk about that wide track configuration you see bunkie Knudsen made the call to widen the tracks of 1959 Pontiacs in order to give the cars a more commanding stance and better cornering ability than other models in its class which was a fine idea because the compact Pontiacs in the early 60s helped add to the surprising variety of Pontiacs fleet small sleek compacts along side midsize vehicles and land yachts Pontiac was really going for that multi demographic appeal I'm talking stuff like the Pontiac Tempest which was one of those be Opie models you know Buick Oldsmobile Pontiac and it was an entry level compact sport coupe with GM's first unibody y platform 50/50 weight distribution thanks to the rear mounted trans axle and front mounted trophy four-cylinder engine the tempest even got a women's trim level because John DeLorean designed this thing to be more than just a compact sport coupe and really in a post-war era where baby boomers were reaching driving age Pontiacs offerings were just plain cool now by November 1961 bunkie Knudsen had moved over to the Chevrolet division leaving PS T's to become the new general manager of Pontiac while John DeLorean was named chief engineer they generally shared Knut ins vision of Pontiac as a more performance oriented brand and so they relegated the pontiac ventura to a trim option on the full-size Catalina from the same era replacing the former with the new Grand Prix which shared visual components with the rest of the fleet like vertical headlights for example while also being differentiated by such styling choices as less chrome and adding concave rear windows around this time Pontiac was aiming to offer larger engine options to give the fleet a sense of muscularity even as the fleet was gradually being moved over to GM's a platform as was the case for the base tempest and the LeMans but if I'm giving these other cars the short shrift it's because the changes made were merely appetizers on the road to muscle car immortality with Pontiac debatably setting off the trend with three little letters G T Oh it all started with an executive from the McManus advertising agency by the name of Jim mangers who loved cars more than newlyweds love fixed-rate mortgages at the time GM had placed a ban on auto racing across all of its divisions and in response mangers was fixated on finding a way for Pontiac to keep the performance identity and it taken such great pains to build in the previous decade while still somehow adhering to this new rule so his idea was to focus on street performance rather than track capability something street legal for the open road that could give your average Joe the thrill of a track without membership dues but he didn't know how to really skirt GM's rule against you know engine sizes being only of a certain displacement and so the plan obviously required the input of chief engineer John DeLorean along with fellow General Motors colleague the aptly named Shane wiser to take the Pontiac Tempest which was already on track to be modified to a front-engine rear-wheel-drive layout and give it a 389 cubic inch or 6.4 liter Pontiac v8 shared by the full-size Bonneville and the Pontiac Catalina so with the plan in place John DeLorean worked with fellow engineers Bill Collins and Russ key to create a car that essentially was a giant middle finger to GM's new a body policy that restricted engine displacement to no higher than 330 cubic inches they got around this by making the GTO an option for the 1964 Pontiac Tempest since the restriction didn't apply to options although saying this is driving me crazy because I looked online everywhere I could and I continually found conflicting reports of the GTO starting out as an option on the LeMans and not the tempest I swear for every three articles I found on the history of the GTO starting out on the tempest I found one talking about its beginnings on the LeMans and vice versa it's weird and I think both are true in a sense let me try to talk this out and please accept my apologies if I'm as catastrophic ly wrong as I expect to be but the LeMans was initially a version of The Tempest when it was introduced at the end of the 1961 model year it was basically a trim package for The Tempest in its first two years before becoming its own model for the 1963 model year but for the 1964 model year it was relegated back to a trim upgrade on the tempest so I think that's where the confusion comes from even if it was a LeMans it was still technically a tempest and that's the story I'm sticking to now in 1963 the best you could hope for with the tempest was the 326 cubic inch v8 but the GTO option offered a 389 cubic inch v8 complete with dual exhausts improved handling and GTO badging the 6.4 liter v8 of the new creation in comparison to the 323 cubic inch or 5.3 liter v8 of the standard tempest allowed Pontiac to cling to the thread of its affordable high performance reputation standing for Gran Turismo OMA legato the GTO made 325 brake horsepower at 4800 rpm and came standard with carter AFB four-barrel carbureted dual exhaust pipes three-speed manual transmission redline tires and springs stiffer than a bag of McDonald's french fries seven minutes after serving the GTO had created a buzz and arguably kicked off the muscle car craze but could it actually proved to be a flagship vehicle for Pontiac well despite ptsds being fairly confident in the GTOs potential for success and critical renowned sales manager Frank bridge was less convinced urging SDS to keep production under 5,000 units for its first run after all Pontiac was doing well in the 60s why mess with a good thing Apple carts are so easily upset so why risk it at all but even before release the GTO showed strong dealer orders even though it was a car that was a big gamble there were concerns about alienating their older clientele overlooking the possibilities presented by appealing to a younger demographic it'd be like CBS deciding to air a teen drama old people aren't gonna get it and old people are your bread and butter so what's the point in trying but then you go and make the CW anyway because you got to appeal to young people somehow right and yes I know cars are an altogether different animal from the world of television but it operates along the same principles of profitability so bridges reluctance was kind of understandable but in spite of his reluctance he did give his blessing to management and estis approved to GTO and by the end of that initial run he was validated in his decision to do so as sales reached thirty-two thousand four hundred fifty units in 1964 alone and the numbers would only climb from there as GTO fever swept the nation with ancillary products from GTO Cologne to GTO driving shoes being sold in stores nationwide the GTO even had a hit novelty song as the platinum-selling little GTO by Ronnie and the Dayton's reach as high as number four on the Billboard pop singles chart The Tempest sold for less than $3,000 new and the GTO option went for less than $300 more the GTO was here to play dual roles as your gateway Pontiac and as your apex Pontiac as part of a revolution towards muscle by 1966 the trim level had proven so popular that the decision was made to offer the GTO as its own model resulting in its most successful model year ever selling 96,000 946 units with the GTO firmly entrenched in American pop culture Pontiac could focus on other vehicles to further boost their profile in the late 60s and early 70s to this end the Pontiac Grand Prix had an impressive reputation in its own right in particular the 1969 Grand Prix was arguably Pontiacs best-looking car for that period particularly for the mid-sized mid luxury market well it was a GTO underneath it's longer hood that hood itself drew to mind the types of big cars that were gradually going out of style tapping into a burgeoning nostalgia for the immediate post-war era the design was at the direction of then general manager john delorean who wanted the grand prix redesigned for 69 stretching out GM's a platform to create what would come to be known as the g-body but for now the grand prix was simultaneously important but also a middle ground between eras of pontiac a performance focused ventura that became a more opulent catalina to hold the luxury car line pontiac wanted to keep its paces covered to have variety for multiple demographics but at the end of the day pontiac was at its best when focused on performance and as they came into the 70s pontiac couldn't play the middle if they wanted to have the success of their rivals in short it was time to bring the fire now part of the impetus behind the Grand Prix redesign was that the first generation was hit with declining sales perhaps due in large part to luxury cars going out of vogue with the general market so the idea was to trim it down a bit lengthen the hood and offer performance and handling where luxury wouldn't suffice hence why the car shares similarities with the GTO under the hood in a downturn in business you go back to what works and the GTO was very much riding a high for Pontiac in fact it seemed that while other companies were shrinking their fleet in response to the Arab oil crisis Pontiac was kind of getting beefier case in point the Pontiac Firebird now when the Firebird entered the fray it may not have seemed all that different from others in its class after all GM had already entered the pony car market with the Chevy Camaro but the Firebird went for a more rugged streamlined aesthetic it's basically the car John DeLorean was allowed to make after GM rejected his proposal to produce the Banshee concept car since the higher-ups feared it would screw with Corvette sales you know they did it's just web so this was their compromise and although the Firebird utilized the Camaro chassis and like the Camaro offered 6 and 8 cylinder engine options this sort of platform sharing wasn't exclusive to GM the February 23rd 1967 release of the Firebird coincided with the debut of the 1967 Mercury Cougar which shared a platform with the Mustang with integrated front bumpers rear slit taillights and that coke-bottle styling Pontiac loved so much the Firebird had a sleek look with a hint of aggression to it available in 2-door convertible and two-door hardtop versions the first gen Firebird engine options included a 3.8 liter v6 making 220 horsepower a 6.6 liter v8 serving up to 340 horsepower and a 400 v8 ram air making 325 brake horsepower at 5200 rpm it was cool but not as cool as its eventual upgrade in the form of the Trans Am which was added to the Firebird as a specialty package for its second generation improving everything from suspension to horsepower to handling the Trans Am was named after the racing series of the same name and Pontiac paid a $5 royalty to the Sports Car Club of America for each model sold in exchange for the rights to use the Trans Am name this would prove to be a fairly lucrative deal as the Trans Am was the apex Firebird in a lot of ways with its anti-sway bars 335 horsepower ram air 3 or the optional 400 horsepower ram air 4 and a lowered suspension with big-ass tires it fit in well with what was known as GM's excitement division because that's what Pontiac was looking to offer but also innovation because in 1971 it was the second gen Firebird that had the privilege of being the first to offer Pontiacs new 455 cubic-inch engine which helped give the car an increase in power and in profile if you were an enthusiast who somehow hadn't heard of the bird then this would be about the time you'd start to hear the word by 1973 the 455 got a Super Duty or SD 455 variant which achieved the type of power and performance that was promised in the named Trans Am even as the first Arab oil crisis meant a bigger emphasis on fuel efficiency and less of an emphasis on performance as a result by its very nature the SD 455 wasn't going to stick around long but then it didn't have to it just needed to be the doorway for people to get into trans Am's under that iconic shaker scoop were aluminum pistons huge valves and exhaust manifolds a redesigned camshaft and reinforced block joining together like the rings that summon Captain Planet all in service of getting you a 310 horsepower rating that was probably closer to 360 or 370 the car basically did its job of bringing people into the Pontiac fold long enough to see the Firebird through it's most successful years but back to the cool factor for a bit as it's hard to talk about Firebird without getting into its unique aesthetic as one of the most recognizable aspects of the Firebird was well the bird itself yes the classic screaming chicken hood decal because this was one of those rare cases where what was on top of the hood was as significant as what was under it which I can't remember ever being the case outside of say Tawny Kitaen and white snakes here I go again video to shorten what's already an absurdly long story GM graphics artist norm in no way worked with designer Bill Mitchell to come up with a decal based off of a napkin sketch by GM chief designer Bill Porter because it's just bills all the way down people in journalist gary Whitson birds in 1982 book Firebird America's premier performance car decent title Porter would recall the original idea for the bird decal was done in my studio on a proposed 1971 show Trans Am in blue and white but Mitchell saw it in a paint shop and he did it he told me to get it off the car it looks like something on a Macy's truck he said why didn't I give him a transatlantic accent then so in no way had the idea to flip the bird's wing so that they were raised overhead it gave the look of wings made of flame which if nothing else fit the name of the car when designer John's Canela took over from Porter and faced the task of redesigning the Firebird 473 he went back to the screaming chicken design and took a production Firebird with decal on the hood and simply drove around town in skåne ellas own words in witson burbs book we took it out to a few gas stations and drive-ins and the people went berserk I mean absolutely came unglued they couldn't believe it and they loved it where do you get that where can I get one it attracted so much attention it was almost like you were walking down the street with no clothes on okay why did I give him like Yonkers accent that's weird and a bad one too yeah eventually Pontiac general manager Jim McDonald got on board with the design on the notion that they didn't really have anything to lose by making it an option if people liked it then great if not hey it was optional and if nothing else it set it apart from the Camaro which was already giving the Firebird in-house competition over the 1970s sales of the Firebird Trans Am grew and its place in pop culture began to take hold sure it still shared the Camaros f-body platform but what it lacked in its own fully formed individuality it more than made up for in zeitgeist appeal as it became the quintessential 70s car again debatable whatever but I mean come on it appeared in Smokey and the Bandit it's hard to think of a Firebird from that period without thinking about that movie it just looks like Burt Reynolds for crying out loud by 1980 the Trans Am was the official pace car for the Indy 500 and by the time it was featured in Knight Rider as KITT the knight industries 2000 car its place in automotive pop-culture history had already been solidified this was just placing a rubber stamp on a legend now the good news was that Pontiac was flying high in sales with 850,000 units sold across their fleet this is thanks at least in part to the aforementioned Firebird although the company had high hopes for the Pontiac Fiero their first mid-engined two-seat production car which got more props for looking cool than for actually being fun to drive in its early years and it's kind of a shame that the Fiero got overlooked during this period because it was a car with loads of potential that only realized that potential too late you see General Motors solved value in a sporty daily driver that they didn't have to worry about competing with the Corvette so the Fiero utilized a reworked version of the GM 2.5 liter Iron Duke inline 4 which offered better fuel efficiency and just enough oomph to feel competitive with other cars in its class but for something Barty it really wasn't as zippy as some consumers were probably expecting upon release in 1983 for the 1984 model year but then the Iron Duke was targeted towards running at low rpms rather than revving high it was geared towards fuel efficiency in ways the Corvette v8 just wasn't you also have to factor in that a lot of the parts used for the Fiero were borrowed from GM economy cars of the period whether brakes suspension or tires it was a car that simply got off on the wrong foot by being too much of a hodgepodge collection of other cars sure it looked cool at least I think so but the appearance wrote a check that the car itself in its original form couldn't cash it wasn't until the second oil crisis of the late 70s was far far in the rearview mirror that Pontiac started beefing up the Fiero with models such as the GT which offered a souped-up v6 that got over 40 horsepower above the base model along with bigger tires and a retuned suspension later Pontiac re added the two-piece brake calipers and improved brake rotors to the suspension which had to be removed from the first year model due to cost concerns by the time the GT came out in 1985 with subsequent improvements made in the years that followed it felt as though Pontiac had finally gotten it right they'd finally distilled the essence of a sporty daily driver into a car that could still provide an element of danger and excitement to match its style but by the late 1980s the Fiero had spent so much time suffering under the weight of unmet expectations and small but noteworthy recalls over everything from engine fires to coolant related air bubbles in the radiator that sales declined significantly in its final years even as it finally delivered on the promise of its mid-engine layout and suspension upgrades and became the fun youthful cart should have had the chance to be from the start the media was never particularly crazy about the car either and the lack of enthusiasm was reflected among consumers not that Fieros didn't go on to have a pretty big cult following in the 1980s Pontiac was actually in the top three among American domestic car manufacturers but this was pretty much the apex it would be a slow slide but it was all downhill from here now Pontiac was far from a one-hit wonder if anything they had an entire fleet of moneymakers that carried them through the golden 60s past that Arab oil embargo of the 70s and into the greed is good era of the 1980s and there was really no reason to believe that Pontiac would decline in the manner in which it inevitably did but here we are anyway some 30 years later looking into what happened and why so what happened and why the age of the Jeep was upon us the minivan was riding a wave of popularity imports remained as popular as ever and the family station wagon was well I mean it was everywhere so where did Pontiac fit in all of this well the 90s brought a more sporty Firebird or at least an attempt at one along with a redesigned Grand Am to reach out to the people they'd lost the foreign automakers in the 1980s the Bonneville was softened in its appearance although the SSCI supercharger gave it an extra bit of a lure that the base model was lacking but for all its attempts to go back to what worked in the past Pontiac didn't reap much in the way of rewards for their efforts and I think a lot of it goes back to that old GM approach better known as badge engineering I talked about it a bit earlier but it only became more pronounced in this era I mean the Sunbird was a cavalier the Firebird was a Camaro even down to specific years models shared an aching lack of distinction with cars like the 88 Grand Am sedan looking like a 5th gen Buick Century of the same body style what happened to the visual flair that set Pontiac apart the Maverick rebellious style that kept the brand in the conversation but there were also larger issues related to the fleet itself and the relative lack of excitement generated by GM's so-called excitement division and you know what look I get it I get where GM was coming from with the idea of remaking the same cars for different price segments but what you ended up with was reskin versions of the same car so that the entire fleet across all of GM felt recursive it did that feeling of automotive deja vu and the Pontiac Sunfire was pretty much the apotheosis of this nonsense because who really needed a mock sporty front-wheel drive car with all the Flair of a supermarket produce aisle at least the produce aisle has cantaloupe and apples and sources of much-needed roughage but was anybody getting hyped over the Pontiac Sunfire even in night 95 with our Blind Melon cassette tapes and our Zubaz pants with fanny packs frosted tips and puka shell necklaces and pockets filled to bursting with double-a batteries because god forbid our walkman dies on our walk to the mall for some reason Pontiac wanted to take another stab at the Sunbird and replaced it with the Sun fire from 1995 this time reincarnating as a Chevy Cavalier riding on an updated J platform except the sunbirds could at least say they looked cool for the first few generations yet no matter how many facelifts this Sunfire got it could never get past the plastic cladding the cheap looking interior and a ride quality that was nowhere up to the standard of Pontiacs former reputation but the problem with badge engineering continued past the 90s as the Pontiac Solstice tried to fill the quirky little sports car segment that the Fiero had once occupied only for GM to create the Saturn Sky a badge-engineered model that did nothing to help Pontiac struggle to cement a new identity inside the old one instead of being a stylish muscular division focused towards performance and uniqueness Pontiac had somehow looped back around being the budget alternative it had been nearly a century prior this was a period where Pontiac really began to feel the pressure of negative press over build quality for instance the 5th gen Grand Am faced concerns over its electronics and brakes along with a generally poor side safety rating as well as the sudden trend of making formerly standard features now optional on the SE models beginning in 2003 anti-lock brakes optional traction control optional lower body side cladding gone altogether which honestly was probably for the best considering the cladding had a hard time actually staying in place on some units there were also recalls for the 5th gen model over rear suspension knuckle bolts that could fracture under high loads and an insufficient weld on fuel tanks that could result in leaks by 2005 the sedan model was pulled all together and yet in discussing Pontiacs decline we really got to talk about the a stack and yeah I know we already reviewed it but we got to do it more you see in a sense the intentions behind it were noble why not make an SUV with available all-wheel drive plenty of cargo space and roomy seating why not make an SUV with the athleticism and fuel economy of a smaller car and why not make it affordable I mean I get it the heart was in the right place as it could by turn appeal to both the young and adventurous types and the older consumers looking for the option of adventure as an oasis within the desert of family life but the Aztec faced the issue of design by committee you see the Aztec was matched to the GM minivan platform which meant it made use of a four-speed automatic transmission electronic all-wheel drive inside of an aluminum subframe and 3.4 liter v6 it was meant to convey the notion of adventure but instead gave off an air of domesticity of missed opportunities and the idea that maybe you'll get around to taking that trip out into nature someday but we both know what the answer to that is in a way it was kind of a depressing car but the function wasn't even the issue people seemed to have with the Aztec no it was the design guided by Tom Peters the head of exterior design at General Motors the Aztek was an attempt at harking back to the risk-taking era at Pontiac as Peters would note in an article with Businessweek we wanted to do a bold in-your-face vehicle that was it for everybody and it's easy to appreciate the idea behind it sometimes you have to do something you think people might not like in order to find out what it is they really want however that Business Week article didn't exactly paint the Aztec in the gentlest light with various other periodicals damming the design noting that many dealers had a hard time trying to find the words to describe the vehicle resigning themselves to the rial that it was a card people would either love or hate with basically no room for middle ground the SUV was described as gut-wrenching to look at by automobile magazine while Auto Pacific's James Hall compared its style to six-week-old cottage cheese a reader poll by The Daily Telegraph would eventually rank it as one of the 100 ugliest cars ever made or to be more accurate the ugliest car ever made yes in a top 10 that included the PT Cruiser the Austin Ambassador the Hummer the Ford Scorpio the AMC Pacer the Porsche Cayenne the Austin Allegro the Ssangyong rhodius and the Fiat Multipla the Pontiac Aztek topped them all in the 2008 article The Telegraph tour the Aztecs shreds claiming it as proof that Americans do ugly better than anyone else and declaring the crossover a cost-cutting committee's attempt to please as many people as possible and on this point one would be inclined to agree sure the Xtreme concept of the Aztec was received favorably with the versatility of a daily driver matched to an all-terrain go anywhere off-roader hell it was even promoted as quote quite possibly the most versatile vehicle on the planet end quote but Pontiac lost the threads somewhere between concept and production and after a year on the market the Hyundai Santa Fe was outselling the Aztec by five to one according to Businessweek no matter how extreme the concept version was the production version never lived up to the hype suffering from Pontiacs fixation with plastic cladding it just wasn't as cool as the type of car someone in their 20s with one and it wasn't nearly as pragmatic as something a family oriented person in their 30s might buy since there were plenty of other options on the market but then appearances wouldn't have mattered at all if the thing had actually sold GM expected something roughly in the ballpark of 75 thousand Aztecs to sell each year with a break-even point of 30 thousand units however in 2001 they sold just 27,000 3:22 falling just shy of their breakeven by 2005 the Aztek was put out to pasture and no amount of walter white visibility would bring it back from the dead in anywhere other than enthusiast and cult circles now pontiac was really starting to feel the heat sure the Pontiac Vibe somehow managed to stick around from 2002 to 2010 but you could argue that the vibes stuck around for as long as it did due to Toyota with whom GM jointly created the car in the mid to late 2000s Pontiac was in a desperate period of reinvention such as replacing the Sun fire with the Pontiac g5 swapping out the Grand Am for the g6 and putting the Bonneville out to pasture for good in 2006 the Pontiac Torrent was brought in to wash away the bad taste the Aztec left behind among consumers and critics alike though it hardly fared any better because it's basically just a reskin Chevy Equinox we got the previously mentioned Pontiac Solstice the front engine rear wheel drive sports car that came too little too late and along those same lines was the Pontiac g8 which itself was a rebadged Holden Commodore that quickly managed to build up a reputation as an authentic driver's car with the GXP version offering an ls3 v8 making 415 horsepower and 415 torque making it one of the most powerful production models Pontiac ever offered but again it was late to the party fleet sales were worse than they'd ever been and none of the old tricks were working anymore whether it was the badge engineering to save on production costs or going back to the performance well the economy was in a bad state in general and the automotive industry was cratering like it never had before leading to bail House cash for clunkers and the rot of manifests need to rescue American industry from ruin so what happened the same thing that typically happens when the American auto industry is in dire straits a knock on Uncle Sam's door by December 2nd 2008 GM was facing tough decisions you see they needed 25 billion dollars in loans from the government but they weren't going to get a dime if they didn't cut down on the number of brands the reasoning from the government was that GM didn't need so many different brands cutting into their own bottom line and reducing the likelihood of profitability they had already phased Oldsmobile out of existence over a gradual period from 2000 to 2004 but that wasn't enough they had to cut deeper if they wanted to secure those loans and yet out of the brands Jim offered to sacrifice at the altar of Congress the first wasn't Pontiac it was Saturn On February 17th 2009 GM offered to get rid of Saturn and sell off their sob and Hummer divisions the rationale behind keeping Pontiac at the time was to transform the brand into their youthful and sporty division which would help round out and diversify the GM fleet and it would cost less to manufacture new Pontiacs not because of badge engineering and other cost-cutting measures but because of the plan to potentially keep as many as four models for the brand and as few as just one so Pontiac would still be around they'd just be making fewer of them the amount of faith GM seemed to have in Pontiac was in no way reflected in the amount of cars they were actually selling and yet one of the first things they teach you when you're learning about writing a practice that probably could have helped make this RCR story a whole hell of a lot shorter than it has been is to kill your darlings even if you think something works it doesn't necessarily mean it's what's good for the product as a whole even if GM had wanted to keep Pontiac it no longer made sense to since even their successes were only modest at best this isn't to say it wasn't tough all over for the auto industry in 2009 but I mean these guys were facing actual bankruptcy due to slow sales and losses and if you're going to go to Uncle Sam for help you'd better come correct and so it came down to either eliminating Pontiac or GMC or Pontiac Angie see regardless GM had a decision to make and they conducted a study to try and parse out what exactly they should do to save their company whatever would allow them to retain the highest profit potential and accrue the least amount of backlash and so GM ultimately decided they would keep their GM truck line because fleet vehicles and America while getting rid of Pontiac altogether this was first revealed in a report dated April 23rd 2009 with GMC joining the other survivors of the GM lineup Chevrolet Cadillac and Buick on April 27 2009 GM officially announced the death of Pontiac with plans to phase out production by year and 2010 the decision led to the loss of over 7,000 jobs in the United States naturally there was backlash over the elimination of Pontiac less over the lost jobs and more over the notion that it should have been Buick that was sacrificed instead in particular Pontiac dealer Robert attorney expressed his disappointment in an October 19th 2009 letter to the editor of Automotive News titled why kill Pontiac why keep uuk straightforward title I like it jurnee wrote to the editor I'm writing as a former Pontiac dealer of 32 years who is concerned with the lack of questioning about the demise of the brand after the big push for project 2000 to put Buick Pontiac and GMC under one roof one would think that would have more or less solved the duplication of products to kill Pontiac now seem senseless keeping Buick now also is senseless from an outsider's view Buicks nine-month US sales of 70 2389 units compared with Pontiacs sales of 150 1818 units no one is even taking into consideration the demographics of the buyers of both brands I wonder how much influence Washington's cars ours with no automotive background have had on this decision I feel it's a sad commentary that there's a lack of noise about this compared with the reaction when Oldsmobile went away I hope this letter generates some reaction and gets a response from the new General Motors well funnily enough journeys letter did just that Susan Doherty the vice president of US sales at General Motors ultimately defended the decision to ditch Pontiac in a response letter dated October 26 2009 challenging journey's rhetoric of characterizing it as a Pontiac versus Buick situation after all the two brands occupied completely different market segments didn't they something had to go and Dockerty Pontiac was the clear albeit painful choice the letter reads regarding Robert E tourneys October 19th letter y-kill Pontiac why keep uuk I'd like to assure your readers that facing out Pontiac was one of the most difficult decisions of my career but also one of the most necessary Pontiac had been unprofitable for several years a team many of whom were passionate about the brand tried in vain to save Pontiac and make it profitable but none of the scenarios proved viable we kept Buick in the General Motors family because it is highly profitable and will grow with new models over the next few years giving Buick and offering in several sedan and crossover segments the Enclave is already a market success with fifty percent of the buyers brand new to Buick the 2010 la crosse is performing well attracting younger buyers and those who are trading in imports like lexus and acura and the 2011 Regal the mid-size sport sedan arrives in US dealerships in the spring and the Regal is already a hot seller in China and is based on the highly successful Opel Insignia the 2009 European Car of the Year a little further down the road there will be a compact sedan and a all crossover joining the family we feel confident that we chose to save the right brand and that Buick has a bright future ahead of it so yeah basically read like ad copy but I think the key factor in dr. Dee's letter here is Buick success in the Chinese market they were selling hotter overseas than they were in America but it would be naive to think that phasing out the brand in the u.s. wouldn't put a dent in its worldwide reputation especially for a more luxury oriented vehicle brand where the name of the game is status or at least the appearance there of Buicks had a consumer loyalty that Pontiac just didn't at the time perhaps due to the amount of infighting among people who loved Pontiacs strangely enough I mean you had purists claiming that anything made after the second oil crisis in 1979 wasn't a real Pontiac because it didn't have an authentic Pontiac engine it was all eighties badge-engineered garbage that was missing the Bohemian free spirit of those early GTOs and Firebirds and all that but in a way you could argue that that sort of gatekeeping led to Pontiacs death because the gatekeepers weren't actually supporting the brand in a way that mattered to Pontiacs bottom line and from their perspective why would they those people who fell in love with those 60s and 70s models probably weren't going to spring for a g6 or a g8 even if the GXP trim level showed promise among enthusiasts but maybe that's an oversimplification in fact research suggests there was more to it as former GM vice chairman and automotive legend Bob Lutz revealed in a Q&A at the Petersen Automotive Museum on October 26th 2013 let´s responded to a question concerning Pontiacs demise and much like in journeys letter it was presented as a question of why Pontiac and not Buick as it would turn out what's his answer would suggest the government had a far bigger hand in targeting Pontiac for elimination specifically the following is a transcript of Lutz's comments on the brand's demise the feds basically wanted to get GM down to Cadillac and Chevrolet they said you don't need all these brands you need one prestige brand and one mass-market brand and we said well we can't get rid of Buick because Buick is important in China and if Buick becomes an orphan in the United States then the Chinese are no longer gonna be interested in it and the Fed said fair enough but everything else goes we said well we'd also like to keep GMC they said well GMC is basically just like chevrolet and we said that may be true there may be a lot of share components but GMC is an entirely different image a different customer base and people are willing to pay different prices for a GMC and here's the profitability and the feds said whoops okay keep GMC so now we had Buick GMC Cadillac and Chevrolet and then I wanted badly wanted to keep Pontiac because Pontiac was on its way back and it had been mismanaged for a number of years you know with the rebuild excitement and the excitement was only in the plastic body cladding mechanically there was nothing about Pontiac in the 90s that would make your heart beat faster and with the solstice and solstice coupe and with the Pontiac g8 which was a great car we were embarked on a strategy of making Pontiac different from the rest of GM in that Pontiac wouldn't get any front-wheel drive cars they would all be rear-wheel drive and the next g6 was going to use the architecture of the Cadillac ATS it was going to be a 3 Series size rear-wheel Pontiac with basically the Cadillac ATS D premium eyes obviously a lot of the cost taken out but still fundamentally that architecture that was going to be the next g6 and I think we could have moved Pontiac away from every other American volume brand and really started positioning it as attractive us alternative as some of the and obviously at much lower prices than European rear-wheel drive cars but the Fed said yeah let's just how much money have you made on Pontiac in the last 10 years and the answer was nothing so it goes and when the guy is handing you the check for fifty three billion dollars says I don't want Pontiac drop Pontiac er you don't get the money it doesn't take you very long to make up your mind but I think it's a shame Pontiac was on its way back and it was killed before but before the plant could really sprout blossoms you know it was well on its way so I agree with you I think Pontiac was a great wonderful history mismanage for a number of years in the 80s and 90s and it was clearly on its way back and we were starting to see a very good customer base in solstices and especially in the g8 which was favorably compared in a lot of road tests to the BMW 5-series people would say dynamically the cars is good and it's more powerful and way cheaper but that was too bad but you can't go through chapter 11 without some really harmful effects it was a sad story but in an even sadder way it made a certain kind of sense why Pontiac and not Buick well Pontiacs just weren't getting it done among consumers anymore sometimes it really is just a game of numbers of ones and zeros and fat stacks of cash and the hope that maybe tomorrow will be different tomorrow will be better so with that the sunset on Pontiac and there was no going back or was there the answer is no no there wasn't any going back although Michigan Pontiac dealer Jim Waldron expressed interests in purchasing the Pontiac brand but by then it had already been decided that Pontiac was being sent to the automotive junkyard in the sky it was May 2009 and GM had decided that the brand just wasn't going to be for sale it was just going to be shuttered completely never mind that Waldron had purportedly already secured financing to buy the brand and logos and had even found financing to purchase GM plants for manufacturing it just wasn't going to happen GM just wanted it gone rather than sold or if you believe Bob Lutz and I don't see any reason not to the government wanted it gone how else were they going to make those fat stacks and save their other more profitable brands if there was competition or potential competition by the end of 2009 not only was Pontiac gone from the United States it had been rebranded in Mexico as the Matiz which basically means Hugh odd name but for a brand with an odd fate considering they only sold one vehicle the matiz g2 it was almost like a final indignity to what the Pontiac brand had once been as the former excitement division of GM just couldn't excite consumers anymore and so it was that in January 2010 in Orion Township Michigan at GM's Orion Township assembly line the final Pontiac rolled out of the factory it was a white 2010 model year g6 the four-door sedan was like a rolling epitaph for the brand here lies excitement press f to pay respects in the grand scheme of things the automotive industry was in a different place in 2009 than it had been at virtually any other period short of 1979 when Lee Iacocca petitioned the government for loans to save Chrysler basically there was a trend towards more environmentally conscious vehicles along with affordability it's how cash for clunkers managed to take hold as an idea in the way that it we did and last plug but I did an entire RCR story on cash for clunkers that you can check out for more on how mindsets were shifting in the late 2000s approaching the 2010s but long story short cash for clunkers was a disaster that took a lot of old gems off the road including more than a few Firebirds Fieros and Trans Am in a sense it may be sorts of cars more treasure than they already were among those who owned them and loved them and those who longed for and sought them it's almost like a comment on the car community writ large people want what they don't have but the only thing that car enthusiasts values more than what they can't have is a car they once had but lost for better or worse Pontiac excelled at creating a sense of longing for what exactly who knows maybe nothing maybe everything you you

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 1,153,125

Rating: 4.7885017 out of 5

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, Pontiac, Death of Pntiac, Death of Pontiac, Life of Pontiac, Why did Pontiac die?, GM Pontiac, RCR Car Ctories, RCR Pontiac, Regular Car Reviews

Id: Odb0eFs_3xU

Length: 80min 27sec (4827 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sephirothwasright]

I know it was a captive import/badge engineered, but my 04 Pontiac GTO is still, most likely, my favorite car (that I've owned). It was my first "domestic" (i.e., "made" by Americans) and after 3 Nissan/Datsuns, it really showed me the potential of a good V8, some half decent build quality, a strong chassis, and a decently appointed interior.

I had to sell it due to life getting in the way, but without that experience I don't think I'd have my Mustang or even consider cars like Corvettes and Camaros and, for that reason, Pontiac left an indelible mark on me.

[u/Jstrike19]

And it's all Doug Judy's fault

[u/xXADAMvBOMBXx]

Pontiac's are what made be become an engineer. Always dreamed of working on a revival campaign for the brand.

[u/Jodaa_G0D]

Trans Am, specifically the last gen got me into cars. My buddy had a 94 which I enjoyed, it was a non ws6, but it had the LT1 in it. 6 months later I saw a nice WS6 01, torch red with that beautiful hood scoop just drop a gear and I could hear that beautiful aftermarket quad tipped exhaust.. Less than a month later I was in a 97 WS6.

It's been 8 years since this happened and I'm telling you pontiac opened the door!

[u/timberwolvesguy]

Sheesh, an hour and 20 minutes? Gonna need to watch this one tonight.

[u/objectivePOV]

How is it possible to design some of the worst looking cars for 20 years straight? Their older designs were ok but the design of most Pontiacs from 1990-2009 ranged from bland to weird to bad. They needed to redesign their image, stop the badge engineering, and get away from the reputation of being not much more than cheap american beater cars.

[u/BradWright1122]

I think the saddest part of the Pontiac legacy is that right when they were making nice cars again with the G-Series cars, GM decided to shut them down. It just didn't make any sense.

[u/DualDoritoDude3]

"We were embarked on a strategy of making Pontiac different from the rest of GM in that Pontiac wouldn't get any front wheel drive cars, they would all be rear-wheel drive" then it goes on to talk about how the next g6 would be an ATS platform. The brand seemed to have a lot of potential with Bob Lutz. Sad that it had to go.

[u/cowboyjosh2010]

I look forward to watching this.

My first car--had it from age 16 to 28--was a 1995 Pontiac Sunfire sedan in Arctic White with a 3-speed automatic transmission (no overdrive), manual locks/windows, and a cassette deck with a 7-way equalizer. In 2016 the frame was so rotted that the mechanic refused to let it pass state inspection, and that was the end of it. Along the way, I never did anything to improve its performance, but it's the car on which I cut my DIY mechanic teeth thanks to my Dad's help. We replaced the exhaust system 3 times, changed the alternator 4 times, replaced the valve cover gasket, and then later on we lapped the valves when we had to replace the head gasket. We replaced the brake and fuel lines using straight lines that we had to bend ourselves. Untold oil changes, tire rotations, coolant/ATF/brake fluid changes, brake pad replacements, spark plug jobs, and on and on. Even wrecked it once in high school and had to do some DIY body repair to the front bumper cover, along with replacing the radiator that I cracked when I hit the pole.

That being said, I can't believe I didn't die in that car. It had HORRIBLE crash test ratings. Of course I never wrecked it (badly), but man all it would have taken was one mistake. I am glad I got to drive it, though. Compared to today's vehicles I could really feel the road through the wheel (I am sure that sounds absurd to people who have driven actual real performance cars, but what I mean is that I could feel the road feedback through the relatively light steering wheel--my Cruze's electric power steering doesn't have that feel). I miss that car, but may I never have something like it again, haha!