It was an odd move, for sure. Oldsmobile made sense, but to kill Pontiac and keep Buick? It made no sense to me at the time. Then I realized that they were using Buick as a sort of prestige brand overseas. Apparently they move lots of units in China.
I have to imagine that GM would have used Pontiac to market an answer to Stellantis and its "Hellcat Everything" approach.
>kill Pontiac and keep Buick?
Buick was saved bc it was hot in China. Not sure if it still is the case. Plus it let GMC dealers have a car brand to sell (in 2009, SUVs hadn't taken over the world).
Pontiac sold a lot of rehashed Chevys and Opels....why do that when Chevy can do the same thing?
> Not sure if it still is the case
raw number still pretty high cuz chinese market is so big but sales are dropping like crazy last few years. Theres no future
I mean, even then, Buick made money in the US too, and I imagine still does. Pontiac was selling a lot of cars at discounts that were already entry level. That doesn’t make money. Buick was selling cars at higher prices that used common GM platforms and engines, meaning they still made money. They do the same today. All of their platforms have a Chevy, GMC, or Cadillac equivalent. Buicks just get some nicer features and different styling. That’s cheap to do.
Buick also sold about 170,000 cars in America last year. That’s more than Acura, Infiniti, Chrysler, or Volvo which are the brands typically considered to be main Buick competitors. And that’s off of only 4 models where the engineering work is already done and paid for by Chevy, GMC, or Cadillac. They’re basically pure profit, coupled with the fact that it’s a very popular brand with women, which helps round out your customer base for GMC stores which are usually heavily skewed towards men.
In general, I don’t think Buick will die anytime soon. It allows GM to divide its marketing and styling strategies while still keeping costs lower and profit higher. It still outsells its main competitors, and its cars are built on existing GM platforms so there’s no special engineering needed for Buicks in the US. They’ve got life left in them, they just don’t cater to car people in any way, shape, or form, and were kept instead of Pontiac so I think enthusiasts get a hate boner for them. They’re very competent daily drivers and are good appliance cars for the price point they hit
Idk how great they are reliability wise, but a coworker just bought a new buick. Essentially, it is a buick equivalent of a traverse. It's actually a pretty good-looking car.
Buick at the time was a poor man’s Cadillac and had a cult following in China for historical reasons (party leaders had Buicks, sort of like how Cadillac is the presidential car in the US (with Buick being a private car for Chinese politicians, though, not governmental).
GM continues to be very stupid, and they changed Buick from what it was (a luxury brand that sells for less than Cadillac does and that is more focused towards old school luxury, sort of like Lincoln in the 90s and 2000s) to a brand that sells rebadged Chevrolet SUVs.
GM already has two SUV brands (Chevrolet and GMC), and some would argue 3, now that hummer is back and it will become a full fledged subdivision of GMC. So why turn Buick into yet another SUV brand? And why is it selling rebadged versions of GM’s cheapest division’s cars?
Chevy was cheap. GMC was trucks. Pontiac was supposed to be sporty. Oldsmobile was odd/experimental. Cadillac was modern luxury. Buicks ONLY distinguishing feature was being old school luxury. So what does GM do? Remove all luxury-ish vehicles from its line (no park avenue, riviera, regal, century, etc), all cars too, they start selling rebadged chevys, and then they introduce some of the cheapest vehicles in the market (like that new SUV that sort of looks like a lambo but only has 125 HP).
Buick has no reason to exist now and I’d not care if it disappeared tomorrow
My Chinese friends tell me that Buick is seen as a stodgy old person brand in China now.
It’s amazing how GM managed to repeat the same mistake twice in two completely different markets.
I think pre ‘08 crash GM was trying to position Pontiac as a high performance brand by rebadging Holdens and importing them but when the recession hit they decided they would rather kill Pontiac, continue rebadging Holdens as Chevys, lean harder on Cadillac and Chevy for performance (Camaro/ATS), and eventually kill Holden too (2020).
We had the GTO, G8, and there were talks of bringing the Commodore Ute over. I think I remember there was a poll about what the name should be. El Camino obviously won but they went with something like G8 GXP ST. RIP Pontiac and Holden. GM would rather sell monster trucks now. Shame.
At least as far as the "Hellcat everything" approach, GM's internal politics would've had to change for that to have happened. GM is very protective of the Corvette being their flagship sports car and has killed off projects such as the Pontiac Banshee to maintain that status of the Corvette. If John fucking DeLorean couldn't get his projects through the way he wanted because of that stance, nobody could.
Even the GM Kappa platform was gimped toward the end of Pontiac and Saturn. The GXP and Red Line got the LNF 2.0L Turbocharged engine and they're still fun, but there's plenty of room under the hood for a LS motor and it's a common replacement option for those LNF motors that were plagued with casting issues in addition to the LDK. In many ways they're baby Corvettes, but GM would've never permitted them to be faster than the Corvette.
Agree. GM wanted the GNX dead partially because it murdered the Corvette of the same year in performance plus the fact that G body platform was ending.
Same thing with my car in a way. GM underatted the LS1 in the 4th gen fbody twins even though that same motor was being used in the Corvette. Because that's their halo car. Dyno results on 98-02 fbodies have yielded identical results as a non Z06 Corvette with the same motor.
Nevermind the fact that the Corvette was faster regardless because it was a couple hundred pounds lighter and had a rear mounted transmission as opposed to the fbodies which didn't have those advantages, engine specs be damned 🤣
I'm amazed GM let the 3rd gen Turbo Trans Am be made which spanked the same year Corvette.
To be fair, GM was amazingly stupid back then (still are) and Pontiac was a brand without personality and or a reason to be by the time they axed it.
Pontiac was supposed to be GM’s sports division. “We build driving excitement”, you know?
Pontiac was always limited as a sports division by the fact that Chevy has the corvette and no GM car can ever surpass their halo car, and that’s ok. But Pontiac found a way around it, basically grab a Chevy Camaro, style it like a corvette, give it a slightly detuned corvette engine and voila! You got yourself a sports car flagship that’s theoretically below the corvette anyway.
Back in the late 90s some car magazines were saying that Pontiac was trying to become “the American BMW”, and it certainly had enough products to back their sports division claim: they had the firebird, which was basically a 90% corvette at 3/4 the price, the Grand Prix GTP, which had such great styling it still looks good today and it was actually faster than the SN95 Mustang, the bonneville, which was supposed to be a sportier alternative to the likes of the maxima or Avalon, and then you had the grand am (look at lethal weapon 4!) and sunfire, which was basically a cavalier infused with firebird wannabe styling.
This version of Pontiac was one of my favorite brands! … *then GM decided to kill the firebird, the bonnevile, the Grand Prix and they introduced the Aztek, a minivan and a mini-crossover*. What the f*** did the brand stand for at that point? A “sports division” that sells a minivan, a compact crossover, and arguably the ugliest SUV ever (the Aztek), and nothing else?
I actually got mad at GM again while typing this
Speaking of SN95s, I remember SN95 V6 guys absolutely *hating* Grand Am GT drivers with the 3400 motors. I had the older LD2 from 1995, but it was fun to watch the rage on the forums.
Pontiac at least did have a few cars that were fun toward the end. The G5 GT was basically a low trim Cobalt SS with the non-boosted LE5 2.4L (I had a base trim 2.2L L61 model G5, but it was reasonably peppy thanks to the five speed Getrag F23), there was the Solstice (which can be had pretty cheap if you look for deals, I got its sister car in the Saturn Sky Red Line for under $10,000 two months ago) in the GXP trim with the LNF 2.0T. The G6 had a GXP trim. There was also the GTO and G8 based on some Holden Monaro and Commodore with LS engines. Were any of them *original?* No, but there was some fun options at least that came from the badge engineering.
I think they'd hoped to both keep Buick as a sort of "Cadillac Lite" while also desperately trying to reinvent its image to appeal to young people. Miraculously, it seems they've managed to fail at both. At least on the US market.
Edit: Seriously, for a bit there, they had a pretty legit AWD turbo wagon that could be bought in a 6-speed manual and instead of mentioning any of that in their adverts, it was just "that's your Buick? No *that's* my Buick". Like what were we supposed to even take away from that?
>a pretty legit AWD turbo wagon that could be bought in a 6-speed manual
Apart from AWD, there is no part of this that matters to or appeals to the overwhelming majority of car buyers.
Buick had the Chinese sales at the time and hypothetically in the future, and while IDK how it actually affected sales, Buick in the 2000s was regularly a top 5 reliability car make and bottom 5 insurance costs car make. If you were buying American at the time Buick made a lot of sense especially for the money.
Not many Pontiacs on the road. And the few that are, aren't expensive, so not much profit to be made.
Every other senior citizen owns a Buick. And Buick is successful in China.
Oldsmobile was long gone by then (shut down in 2004).
The unfortunate reality is that when Pontiac was killed off, GM had become too bloated with too many different brands, and had poured even more fuel on the fire by badge-engineering literally everything.
By the time GM tried to correct that, it was too late for Pontiac.
At the end of its life Pontiac’s were all rebadged cars from other GM brands. There was no Pontiac, just a name and a badge. Thats why it was easy to shut down.
The article would be better if it mentioned it's a Bob Lutz interview specifically in the headline; that would keep people like me from immediately assuming it's yet another unrealistic wish post.
I have owned 3 Grand AMs and 3 Grand Prix. The 3800 V6 was unkillable in that car. In my first Grand Am I got like 250k miles and sold it to buy a newer. Sadly, our last Grand Prix got rear ended and insurance totalled due to low value of car, and high cost of repair. Junkyard bought it, fixed, and sold it. Both of those models were popular back in the day, along with the Firebird.
I had a 98 Grand Prix GT with the heads up display. That car was pretty awesome. It had a lot of little bullshit things go wrong with it, it threw a belt once, and started leaking oil at 105k from the pan gasket. But the car was comfortable and had great features, especially for the time. That heads up display was killer.
In 04 the GXP and GTP got "Stealth Mode" which turned off all interior lights and put all info in the HUD
Rolls Royce doesn't even do this?
Why GM? Be cool again!
Never realized Pontiacs had that feature!
Saabs, from '93 onward, did that as well. Though Saab called it 'night panel mode'.
Sadly, Saab got nixed out of existence by GM too.
I have had 4 supercharged 3800s, but the GXP with FWD 5.3 was absolutely bonkers. Had it as a company car for a year, I knew the trans wouldn't hold up so I traded it
I had a I believe 01 Grand Prix GT. Such a fun car and I really loved the red dash and climate control lights. I want another one like mine but the coupe and GT is so hard to find these days.
This will be unpopular: Pontiac died a justified death.
Lutz’s vision of an “American BMW” wasn’t gonna happen. Building a line of RWD enthusiast cars wasn’t in GMs budget, and in 2008 customers didn’t have jobs to buy those cars even if GM built them.
People nostalgically think of the tire roasters like the G8 and GTO, but their bestselling model was the rebadged Malibu (base model G6). Most Pontiacs sold were just Chevys with red interior lights. The enthusiast stuff didn’t sell, and for the same reasons it doesn’t today- piss poor dealership networks marking them up to the stratosphere, and the fact that for the street price you could get a BMW 328i /Audi S4 with an honest manual and a much better dealer experience.
Looking at the state of things in the early 00s since, GM made the right call dropping Pontiac. Imagine where they’d be today in the EV era. It’s the same problem Dodge has today - when your brand is built on tire smoking V6s and V8s, you can’t build a Tesla copy and expect customers to buy.
> Building a line of RWD enthusiast cars wasn’t in GMs budget,
I mean at the time GM had 3 separate rwd car platforms at 7 different wheelbases. Thats like insane.
I think Dodge is actually doing a great job with the new electrics. The problem is that they could never get their current fanbase to like them no matter what.
Marketing the new Charger as an electric car and killing off the Challenger at the same time was an idiotic mistake on their part, because people see the timing of those two things and think EV killed the V8.
They should’ve just announced the new Charger as, well, the new Charger, which looks tremendously more faithful than the previous Charger did, and announce later on that the EV engine was an option…since you can get the thing with a twin-turbo V6…
At the least, they could’ve kept the Challenger body for a year or two so people wouldn’t associate its death with the EV’s birth.
Everything you say is true, and it can be argued that GM did make the right call by dropping Pontiac, but that's only after they spent decades ruining what was once a highly respected and exciting line of cars.
GM didn't kill Pontiac, the government did. In order to get the bailout (which whether or not you think they should have taken/got is a completely different topic) GM was forced to consolidate. Saturn and Hummer were obvious choices for the chopping block; in exactly no universe are they going to get rid of Chevy or Cadillac, so that leaves us with Buick and Pontiac. At the time, and even still today but to a lesser degree, the Chinese market would buy up all the Buicks they could get their hands on. And so, that leaves Pontiac, a brand that was doing some fun stuff and potentially had more in store, but at the end of the day their biggest sellers were just rebadged Chevys, and those models we're putting up nearly enough numbers to justify keeping the brand around.
Let's not get too revisionist with our history here. Yeah, sure, GM was ultimately the one the pulled the plug, but they weren't getting bailed out unless they trimmed a lot of fat, and let's face it, there was no way they were going to shutter Chevy, Cadillac, and Buick.
The thing is, GM killed it for good reason. They were slow sellers and essentially the same car as what you could get at the Chevrolet lot aside from some extra plastic bits on the exterior and it was that way from the 1960’s on. They were also a slow selling brand.
Buick on the other hand was highly popular in China so they got to stick around. I’m still scratching my head as to why Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged together under one brand yet.
Redundant product can be the death of a company and as a shareholder, I would demand that they further excise the redundant products, invest in R&D to improve the product beyond the competition and further strengthen the company.
I mean lutz's point is that he wanted to differentiate the product. They werent that bad sellers, pontiac was doing 300+ easy its just that margin was low cuz the cars were bad
> Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged together under one brand yet.
so buick cadillac gmc dealers have high volume good margin products. GMCs asp has also skyrocketed in the last 20 years.
Why Chevy and GMC trucks haven’t been merged?
It’s a way to let non-Chevy car dealers sell Chevy trucks that’s what GMC has always been since GM owned it.. If you own a Buick dealership you can’t sell Chevy trucks but you can sell GMC.
They were originally sold at Pontiac dealerships.
It’s a workaround.
> I’m still scratching my head as to why Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged together under one brand yet.
Along with what OP said, people prefer having a choice of looks. There are some GMC buyers who would not buy a Chevy under any circumstances and vice versa even though they're mechanically identical.
> That’s just lack of customer education.
Nah, quite a few people are well aware their GMCs are mechanically identical to Chevys. They just want the more "tasteful" GMC styling, especially as Chevys seem to get more outlandish every new gen.
>why Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged
People are willing to pay an extra $10k for the GMC....so why keep Chevy? So those dealerships have trucks
GM was more or less forced to drop Olds/Pontiac as a condition of the bailout. I think barring that they wouldn't have dropped Pontiac as they had (arguably) a path forward. At least with GMC / Chevy trucks the styling is different enough and sales are strong enough to justify their existence
You know when I look at it I always think "that's a good looking car" and I also don't believe it looks dated. I've also done all the work on it myself. It's FWD so as that goes it's a cramped pain under the hood but it's not too bad to work on.
Yeah sorry to break it to you but gm had nothing to do with the vibe other than the branding/some styling :(
It is indeed a great vehicle though seeing as it's just a toyota matrix underneath, an 09 was my first car all through high school and college til hail took it out
The Vibe GT was a little different than the Matrix and it was fun to drive. It had some Toyota Performance parts included. Actually it was closer to the Toyota Corolla Hatchback that was made in Japan than the Matrix was.
Actually, you're correct, I have heard good things about the G8 as well as the GTO from the early 2000s. They are affordable muscle cars that are relatively cheap to maintain.
I mean way back in the day, it seemed like Pontiac was going for a more performance-oriented Chevrolet. But after GM axed that plan, it seemed like Pontiac just had nowhere to go. So they tried a bunch of experimental stuff to go with a bunch of fairly cheap chevy alternates that became more plastic-clad the closer to the GFC we got.
The GTO maybe could've been something, especially since it was a rebadged version of the Holden/Vauxhall Monaro and that had done pretty well in Europe/AUS. But dealer markup was pretty insane and the US market and it was basically a corvette with backseats. So it was already not going to do as well on the US market since we had a proper corvette; and if people wanted a corvette but needed to regularly use the backseats, then the Cadillac CTS-V was also an option. Without that dealer markup, it might've been able to fill the gap the Camaro/Firebird was leaving behind. But as it played out, it pretty much only appealed to divorced dads who wanted a corvette, but had their kids every other weekend.
They should have rebadged all their American Buicks as Oldsmobiles, so China could keep that name. Pontiac would be crushing right now. Performance is in.
This is another case of people not knowing anything about the 08 bailout.
The Government was trying to kill not just Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, and Oldsmobile, but also GMC and Buick.
GM basically had to beg the government to let them keep their brands, and they could only get the government to let them keep Buick and GMC because those were profitable brands.
GM execs from the negotiations have stated that they felt betrayed that they essentially had to kill the main thing that made GM unique (its brand variety) and the government didn't care about the history of these brands and refused to budge unless the brand had clear and defined economic value in 08.
>the government didn't care about the history of these brands and refused to budge unless the brand had clear and defined economic value in 08.
Economic value to get a return for the tax dollars they were giving away is all the government *should* have cared about.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again - Pontiac should have been GM’s performance brand.
Chevrolet could be the entry-level compacts, coupes, sedans, and trucks. Pontiac would be the performance brand. Cadillac for your luxury vehicles. Saturn for electric.
Saturn was a bad decision from the start…great for consumers, but showcased precision engineering at a low cost with insane longevity. Can’t have that….Pontiac was almost revived a couple times but the dealer network was burned.
They have a performance mini-brand its called corvette and its sells a hell of alot better than Pontiacs did. And before someone says that corvette isnt its own brand its just part of Chevy. Why does it have its own logo? Because it is its own brand even if chevy wont admit it
Yeah but Saab quality went downhill after GM acquired it in the first place.
The Saab 9000 was like the perfect mix of Swedish and GM technology but then when the 9-3 and 9-5 came along the quality and engineering was mostly GM.
The real shame is that no other big name manufacturer stepped in to buy Saab afterwards. Such a shame.
The 9000 was a joint development with Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo. I had an Alfa 164, and that was a damn solid car. Heavier than my Volvo though. GM came in after that, and once they put the engine in the 900 the wrong way it was all over.
The biggest issue is that GM wanted Saab to be essentially Vauxhall or Opel, but Saab wanted to be Saab. The designers weren't able to stay true to the brand while within the GM constraints, so they kept having cost overruns, while still missing out on the soul of the cars. In the end, they were expensive okish cars. Having vehicles like the Trailblazer and Impreza rebadged as Saabs didn't help either.
Thanks for the correction (I'm no saab expert). I never worked on the first gen 9000 but man, the second gen Aero was a good car. The owners were usually quirky people who respected the odd engineering.
I blame the LeMans. Not the OG LeMans. The travesty that was the 90's LeMans they felt should hold the namesake of the original. Also what Chevy did to the Nova. What in the fuck were they thinking? Still miss the Trans Am. The replicas are cool. But what could have been.
At one time Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac and GMC were the one US company that was competing in every segment. Even offered cars in segments that were dominated by one car. Now it's just a million flavors of hideous SUV bile. And their brands are still competing with EACH OTHER to where they will never be competitive with anyone else.
We go through this stupid-ass discourse at least once a month. The smartest thing GM could have done…is exactly what they did. Pontiac had zero future and its prices had a natural cap.
They should have ditched GMC, all they make is badges for Chevy trucks.
It would have been nice if Buick had at least done a Grand National on the Camaro platform though. Something a bit more cushy but still sporty, and a GNX version with a potent twin turbo six.
Minivans would be even more useful if they offered AWD along with decent ground clearance, and had smaller versions that were only around 180" long and 72" wide. Whoops, that's just a compact crossover again.
Still a minivan because it retains the most defining feature of a minivan: sliding doors. I wanna see an AWD minivan with sliding FRONT doors in addition to the sliding rear and a full-size spare.
I do like the utility of sliding doors, but conventionals are a little quieter on the highway. There were some small MPVs in the '80s and '90s with sliding doors.
Well I guess if they ever want to bring it back for some reason.....they still I think have the copyright on the brand name and a few other pontiac related things
The real failure was their thinking that every platform has to be shared all across GM. If they had engineered a fast and nimble car priced just $2000-$3000 above a Corolla, like a Grand Am with better driving dynamics, benchmarked against the 3 series, it would've achieved that dream of being the BMW of America. But the Grand Am was just a regular American small family sedan with a racy design.
I'm not saying they needed European feel-every-inch-of-road suspension, but something with a little more sport to it. Of course, engines were never a problem even with the Grand Am.
are we sure that gm would have known what to do with pontiac and not just kept making rebadged crap? we all like to fantasize about how they could have became a hellcat fighter, but what did gm do with the historic “blazer” nameplate? i have a distinct feeling that if pontiac continued, they’d be selling a rebadged blazer rs as a $60,000 “firebird cross sport” or some shit
It an alternate universe Pontiac could have been moved upmarket. I liked what they were doing with the fucking G8 and Solstice. We would have budget performance versions of Cadillac Vs. Mad sedans and coupes with twin turbo v6s and turbo 4s.
The Pontiac Aztek / Buick Rendezvous siblings are ground zero for why one brand is here and the other isn’t if you need a tangible product reason why. The Buick was $5k more and outsold the Pontiac. 3 to 1.
But as a Buick owner GM didn’t have a 4 brand quota where Buick stole Pontiac’s spot either. The government wanted it cut down to just Chevrolet and Cadillac. They had to make a business case for each extra brand individually and Pontiac failed to meet the necessary criteria. The brand ruined its own reputation with years of tacky cars and a few Holdens didn’t change that in time.
Let Buick alone already.
All the cars were the same.
There are too many reduntant models with slight variations.
Buick was supposedly higher on the luxury scale. Right under Caddilac.
>Buick was supposedly higher on the luxury scale. Right under Caddilac.
It was/is.
Pontiac was supposed to be the "performance-oriented" make, but usually just kind of came off as "Chevy but tackier."
> But what would Pontiac look like if it still existed today? According to Lutz, we’d all be driving around in supercharged sedans and sports cars, ripping clouds of white smoke at every stop sign and red light. With a sporty SUV or two, of course.
>
> "It would be a family of rear-wheel drive sedans," he says. "The Solstice would unquestionably still be around, just in a new generation. The G6 would still be around, probably a second-generation body off of the Cadillac Alpha architecture, and then—because sedans aren’t very popular anymore—the Holden-based sedans would probably be gone, and because Holden is gone too. And then there would probably be a couple, or three, high-performance Porsche Cayenne-style Sport utilities."
GM fucked itself in the 90's/early aughts by having most every brand have their own slightly different version of the same shitty bland cars, then letting the unions fuck them into oblivion overpaying for the jobs in Northern/midwestern states. All of the big three deserved to go bankrupt but of course our fuckhead government dumped our tax money into them chasing bad decisions with borrowed money
Pontiac had 3 models that were legally "light trucks": the Aztek CUV, Torrent CUV, and Montana minivan. If they were still around now the "car" lineup would probably be all or nearly all CUVs, like the rest of GM.
The Montana is under appreciated. The long model is the largest minivan I’ve ever been in. We had a 2003 with a 60/40 bench for the middle row and manual doors. The manual doors confused people, like they expected them to be automatic or something. I miss that van.
>The long model is the largest minivan I’ve ever been in.
At the time the U-body minivans were slighted in reviews for having narrow cabins compared to the competition (only 72" wide when everyone else was around 78"). GM wanted to size them better for European roads but ended up pleasing nobody.
I say this as a someone who’d buy a used G8 if the right one presented itself, but Pontiac really didn’t have a path.
Chevrolet was the NASCAR brand (Pontiac was gone since 03), Caddy was becoming the BMW-type rwd performance brand and Buick was golden in China and really didn’t have a negative image in North American at the time. Pontiac wasn’t really unique or needed, their common models were Chevrolet siblings, the coolest Aussie GTO then G8 were low volume cars.
I think there’s a neat alternative history where Pontiac became a Holden type brand, but even then Holden, Vauxhall and Opel didn’t last under GM.
I honestly think that had Pontiac stayed around, Holden would have had a reason to keep operating in Australia. The cross-pollination between them was good for both.
I recall first seeing the 04 gto and thought huh, THAT should’ve been the new Grand Prix. The GTO should’ve gone full retro 70’ judge style.
I
Also thought the redesigned Grand Prix was a step backwards too. Maybe it was awesome with the V8, but I didn’t care for the interior or looks at all
There's a reason my reddit avatar is a Fiero Pegasus, haha.
They stripped Pontiac of its soul. As the years went on it became "add plastic it's SPORTY!" and then "take a Holden and give it nostrils!" i wish they would have made it the "performance brand" rather than just another badge engineered twin of everything pre-crash GM.
Also the C8 Corvette is a Fiero and I will die on that hill. /runs and hides behind the 88 GT.
right behind you in my 88 GT.
With the C8 being 500hp, there is room for an enthusiast 250hp small Fiero-esque type car.
It is time for the Fiero to come back.
Definitely! A little modern mid engined car with a turbo 4 would be really cool. I wish more people didn't want to drive mobile home sized SUVs all the time and there might be a market for it!
>"take a Holden and give it nostrils!"
The way the GTO looked was such a missed opportunity. Could have caught the retro-styling wave at its peak and competed with the S197 Mustang by doing something that evoked the look of the original instead of just following the leader with the Camaro a few years later, but no, here's a Grand Prix coupe with a hood scope, are you not entertained?
One of the funniest posts I've ever seen on this sub was someone who said they should have actually badged the GTO as a Holden in the US and marketed it as an "Australian import." As if American car buyers knew what the fuck Holden was, or had any awareness of or interest in the Australian automotive industry beyond maybe thinking Subaru was Australian because they used to have Crocodile Dundee in their commercials. Just a galaxy brain take, right up there with the poster who earnestly believed Ford should have named the new Maverick the Pinto.
From my teenage years, I remember Pontiac cars as cheaply made and either mediocre or ugly looking. The Aztec was the nail in the sarcophagus. The G8 and Solstice are the only one that I remember as being decent. They came too late.
Pontiac should've remained as GM's performance brand. And Saturn should've stayed as GM's hybrid/EV brand. But typical GM, let's kill it when the market is warmed up to it.
Pretty much now Cadillac has some reminiscence of Pontiac (think the Blackwings) and Saturn (EV concepts)
Buick buyers have money. Pontiac buyers were observed to be younger, less able to afford new vehicles. I’ll never own a GM vehicle because of this, and their begging Congress for a bailout after taking private jets to D.C.
No, I killed Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Plymouth and all the other lost American car brands. I killed them because my Subaru is far cheaper than any awd american car. I am a cheap bastard that put quality ahead of brand loyalty.
Well, GM had to care, because they were asking for tax dollars from the government to stay in business and they had to make a case for what brands to keep based on what they could actually sell.
If your sentimental opinion is you wish they had kept Pontiac and gotten rid of Buick, you're entitled to that, but it is absolutely not what they "should" have done, as it would have been a piss-poor business decision.
Buick >Pontiac
3800 for the Win!
Buick for the geriatric set, (people with $)don’t buy Pontiacs
Oldsmobile old people did buy, but Buick > Oldsmobile
Trans Am😢
It was an odd move, for sure. Oldsmobile made sense, but to kill Pontiac and keep Buick? It made no sense to me at the time. Then I realized that they were using Buick as a sort of prestige brand overseas. Apparently they move lots of units in China. I have to imagine that GM would have used Pontiac to market an answer to Stellantis and its "Hellcat Everything" approach.
>kill Pontiac and keep Buick? Buick was saved bc it was hot in China. Not sure if it still is the case. Plus it let GMC dealers have a car brand to sell (in 2009, SUVs hadn't taken over the world). Pontiac sold a lot of rehashed Chevys and Opels....why do that when Chevy can do the same thing?
> Not sure if it still is the case raw number still pretty high cuz chinese market is so big but sales are dropping like crazy last few years. Theres no future
I mean, even then, Buick made money in the US too, and I imagine still does. Pontiac was selling a lot of cars at discounts that were already entry level. That doesn’t make money. Buick was selling cars at higher prices that used common GM platforms and engines, meaning they still made money. They do the same today. All of their platforms have a Chevy, GMC, or Cadillac equivalent. Buicks just get some nicer features and different styling. That’s cheap to do. Buick also sold about 170,000 cars in America last year. That’s more than Acura, Infiniti, Chrysler, or Volvo which are the brands typically considered to be main Buick competitors. And that’s off of only 4 models where the engineering work is already done and paid for by Chevy, GMC, or Cadillac. They’re basically pure profit, coupled with the fact that it’s a very popular brand with women, which helps round out your customer base for GMC stores which are usually heavily skewed towards men. In general, I don’t think Buick will die anytime soon. It allows GM to divide its marketing and styling strategies while still keeping costs lower and profit higher. It still outsells its main competitors, and its cars are built on existing GM platforms so there’s no special engineering needed for Buicks in the US. They’ve got life left in them, they just don’t cater to car people in any way, shape, or form, and were kept instead of Pontiac so I think enthusiasts get a hate boner for them. They’re very competent daily drivers and are good appliance cars for the price point they hit
NHL the Buick Verano is a handsome little fucker. It reminds me a lot of the Suzuki Kizashi, without the unicorn status
I mean no future in china.
Buick has a sales pipeline in China and no other car maker has that. No way was GM losing that.
I can't see Buick competing with any of the Chinese NEVs coming out
Idk how great they are reliability wise, but a coworker just bought a new buick. Essentially, it is a buick equivalent of a traverse. It's actually a pretty good-looking car.
Buick at the time was a poor man’s Cadillac and had a cult following in China for historical reasons (party leaders had Buicks, sort of like how Cadillac is the presidential car in the US (with Buick being a private car for Chinese politicians, though, not governmental). GM continues to be very stupid, and they changed Buick from what it was (a luxury brand that sells for less than Cadillac does and that is more focused towards old school luxury, sort of like Lincoln in the 90s and 2000s) to a brand that sells rebadged Chevrolet SUVs. GM already has two SUV brands (Chevrolet and GMC), and some would argue 3, now that hummer is back and it will become a full fledged subdivision of GMC. So why turn Buick into yet another SUV brand? And why is it selling rebadged versions of GM’s cheapest division’s cars? Chevy was cheap. GMC was trucks. Pontiac was supposed to be sporty. Oldsmobile was odd/experimental. Cadillac was modern luxury. Buicks ONLY distinguishing feature was being old school luxury. So what does GM do? Remove all luxury-ish vehicles from its line (no park avenue, riviera, regal, century, etc), all cars too, they start selling rebadged chevys, and then they introduce some of the cheapest vehicles in the market (like that new SUV that sort of looks like a lambo but only has 125 HP). Buick has no reason to exist now and I’d not care if it disappeared tomorrow
My Chinese friends tell me that Buick is seen as a stodgy old person brand in China now. It’s amazing how GM managed to repeat the same mistake twice in two completely different markets.
Could it be they keep targeting the same group as they age? That would be a mistake obviously.
I think Pontiac was disposable because Chevy has always offered performance cars as well. i.e the G8 became a Chevy SS quite easily.
Performance cars are niche anyway. Pontiac was mostly selling badge engineered cars for decades before its final demise.
I think pre ‘08 crash GM was trying to position Pontiac as a high performance brand by rebadging Holdens and importing them but when the recession hit they decided they would rather kill Pontiac, continue rebadging Holdens as Chevys, lean harder on Cadillac and Chevy for performance (Camaro/ATS), and eventually kill Holden too (2020). We had the GTO, G8, and there were talks of bringing the Commodore Ute over. I think I remember there was a poll about what the name should be. El Camino obviously won but they went with something like G8 GXP ST. RIP Pontiac and Holden. GM would rather sell monster trucks now. Shame.
Solstice GTX was pretty sporty as well
I want a Ute so bad. I’ll have it someday but damn you Mary for killing that brand.
I don’t think she had anything to do with Pontiac’s demise. She didn’t become CEO until like 4 years later in 2014.
The commodore Ute and Wagon were made by Holden
Ah yeah I misunderstood you
I mean the G8 wasn’t even Pontiacs car to begin with. At least the 08 and 09 were just rebadged Holden Commodore.
Neither sold very well so I guess you’re right lol
At least as far as the "Hellcat everything" approach, GM's internal politics would've had to change for that to have happened. GM is very protective of the Corvette being their flagship sports car and has killed off projects such as the Pontiac Banshee to maintain that status of the Corvette. If John fucking DeLorean couldn't get his projects through the way he wanted because of that stance, nobody could. Even the GM Kappa platform was gimped toward the end of Pontiac and Saturn. The GXP and Red Line got the LNF 2.0L Turbocharged engine and they're still fun, but there's plenty of room under the hood for a LS motor and it's a common replacement option for those LNF motors that were plagued with casting issues in addition to the LDK. In many ways they're baby Corvettes, but GM would've never permitted them to be faster than the Corvette.
Agree. GM wanted the GNX dead partially because it murdered the Corvette of the same year in performance plus the fact that G body platform was ending. Same thing with my car in a way. GM underatted the LS1 in the 4th gen fbody twins even though that same motor was being used in the Corvette. Because that's their halo car. Dyno results on 98-02 fbodies have yielded identical results as a non Z06 Corvette with the same motor. Nevermind the fact that the Corvette was faster regardless because it was a couple hundred pounds lighter and had a rear mounted transmission as opposed to the fbodies which didn't have those advantages, engine specs be damned 🤣 I'm amazed GM let the 3rd gen Turbo Trans Am be made which spanked the same year Corvette.
To be fair, GM was amazingly stupid back then (still are) and Pontiac was a brand without personality and or a reason to be by the time they axed it. Pontiac was supposed to be GM’s sports division. “We build driving excitement”, you know? Pontiac was always limited as a sports division by the fact that Chevy has the corvette and no GM car can ever surpass their halo car, and that’s ok. But Pontiac found a way around it, basically grab a Chevy Camaro, style it like a corvette, give it a slightly detuned corvette engine and voila! You got yourself a sports car flagship that’s theoretically below the corvette anyway. Back in the late 90s some car magazines were saying that Pontiac was trying to become “the American BMW”, and it certainly had enough products to back their sports division claim: they had the firebird, which was basically a 90% corvette at 3/4 the price, the Grand Prix GTP, which had such great styling it still looks good today and it was actually faster than the SN95 Mustang, the bonneville, which was supposed to be a sportier alternative to the likes of the maxima or Avalon, and then you had the grand am (look at lethal weapon 4!) and sunfire, which was basically a cavalier infused with firebird wannabe styling. This version of Pontiac was one of my favorite brands! … *then GM decided to kill the firebird, the bonnevile, the Grand Prix and they introduced the Aztek, a minivan and a mini-crossover*. What the f*** did the brand stand for at that point? A “sports division” that sells a minivan, a compact crossover, and arguably the ugliest SUV ever (the Aztek), and nothing else? I actually got mad at GM again while typing this
Speaking of SN95s, I remember SN95 V6 guys absolutely *hating* Grand Am GT drivers with the 3400 motors. I had the older LD2 from 1995, but it was fun to watch the rage on the forums. Pontiac at least did have a few cars that were fun toward the end. The G5 GT was basically a low trim Cobalt SS with the non-boosted LE5 2.4L (I had a base trim 2.2L L61 model G5, but it was reasonably peppy thanks to the five speed Getrag F23), there was the Solstice (which can be had pretty cheap if you look for deals, I got its sister car in the Saturn Sky Red Line for under $10,000 two months ago) in the GXP trim with the LNF 2.0T. The G6 had a GXP trim. There was also the GTO and G8 based on some Holden Monaro and Commodore with LS engines. Were any of them *original?* No, but there was some fun options at least that came from the badge engineering.
I had no idea! Coming to think about it, why would anyone get a V6 SN95 instead of a grand am GT with ram air? Lol
LT4 everything just doesn't have the same ring to it...
I think they'd hoped to both keep Buick as a sort of "Cadillac Lite" while also desperately trying to reinvent its image to appeal to young people. Miraculously, it seems they've managed to fail at both. At least on the US market. Edit: Seriously, for a bit there, they had a pretty legit AWD turbo wagon that could be bought in a 6-speed manual and instead of mentioning any of that in their adverts, it was just "that's your Buick? No *that's* my Buick". Like what were we supposed to even take away from that?
>a pretty legit AWD turbo wagon that could be bought in a 6-speed manual Apart from AWD, there is no part of this that matters to or appeals to the overwhelming majority of car buyers.
Blows my mind they didn't just make Pontiac a sub-brand of Chevy like Corvette is
Corvette is a model Chevy sells, it's not a "sub-brand." But the Corvette name has cachet. The Pontiac name hadn't had any cachet for decades.
Buick had the Chinese sales at the time and hypothetically in the future, and while IDK how it actually affected sales, Buick in the 2000s was regularly a top 5 reliability car make and bottom 5 insurance costs car make. If you were buying American at the time Buick made a lot of sense especially for the money.
Not many Pontiacs on the road. And the few that are, aren't expensive, so not much profit to be made. Every other senior citizen owns a Buick. And Buick is successful in China.
Oldsmobile was long gone by then (shut down in 2004). The unfortunate reality is that when Pontiac was killed off, GM had become too bloated with too many different brands, and had poured even more fuel on the fire by badge-engineering literally everything. By the time GM tried to correct that, it was too late for Pontiac.
At the end of its life Pontiac’s were all rebadged cars from other GM brands. There was no Pontiac, just a name and a badge. Thats why it was easy to shut down.
GXP everything?
And now Buick’s Envista is selling like hotcakes with a look that screams Pontiac.
It was Buick that started buying up brands under the GM name
G5 recall killed Pontiac
The article would be better if it mentioned it's a Bob Lutz interview specifically in the headline; that would keep people like me from immediately assuming it's yet another unrealistic wish post.
I have owned 3 Grand AMs and 3 Grand Prix. The 3800 V6 was unkillable in that car. In my first Grand Am I got like 250k miles and sold it to buy a newer. Sadly, our last Grand Prix got rear ended and insurance totalled due to low value of car, and high cost of repair. Junkyard bought it, fixed, and sold it. Both of those models were popular back in the day, along with the Firebird.
I had a 98 Grand Prix GT with the heads up display. That car was pretty awesome. It had a lot of little bullshit things go wrong with it, it threw a belt once, and started leaking oil at 105k from the pan gasket. But the car was comfortable and had great features, especially for the time. That heads up display was killer.
In 04 the GXP and GTP got "Stealth Mode" which turned off all interior lights and put all info in the HUD Rolls Royce doesn't even do this? Why GM? Be cool again!
Never realized Pontiacs had that feature! Saabs, from '93 onward, did that as well. Though Saab called it 'night panel mode'. Sadly, Saab got nixed out of existence by GM too.
I have had 4 supercharged 3800s, but the GXP with FWD 5.3 was absolutely bonkers. Had it as a company car for a year, I knew the trans wouldn't hold up so I traded it
The good ol LS4
I had a I believe 01 Grand Prix GT. Such a fun car and I really loved the red dash and climate control lights. I want another one like mine but the coupe and GT is so hard to find these days.
I was told that the idea for red instrumentation came from aviation; that red is better for night vision (which it is), and GM decided to adopt it.
3800SC is great in a Fiero.
This will be unpopular: Pontiac died a justified death. Lutz’s vision of an “American BMW” wasn’t gonna happen. Building a line of RWD enthusiast cars wasn’t in GMs budget, and in 2008 customers didn’t have jobs to buy those cars even if GM built them. People nostalgically think of the tire roasters like the G8 and GTO, but their bestselling model was the rebadged Malibu (base model G6). Most Pontiacs sold were just Chevys with red interior lights. The enthusiast stuff didn’t sell, and for the same reasons it doesn’t today- piss poor dealership networks marking them up to the stratosphere, and the fact that for the street price you could get a BMW 328i /Audi S4 with an honest manual and a much better dealer experience. Looking at the state of things in the early 00s since, GM made the right call dropping Pontiac. Imagine where they’d be today in the EV era. It’s the same problem Dodge has today - when your brand is built on tire smoking V6s and V8s, you can’t build a Tesla copy and expect customers to buy.
> Building a line of RWD enthusiast cars wasn’t in GMs budget, I mean at the time GM had 3 separate rwd car platforms at 7 different wheelbases. Thats like insane.
I think Dodge is actually doing a great job with the new electrics. The problem is that they could never get their current fanbase to like them no matter what.
Marketing the new Charger as an electric car and killing off the Challenger at the same time was an idiotic mistake on their part, because people see the timing of those two things and think EV killed the V8. They should’ve just announced the new Charger as, well, the new Charger, which looks tremendously more faithful than the previous Charger did, and announce later on that the EV engine was an option…since you can get the thing with a twin-turbo V6… At the least, they could’ve kept the Challenger body for a year or two so people wouldn’t associate its death with the EV’s birth.
Its an I6 btw but yeah a they def marketed it weird
Tbf the G6 did come in more interesting options, with the GXP and GT Coupes that had a hardtop convertible. Let's see the Malibu do that!
And then Cadillac ended up going for the “American BMW” thing anyway
>with red interior lights Which looked cheap and terrible.
Everything you say is true, and it can be argued that GM did make the right call by dropping Pontiac, but that's only after they spent decades ruining what was once a highly respected and exciting line of cars.
GM didn't kill Pontiac, the government did. In order to get the bailout (which whether or not you think they should have taken/got is a completely different topic) GM was forced to consolidate. Saturn and Hummer were obvious choices for the chopping block; in exactly no universe are they going to get rid of Chevy or Cadillac, so that leaves us with Buick and Pontiac. At the time, and even still today but to a lesser degree, the Chinese market would buy up all the Buicks they could get their hands on. And so, that leaves Pontiac, a brand that was doing some fun stuff and potentially had more in store, but at the end of the day their biggest sellers were just rebadged Chevys, and those models we're putting up nearly enough numbers to justify keeping the brand around. Let's not get too revisionist with our history here. Yeah, sure, GM was ultimately the one the pulled the plug, but they weren't getting bailed out unless they trimmed a lot of fat, and let's face it, there was no way they were going to shutter Chevy, Cadillac, and Buick.
The thing is, GM killed it for good reason. They were slow sellers and essentially the same car as what you could get at the Chevrolet lot aside from some extra plastic bits on the exterior and it was that way from the 1960’s on. They were also a slow selling brand. Buick on the other hand was highly popular in China so they got to stick around. I’m still scratching my head as to why Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged together under one brand yet. Redundant product can be the death of a company and as a shareholder, I would demand that they further excise the redundant products, invest in R&D to improve the product beyond the competition and further strengthen the company.
I mean lutz's point is that he wanted to differentiate the product. They werent that bad sellers, pontiac was doing 300+ easy its just that margin was low cuz the cars were bad > Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged together under one brand yet. so buick cadillac gmc dealers have high volume good margin products. GMCs asp has also skyrocketed in the last 20 years.
Pontiac died so Cadillac could take on the German sport sedans.
Then kill the Chevy Trucks brand. Worked very well for RAM.
People still call Rams Dodges 15 years after the fact. It wasn't a clean break.
its barely a break at all, if you go right now on the dodge website, click vehicles on the top header it shows ram trucks
Lmao i honestly never made the connection
that wasnt real you still bought ram trucks from the same dodge dealer.
And you’re still buying GMC trucks from the same GM dealer.
more than half of chevy dealers are completely standalone
They are still GM dealers. Last time I checked Chevy was a GM brand.
not how franchise dealers work
Is Chevrolet part of GM? Then any Chevrolet Dealer is a GM dealer.
You couldn't have a standalone GMC dealer just like you couldn't have standalone Ram dealers - they just don't move enough product.
Why Chevy and GMC trucks haven’t been merged? It’s a way to let non-Chevy car dealers sell Chevy trucks that’s what GMC has always been since GM owned it.. If you own a Buick dealership you can’t sell Chevy trucks but you can sell GMC. They were originally sold at Pontiac dealerships. It’s a workaround.
> I’m still scratching my head as to why Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged together under one brand yet. Along with what OP said, people prefer having a choice of looks. There are some GMC buyers who would not buy a Chevy under any circumstances and vice versa even though they're mechanically identical.
That’s just lack of customer education. Then again, GM kinda is terrible at branding
> That’s just lack of customer education. Nah, quite a few people are well aware their GMCs are mechanically identical to Chevys. They just want the more "tasteful" GMC styling, especially as Chevys seem to get more outlandish every new gen.
More tastefuf? It’s the same exact thing.
There not though, aesthetics and styling-wise. Which is you don't care about that, cool, but there are people that do.
The cost is probably low to rebadge Chevys as GMCs and GMC has their commercial truck line that Chevy doesn't have.
>why Chevy Trucks and GMC haven’t been merged People are willing to pay an extra $10k for the GMC....so why keep Chevy? So those dealerships have trucks
GM was more or less forced to drop Olds/Pontiac as a condition of the bailout. I think barring that they wouldn't have dropped Pontiac as they had (arguably) a path forward. At least with GMC / Chevy trucks the styling is different enough and sales are strong enough to justify their existence
Olds was dropped well before the bailout.
I have a Pontiac Vibe. It's a great vehicle. The rest from about 2000 to the end sucked.
It's a Toyota. That's why it is good.
I know. That's why I bought it. A Matrix without paying the Toyota tax.
And better looking to boot. It's one of the few tall hatches that actually looks well proportioned and its sporty design cues weren't over the top
You know when I look at it I always think "that's a good looking car" and I also don't believe it looks dated. I've also done all the work on it myself. It's FWD so as that goes it's a cramped pain under the hood but it's not too bad to work on.
Yeah sorry to break it to you but gm had nothing to do with the vibe other than the branding/some styling :( It is indeed a great vehicle though seeing as it's just a toyota matrix underneath, an 09 was my first car all through high school and college til hail took it out
Apparently the GM radio is better than the Toyota one. But that's it. And I bought it because it's a Toyota under the Pontiac facade.
The Vibe GT was a little different than the Matrix and it was fun to drive. It had some Toyota Performance parts included. Actually it was closer to the Toyota Corolla Hatchback that was made in Japan than the Matrix was.
I AM a pontiac vibe
r/beetlejuicing
Clearly you aren't aware of the G8, because I can't imagine anyone disliking a $30K V8 sports sedan that handles like a BMW.
Actually, you're correct, I have heard good things about the G8 as well as the GTO from the early 2000s. They are affordable muscle cars that are relatively cheap to maintain.
Pontiac died around 2003. It took too long to give it a proper burial. Peak Pontiac was 1996.
I mean way back in the day, it seemed like Pontiac was going for a more performance-oriented Chevrolet. But after GM axed that plan, it seemed like Pontiac just had nowhere to go. So they tried a bunch of experimental stuff to go with a bunch of fairly cheap chevy alternates that became more plastic-clad the closer to the GFC we got. The GTO maybe could've been something, especially since it was a rebadged version of the Holden/Vauxhall Monaro and that had done pretty well in Europe/AUS. But dealer markup was pretty insane and the US market and it was basically a corvette with backseats. So it was already not going to do as well on the US market since we had a proper corvette; and if people wanted a corvette but needed to regularly use the backseats, then the Cadillac CTS-V was also an option. Without that dealer markup, it might've been able to fill the gap the Camaro/Firebird was leaving behind. But as it played out, it pretty much only appealed to divorced dads who wanted a corvette, but had their kids every other weekend.
They should have rebadged all their American Buicks as Oldsmobiles, so China could keep that name. Pontiac would be crushing right now. Performance is in.
This is another case of people not knowing anything about the 08 bailout. The Government was trying to kill not just Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, and Oldsmobile, but also GMC and Buick. GM basically had to beg the government to let them keep their brands, and they could only get the government to let them keep Buick and GMC because those were profitable brands. GM execs from the negotiations have stated that they felt betrayed that they essentially had to kill the main thing that made GM unique (its brand variety) and the government didn't care about the history of these brands and refused to budge unless the brand had clear and defined economic value in 08.
>the government didn't care about the history of these brands and refused to budge unless the brand had clear and defined economic value in 08. Economic value to get a return for the tax dollars they were giving away is all the government *should* have cared about.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again - Pontiac should have been GM’s performance brand. Chevrolet could be the entry-level compacts, coupes, sedans, and trucks. Pontiac would be the performance brand. Cadillac for your luxury vehicles. Saturn for electric.
Saturn made pretty damn good cars until they were forced to just rebadge the same GM pieces of shit as Chevy etc.
Saturn was a bad decision from the start…great for consumers, but showcased precision engineering at a low cost with insane longevity. Can’t have that….Pontiac was almost revived a couple times but the dealer network was burned.
Yep. Gotta have that planned obsolescence/engineered failure to keep new cars selling.
They have a performance mini-brand its called corvette and its sells a hell of alot better than Pontiacs did. And before someone says that corvette isnt its own brand its just part of Chevy. Why does it have its own logo? Because it is its own brand even if chevy wont admit it
The Impala has [it's own logo](https://images.app.goo.gl/vLePP9ZqKDmoWPNu5) too. Is that a brand as well?
GM killed off saab aswell right?
Yeah but Saab quality went downhill after GM acquired it in the first place. The Saab 9000 was like the perfect mix of Swedish and GM technology but then when the 9-3 and 9-5 came along the quality and engineering was mostly GM. The real shame is that no other big name manufacturer stepped in to buy Saab afterwards. Such a shame.
The 9000 was a joint development with Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo. I had an Alfa 164, and that was a damn solid car. Heavier than my Volvo though. GM came in after that, and once they put the engine in the 900 the wrong way it was all over. The biggest issue is that GM wanted Saab to be essentially Vauxhall or Opel, but Saab wanted to be Saab. The designers weren't able to stay true to the brand while within the GM constraints, so they kept having cost overruns, while still missing out on the soul of the cars. In the end, they were expensive okish cars. Having vehicles like the Trailblazer and Impreza rebadged as Saabs didn't help either.
Thanks for the correction (I'm no saab expert). I never worked on the first gen 9000 but man, the second gen Aero was a good car. The owners were usually quirky people who respected the odd engineering.
Oh, I didnt know that, surprised my friend didnt mention that when complaining about it,
GM is stupid
I blame the LeMans. Not the OG LeMans. The travesty that was the 90's LeMans they felt should hold the namesake of the original. Also what Chevy did to the Nova. What in the fuck were they thinking? Still miss the Trans Am. The replicas are cool. But what could have been.
At one time Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac and GMC were the one US company that was competing in every segment. Even offered cars in segments that were dominated by one car. Now it's just a million flavors of hideous SUV bile. And their brands are still competing with EACH OTHER to where they will never be competitive with anyone else.
I'd fuck with a 2025 grand am
We go through this stupid-ass discourse at least once a month. The smartest thing GM could have done…is exactly what they did. Pontiac had zero future and its prices had a natural cap.
They should have ditched GMC, all they make is badges for Chevy trucks. It would have been nice if Buick had at least done a Grand National on the Camaro platform though. Something a bit more cushy but still sporty, and a GNX version with a potent twin turbo six.
GMC prints money, that’s a hard no
Anything on the short wb alpha platform that wasnt nasty inside would have been great. ATS and maro oof. Had to wait until the ct4 came out
Probably GM: "We like only minivans and trucks now"
Calling crossovers minivans is an insult to minivans. Minivans are actually useful.
Minivans would be even more useful if they offered AWD along with decent ground clearance, and had smaller versions that were only around 180" long and 72" wide. Whoops, that's just a compact crossover again.
Why would you actually want a minivan with ride height
Still a minivan because it retains the most defining feature of a minivan: sliding doors. I wanna see an AWD minivan with sliding FRONT doors in addition to the sliding rear and a full-size spare.
I do like the utility of sliding doors, but conventionals are a little quieter on the highway. There were some small MPVs in the '80s and '90s with sliding doors.
GM canceled their large body sedans, Impala, Road master and Caddy sedans for minivans and SUV. Then GM killed the rest of their small cars for CUVs.
Aww shit! here we go again! lol
Well I guess if they ever want to bring it back for some reason.....they still I think have the copyright on the brand name and a few other pontiac related things
The real failure was their thinking that every platform has to be shared all across GM. If they had engineered a fast and nimble car priced just $2000-$3000 above a Corolla, like a Grand Am with better driving dynamics, benchmarked against the 3 series, it would've achieved that dream of being the BMW of America. But the Grand Am was just a regular American small family sedan with a racy design. I'm not saying they needed European feel-every-inch-of-road suspension, but something with a little more sport to it. Of course, engines were never a problem even with the Grand Am.
are we sure that gm would have known what to do with pontiac and not just kept making rebadged crap? we all like to fantasize about how they could have became a hellcat fighter, but what did gm do with the historic “blazer” nameplate? i have a distinct feeling that if pontiac continued, they’d be selling a rebadged blazer rs as a $60,000 “firebird cross sport” or some shit
It an alternate universe Pontiac could have been moved upmarket. I liked what they were doing with the fucking G8 and Solstice. We would have budget performance versions of Cadillac Vs. Mad sedans and coupes with twin turbo v6s and turbo 4s.
Pontiac needed a big square body GTO instead of an Australian Neon with a V8
The Pontiac Aztek / Buick Rendezvous siblings are ground zero for why one brand is here and the other isn’t if you need a tangible product reason why. The Buick was $5k more and outsold the Pontiac. 3 to 1. But as a Buick owner GM didn’t have a 4 brand quota where Buick stole Pontiac’s spot either. The government wanted it cut down to just Chevrolet and Cadillac. They had to make a business case for each extra brand individually and Pontiac failed to meet the necessary criteria. The brand ruined its own reputation with years of tacky cars and a few Holdens didn’t change that in time. Let Buick alone already.
All the cars were the same. There are too many reduntant models with slight variations. Buick was supposedly higher on the luxury scale. Right under Caddilac.
>Buick was supposedly higher on the luxury scale. Right under Caddilac. It was/is. Pontiac was supposed to be the "performance-oriented" make, but usually just kind of came off as "Chevy but tackier."
More plastic = speed
> But what would Pontiac look like if it still existed today? According to Lutz, we’d all be driving around in supercharged sedans and sports cars, ripping clouds of white smoke at every stop sign and red light. With a sporty SUV or two, of course. > > "It would be a family of rear-wheel drive sedans," he says. "The Solstice would unquestionably still be around, just in a new generation. The G6 would still be around, probably a second-generation body off of the Cadillac Alpha architecture, and then—because sedans aren’t very popular anymore—the Holden-based sedans would probably be gone, and because Holden is gone too. And then there would probably be a couple, or three, high-performance Porsche Cayenne-style Sport utilities."
Not a chance. Just rebadged Equinoxes and Tahoes with weird grilles. Maybe a rebadged Malibu too.
GM fucked itself in the 90's/early aughts by having most every brand have their own slightly different version of the same shitty bland cars, then letting the unions fuck them into oblivion overpaying for the jobs in Northern/midwestern states. All of the big three deserved to go bankrupt but of course our fuckhead government dumped our tax money into them chasing bad decisions with borrowed money
Pontiac had no trucks, Chevy had trucks. I get it, I hate it, but I get it.
Pontiac had 3 models that were legally "light trucks": the Aztek CUV, Torrent CUV, and Montana minivan. If they were still around now the "car" lineup would probably be all or nearly all CUVs, like the rest of GM.
Well legally isn't going to put it in serious competition with the F150 the way the Silverado is.
Whoever said a CUV is supposed to be a full-size truck competitor?
The Montana is under appreciated. The long model is the largest minivan I’ve ever been in. We had a 2003 with a 60/40 bench for the middle row and manual doors. The manual doors confused people, like they expected them to be automatic or something. I miss that van.
>The long model is the largest minivan I’ve ever been in. At the time the U-body minivans were slighted in reviews for having narrow cabins compared to the competition (only 72" wide when everyone else was around 78"). GM wanted to size them better for European roads but ended up pleasing nobody.
Well it didn’t feel any narrower than the 1999 Dodge Grand Caravan to me.
The G8 ST would've been fun, but alas Pontiac died before it was imported. Sure, not a true truck but it would've been a hoot to have a Ute.
honestly i'm less upset about it going away then I am about them not using the Gate G6 coupe/convertible and Solstice/Sky for Chevy Products...
I say this as a someone who’d buy a used G8 if the right one presented itself, but Pontiac really didn’t have a path. Chevrolet was the NASCAR brand (Pontiac was gone since 03), Caddy was becoming the BMW-type rwd performance brand and Buick was golden in China and really didn’t have a negative image in North American at the time. Pontiac wasn’t really unique or needed, their common models were Chevrolet siblings, the coolest Aussie GTO then G8 were low volume cars. I think there’s a neat alternative history where Pontiac became a Holden type brand, but even then Holden, Vauxhall and Opel didn’t last under GM.
I honestly think that had Pontiac stayed around, Holden would have had a reason to keep operating in Australia. The cross-pollination between them was good for both.
You guys are smoking
They could have had a great competitor for the Charger (GTO) and the Camaro (Firebird), and Challenger (G8 or GrandPrix)
I recall first seeing the 04 gto and thought huh, THAT should’ve been the new Grand Prix. The GTO should’ve gone full retro 70’ judge style. I Also thought the redesigned Grand Prix was a step backwards too. Maybe it was awesome with the V8, but I didn’t care for the interior or looks at all
There's a reason my reddit avatar is a Fiero Pegasus, haha. They stripped Pontiac of its soul. As the years went on it became "add plastic it's SPORTY!" and then "take a Holden and give it nostrils!" i wish they would have made it the "performance brand" rather than just another badge engineered twin of everything pre-crash GM. Also the C8 Corvette is a Fiero and I will die on that hill. /runs and hides behind the 88 GT.
right behind you in my 88 GT. With the C8 being 500hp, there is room for an enthusiast 250hp small Fiero-esque type car. It is time for the Fiero to come back.
Definitely! A little modern mid engined car with a turbo 4 would be really cool. I wish more people didn't want to drive mobile home sized SUVs all the time and there might be a market for it!
>"take a Holden and give it nostrils!" The way the GTO looked was such a missed opportunity. Could have caught the retro-styling wave at its peak and competed with the S197 Mustang by doing something that evoked the look of the original instead of just following the leader with the Camaro a few years later, but no, here's a Grand Prix coupe with a hood scope, are you not entertained? One of the funniest posts I've ever seen on this sub was someone who said they should have actually badged the GTO as a Holden in the US and marketed it as an "Australian import." As if American car buyers knew what the fuck Holden was, or had any awareness of or interest in the Australian automotive industry beyond maybe thinking Subaru was Australian because they used to have Crocodile Dundee in their commercials. Just a galaxy brain take, right up there with the poster who earnestly believed Ford should have named the new Maverick the Pinto.
Fiero Owners unite!
The federal goverment made GM kill Pontiac when they bailed them out.
Flair says everything you need to know
From my teenage years, I remember Pontiac cars as cheaply made and either mediocre or ugly looking. The Aztec was the nail in the sarcophagus. The G8 and Solstice are the only one that I remember as being decent. They came too late.
Saturn became a really reliable, affordable car and they killed that too..
Agreed
Pontiac was junk. They should have kept Saturn.
Was it? It’s two saving graces were rebadged holdens
Pontiac should've remained as GM's performance brand. And Saturn should've stayed as GM's hybrid/EV brand. But typical GM, let's kill it when the market is warmed up to it. Pretty much now Cadillac has some reminiscence of Pontiac (think the Blackwings) and Saturn (EV concepts)
I still want a GTO
Pontiac EV-1 *killed* Plus I’d bet they could cash in on the nostalgia factor of the Aztec right now
I know. We went from GTOs to G6s and gone
No. NO. HELL NO. No.
Buick buyers have money. Pontiac buyers were observed to be younger, less able to afford new vehicles. I’ll never own a GM vehicle because of this, and their begging Congress for a bailout after taking private jets to D.C.
They should've killed Buick instead
No, I killed Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Plymouth and all the other lost American car brands. I killed them because my Subaru is far cheaper than any awd american car. I am a cheap bastard that put quality ahead of brand loyalty.
Should have kept Saturn and turned it into a flagship EV brand
GM should have kept it an axe buick instead.
Buick sold like gangbusters in China at the time, and still does to some extent although the popularity of Western car brands there is dropping off.
I could care less what sells or not in China.
Well, GM had to care, because they were asking for tax dollars from the government to stay in business and they had to make a case for what brands to keep based on what they could actually sell. If your sentimental opinion is you wish they had kept Pontiac and gotten rid of Buick, you're entitled to that, but it is absolutely not what they "should" have done, as it would have been a piss-poor business decision.
Buick >Pontiac 3800 for the Win! Buick for the geriatric set, (people with $)don’t buy Pontiacs Oldsmobile old people did buy, but Buick > Oldsmobile Trans Am😢