Another PONTIAC story!

[BigAls87Z28]

Make it look like an old one. That's it. GTO outsold ls1 trans ams year after year.
Gtot wouldn't save ****. A really good G6 would. That with a really good G5. GTO might have been a good halo var but hats I.
Problem is that you can't make three really good cars with a budget that car hardly support two.

[BigAls87Z28]

Looking at sales numbers the cobalt sold over ten thousand. Impreza was three. I'd say its a safe bet that the ss out sells the wrx.

[NJSPEEDER]

Originally Posted by BigAls87Z28

Well, its been 40 years and they havent made jack.
People get teary eyed about these classic muscle cars when most couldnt out-drag race a Solstice GXP or a Cobalt SS.
Its sad, but Pontiac stopped being relevant and now its just overlap.

The overlap and loss of image of the brand is a mess that GM created. How do you hand a brand the title of "Excitement Division" then stop advertising and racing it?

They screwed the pooch and it all started a long time ago. Just took a while for the sum total of the mess to get noticed or become important enough for them to bother doing anything about. Now that time is at hand and it is way too late.

GM made the mess and soon they won't be a company of any kind anymore. Congrats to them for making a mess of every individual brands image to the point that they are all meaningless in the broader market.

[BigAls87Z28]

When was the last time pontiac went racing? They didn't start racing till recently with the gto in formula drift and rolex. The with solstice and g6. And they won races! Sales kept dropping.
They did better with fwd w bodies, minivans and sunfires. Again this the best line up from an enthusiast point of view then ever before. You don't to buy a pontiac now then you were never gonna buy one.

[PolarBear]

Originally Posted by LS1Hawk

Pontiac WAS a performance brand. It went from a lineup in the 60s with cars like the LeMans, GTO, Catalina 2+2, Firebird and Grand Prix - all performance vehicles relative to their time - to the Gsh*ts of today.

What (not sure you do or not) most people do not realize is these cars did not start out to be "muscle cars". They became what people made them out to be. Car comanies like Pontiac need more reagular cars to support one or maybe two performance cars.
Unfortunately I agree with the statements that Pontiac has been dead for quite some time. Gm really has been competing with its self with the re-badging off other platforms Pontiac hasnt been showing any excitement for a while, really the only thing they got from rebadging were some luxury upgrades that were standard that may have been upgrades on other vehicles.

I for one will TRUELY miss Pontiac as an owner of 4 of them and wanting at least 2 of the current/upcoming vehicles.

[LS1Hawk]

Originally Posted by Frosty

You think so? I don't know...one car that was slated for a 3yr run can't save a car company IMO.

I personally don't get all excited about the GTO, I think they're over-hyped but what did GM do so horribly wrong that went against what people wanted?

When they brought the GTO to the market, both Bob Lutz and I can't remember her name, but some female executive within Pontiac said the GTO would be Pontiac's flagship and stand as an example of the direction in design the brand would take. From my understanding, the Monaro the GTO was based off of was a design going back to 1997. Shouldn't design be new and fresh, not 6 years old? I think that went against what people wanted. Even if it was only intended to be around for 3 years, they could have really nailed the design and said this is sign of things to come at Pontiac.

[BigAls87Z28]

The GTO took a very popular Monaro coupe and brought it here with a few modifications.

If GM were to make it Retro, it would cost GM millions of dollars and we would probably have seen the GTO probably around last year. Problem is, that the VY/VZ chassis wasnt making it past 06.
So GM took a great performance coupe, gave it twin kidney's and dropped it off in America.

The GTO was the direction that Pontiac wanted to go. Maybe not design wise, but in execution wise, yes. G8 carries the same execution.