Whenever General Motors announces a hot, sexy sports car that’s supposed to dethrone BMW, a little piece of me dies. That’s the part of me that grew-up watching Smoky and The Bandit (over and over), yearning for my very own Trans Am adorned with a giant, screaming chicken. Nowadays, it seems everyone in The General’s army is allowed to have a bona-fide sports car except, ironically, their sports division. That ain’t right.
Let’s face it: the last few decades haven’t been kind to Pontiac fans. We’ve suffered through a roll call of automotive abortions: the listless Pontiac Firefly, the dishonestly named Pontiac Trans Sport, the justifiably maligned Aztek and Pontiac designers’ obsession with ungodly plastic body kit (its poster child being the jello-mobile known as the Grand Am). And the hits keep not happening.
With the recent announcement of a turbo-charged Chevrolet Cobalt SS, and the possibility of the SS moniker being applied to Corvette ZR1 and HHR-wagon, all hope for a Pontiac revival is now dead-– at least for me. For those of us who are counting, General Motors has missed five opportunities to re-invigorate Pontiac in the last five years.
This torturous prolongation of Pontiac’s imminent death began with the Solstice concept. Oddly enough, GM actually decided to badge the roadster as a Pontiac, rather than, say, a Hummer or a Buick. Having experienced the recent products of The General’s car-birthing process on countless visits to Avis rent-a-car, I can only attribute this brilliant decision to blind luck. Regardless, I was elated that, perhaps, the General was finally getting serious about their erstwhile excitement division.
The Solstice was so gorgeous it was hard to believe it shares its DNA with anything other than the Chevrolet Corvette. Unlike the Corvette, the Solstice was born a work in progress: crude chassis, irritating ragtop mechanism, scary handling, and a useless trunk. In fact, the Solstice was outclassed by the Mazda Miata in every important metric save power and looks. Not to belabor the point, but looks and power are perhaps the least important attributes of a small, cheap roadster. Further dilution occurred when the Solstice was given a saturnine cousin.
Next came news that GM was developing a car on the Nürburgring. Terrific, thought I, a big brother to the Solstice! Unfortunately, that car turned out to be the Cadillac CTS. I have no doubts that the Caddy is a terrific value (once incentives are factored in, obviously) blessed with genuine grunt and pistonhead poise. Still, the question remains and must be posed: “What the Hell is Cadillac doing testing a car on the Nürburgring?”
GM then decided to import the aesthetically bland Holden Monaro from Australia and perform am utterly lazy re-badging that harkened back to the days of the Chevrolet Chevette and Pontiac T1000/Acadian. American muscle cars should adhere to what I call the “Schwarzenegger Principle.” Arnie didn’t grow muscles and depilitate his delts with the intention of buttoning his shirt. In automotive terms, muscle cars should never pack ridiculous amounts of displacement while looking like a suppository. The GTO, unfortunately, looked right at home beside the Pontiac Grand Prix. In other words, it was dead on arrival.
And still I kept the faith– until GM announced it was developing a world-wide, world-class world-heavyweight-title rear-wheel drive platform. Finally! Visions of a modern GTO or Firebird danced in my head. Then, Rick Wagoner pulled the veil on the all new… Chevrolet Camaro.
If it had all ended there, with GM throwing up its hands and admitting “We suck at brand management,” the story’d be over. Instead, the General chose to tease us with a rebadged Aussie import. GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz announced this possible, hyper-likely, in-development, BMW-destroying, Hyundai-undercutting, CAFE-endangered GTO for 2010.
Yeah, right. We may be oxymorons, but Pontiac cognoscenti have heard that tune before– and we know it always manages to end-up off-key. We shall see what we shall see.
Meanwhile and anyway, my bridge too far arrived when GM tossed the lion’s share of its racing budget at Cadillac and Chevrolet. Though Chevrolet is historically entrenched in NASCAR and endurance racing, the introduction of a competitive Cadillac CTS made me hurl. The “standard of the world” does not belong on a race track any more than it belongs on the Green Hell. Imagine how ridiculous a Rolls Royce Phantom would look with a racing spoiler. Pontiac, with its storied past in Trans Am racing, should have campaigned its G8.
For now, the upcoming Cobalt Turbo SS is the non-Vette buying, GM-supporter’s only new “performance” car. The new ‘Balt is just another promising machine destined not to darken a Pontiac showroom. This time, I won’t be waiting. If Pontiac can be boiled down to a bad roadster, a re-badged Toyota, a re-badged Holden and re-badged Chevy SUV, it’s time to move on.
At least we’ll have the G8. But that’s not a proper sports-car, now is it.
I’ve also felt from the beginning that the Camaro was a bad idea – it should’ve gone ONLY to Pontiac.
The Solstice is too little too late for Pontiac. Outside of that we have several sedans that are anonymous at best and a shared effort with Toyota. If Toyota pulls the plug on the NUMMI Matrix then that will be that.
Buick used to make performance cars too, damn fast ones at that ( GN, GNX, GSX, Wildcat to name a few) and they moved to challange Lexus for supremacy. At least they have a proper goal.
Why would someone choose a Pontiac over a Nissan or Hyundai these days? Style? Prestige? Performance? The Holden is the only one that delivers on performance and it’s an import, and a slow seller at that.
Unlike the Corvette, the Solstice was born a work in progress: crude chassis, irritating ragtop mechanism, scary handling, and a useless trunk. Throw in underpowered and you're describing the first few years of Corvette perfectly. However, GM won't nurture the Solstice like they did the 'Vette. They'll let it languish, then kill it for poor sales. They did the same the last time they gave Pontiac a small two-seater: the Fiero. Flammability notwithstanding, by the time they got through massaging it and fixing its problems, they'd turned it into a decent competitor for the MR2 But then instead of letting it develop a following in that niche, they killed it because it wasn't selling like a family sedan. I give the Solstice three more years at the most.
what 's wrong with this looks-like -big-3 ? they haven`t made a single damn coupe/sedan platform for the last 400 years or so. looks like they are ready to borrow it even from yugo zastava, just to avoid engineering.bororw, bororw, rbadge, borrow. Are your engineers superretarded or superunderpaid? what the f…? soon a mud splasher designing will bee too complex task for a gm. such a shame……… and Pontiac ? does it have a single it`s own unique model, that wouldn`t be outsourced? you can build world class cars? then why the f.. you outsource them? don`t even dare to leave without answering…..opel camaroooooooooooo
::sigh::
Oh Pontiac. When I was 16 I just loved Pontiac, the marketing goosed me right where I wanted it, I really thought the Grand Prix a tougher more mansome versions of my dad’s Lumina. The Firebird/Trans Am left the Camaro about as appealing as a wheelchair in comparison.
This G8 is fantastic, 4-stars, A+ megasexiness, if the pictures do it any justice and the performance matches the reports. I hope it indicates a realignment of the Pontiac brand as a unique sporting division, not just platform rebadges with tighter suspensions. It might trickle down over the next few years when the G6 is updated, the G5 gotten rid of, and the Vibe is given a G name. Idunno. It probably won’t happen and Pontiac will shrivel on the vine, but I’m really hoping the G8 is a sign of things to come.
If Caddy is so sporting and Chevy puts out SS models…why bother with Pontiac at all?
“I’ve also felt from the beginning that the Camaro was a bad idea – it should’ve gone ONLY to Pontiac.”
Remember- before the Pontiac Firebird was a Firebird it was a Chevrolet Camaro!!!
Captive imports typically have the longevity of a fruit fly, which crushes resale value. Obtaining competent repairs and sourcing parts is near impossible.
Genius of Bob Lutz at work, obviously. All this happened on his watch, right?
Justin Berkowitz :
November 1st, 2007 at 1:37 pm
At least we’ll have the G8. But that’s not a proper sports-car, now is it.
BMW is a sporty brand whose flagships are sold with 4-doors (M3, M5). Is the G8 gonna be that good though?
(Does that even merit an answer?)
“If Caddy is so sporting and Chevy puts out SS models…why bother with Pontiac at all?”
Don’t forget Saturn’s Red Line models and Buick’s forthcoming Supers. Every division is the performance division now, apparently.
It’s especially galling when you consider that Pontiac fired the opening salvo in the muscle cars wars with the GTO and fired the final, parting shot with the Super Duty 455 Trans Ams.
What about the Pontiac GXP.R that’s running in the Rolex Grand-Am series? It’s the only car in the GT series that doesn’t have a retail equivalent. Sure, it was somewhat shaped to look like a G6, but the last I checked the G6 was pulled by the wrong wheels.
garllo:
November 1st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
“I’ve also felt from the beginning that the Camaro was a bad idea – it should’ve gone ONLY to Pontiac.”
Remember- before the Pontiac Firebird was a Firebird it was a Chevrolet Camaro!!!
Actually they came out at the same time exactly – 1967.
Ok back to the subject at hand. Pontiac historically (at least in the 60’s) represented cheap thrills to the kids of that era. Sure there were Catalinas, Bonnies, and Grand Prix but what ignited the auto lust of the teenagers were the Goat and the ‘bird – cheap, affordable, go-fast hardware that looked the part. Pontiac in it’s current form is not able to deliver that kind of thrills per dollar quotient. A Trans-AM version of the new Camaro? At 35+ g’s? No kid working an entry level job is gonna afford that, just aging, balding, middle age men (like me, ha!) who want to relive their reckless youth. G8? Same problem. sure it will be a lot less pricey than a Bimmer (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be much more reliable too) but the kids can’t afford it. And if you could afford it, why not spend a little more and get the Bimmer, Infinity, or Lexus?
So where does that leave Pontiac? It can’t be super lux (Caddy), everyman (Chevy), near lux (Buick), or import fighter (Saturn) – it can’t even be “born from jets”. The only segment that I can see is the youth market. I’m thinking Scion and even Mazda. But other than the Vibe, it doesn’t have the product for this market. So that means GM can either A. Spend billions on reorienting the brand with new products or B. Do what it’s doing now – a little bit ‘o ‘dis and a little bit ‘o ‘dat – leaving Pontiac to twist in the wind.
Scratch the power advantage for the SLOstice, the extra 7 ponies get to pull a 400 lb. lard-butt.
The ONLY area it beats the Miata is looks…and the guy who penned it now works for Mazda.
At least GM produces ironic situations for our entertainment.
And while it may not burst into flames (yet?), it was at the very bottom of the latest CR survey. Didn’t El kaBob say quality was a top priorty on this baby? Fiero II, in my book.
Enjoy,
Bunter
DirtBag :
November 1st, 2007 at 3:27 pm
What about the Pontiac GXP.R that’s running in the Rolex Grand-Am series? It’s the only car in the GT series that doesn’t have a retail equivalent.
Good comment!
However, in GT racing, if it’s not a modified production car that is sold to the public, what is the point really? The whole point of GT racing is to showcase what production cars could be capable of. GT racing is all about image and credibility. The fact that GM runs a car so different than what it sells to normal folks has the inverse effect of making the everyday G6 GXP look even worse!
A better example is to look at what Corvette Racing has achieved. Their domination of GT in ALMS and past domination of Le Mans has been instrumental in establishing credibility for the Corvette as a world-class sports car. Today, when people say the C6-Z06 can outrun a 911 Turbo (assuming a nice, glossy track with no ground effects), the reason people don’t laugh is because the Corvette’s dominance is beyond refute.
We can not say the same for Pontiac.
bfg9k :
November 1st, 2007 at 2:41 pm
If Caddy is so sporting and Chevy puts out SS models…why bother with Pontiac at all?
I think you may be on to something there.
No point in giving a cushy corner office to the guy who’s destined to be “downsized” next month, is there? My guess is that when GM hits rough(er) seas, Pontiac will be the first brand thrown overboard (though I guess if you wanted to be pedantic you could say the second after Oldsmobile.)
There is simply no reason for Pontiac to exist, 30 year old Burt Reynolds movies notwithstanding…
I would guess that the GXP.R in the Grand Am Series is just a temporary replacement model of the GTO.R until they make a new G8.R in the next year or two.
Hello! This is MY remembrance of Pontiac:
15 yr old Terry, Dad at the wheel of his new ’67 GTO, drag racing with my uncle with his ’67 428H.O. Gran Prix.
2 years later I’m driving the GTO, 2 other friends with a ’65 GTO and a ’66 GTO Tri-Power. Fast times for high school.
Yes the leaves have turned and the mornings are cold.The rag top Firebird goes down for the long winter nap.I fire up the old Grand Am GT with the wrong wheel drive.A quik once over at my mechanic,and wer’e on the road again.
She runs and looks as good as it did 7 yrs ago when I drove it off the lot Not real fast, but fast enough leather seats and a monsoon radio.Resale value 4000 $?
Damn right PONTIAC still excites this old boy
Maybe it is just me, but I don’t find the Solstice good looking at all. Instead of being sleek, low slung, and sexy like a roadster should be, it’s a porker. It is the fat roadster for fat Americans.
My memory of Pontiac is the;
Grand Safari wagon with the electric clamshell rear door and a few blown transmissions.
1970s and 1980s Trans Ams driven by rejects
The Daewoo Lemans!
hate the Aztek all you want, it was a better car than any of those.
Oddly enough, the only really good Pontiac my family owned was a 1984 Sunbird my brother had.
+1 for Screaming Chicken Trans Am. I liked it better than the Camaro. There was a Mountain Dew commercial that featured a black one like in the photo about a year ago, I think.
It’s not just you, qwerty. The Solstice is just a blob, not nearly as handsome as the Saturn Sky, which the editorial didn’t bother to mention–would have been only more painful for the author, I suppose.
James2: I did mention it (read more closely), but that’s beside the point. The editorial focused on Pontiac. The fact that Saturn was given a sister copy is just another nail in the coffin.
So what if the Sky is gorgeous? Why is Saturn getting a copy when Pontiac is the sporty brand?
I can not think of a single good reason why Pontiac still exists. GM has managed it into the dirt.
It reminds me of an old saying: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t manage it to drink.”
Say what you like about Alfred Sloan, but GM hasn’t had a real leader since him. Oddly enough, Sloan is often referred to as one of the fathers of modern management. Somehow he “managed” to keep a confederation of passionate and brilliant division leaders, designers and engineers making magic for decades. Now there is no magic left because there hasn’t been any real leadership at GM (or Ford and now at Chrysler) for a long, long time.
In the US the only brands still relevant for GM are Chevrolet and Cadillac, and both are on life support.
Even mighty GMC has been neutered. Up into the 1960s GMC had some overlap with Chevrolet trucks, but then picked up into heavier duty units above the Chevrolet lineup. GMC had a super stout V-6 engine all to itself which is legendary. Now a GMC truck is nothing but a quick nose job on a Chevy. Why bother?
I must disagree with this piece. Anyone who believed Pontiac to be an excitement division clearly has been sipping on John DeLorean’s kool-aid.
Even in the heyday of the muscle car era, Pontiac only had two vehicles of significance, the Firebird/Trans Am and the GTO. Compare that to Chevrolet who had SS versions of the Nova, Chevelle, Camaro, and Impala.
Even during the 70’s Chevrolet made attempts to keep up with the performance envelope with the Cosworth Vega. What did Pontiac bring to the table? Nothing.
The 80’s came around, and GM had only one RWD platform around, the G-Body. Even among this stalwart, Pontiac brought nothing to the table. Chevrolet had the Monte Carlo SS, Olds had the Cutlass Supreme 442, Buick came to bat with the Grand National. What did Pontiac do with their Grand Prix? Nothing.
Sure, they might have teased us with the Fiero and what might have been had GM went ahead and did the right thing by dropping in the Oldsmobile developed Quad4, and they teased us again when they teamed up with McLaren/ASC to turbo up the Grand Prix. But when you look back, you’ll find a division who’s legacy to excitement is two cars, one of them being a badge-engineered clone.
Pontiac never was about excitement, just the image of it, propped up by a man smart enough to scream, “First!!!” when it came to the muscle car wars. Bob Lutz didn’t kill this puppy, it was in a persistent vegetative state long before his arrival.
Even in the heyday of the muscle car era, Pontiac only had two vehicles of significance, the Firebird/Trans Am and the GTO. Compare that to Chevrolet who had SS versions of the Nova, Chevelle, Camaro, and Impala.
What about the Catalinas with the 421SD? Or, the Grand Prixs and Bonnevilles fitted with the 421SD, and later the 428 or 455?
too many brands to prop up.
If Pontiac disappeared who would really notice anyway?
Only Pontiac experience is that my son had a 1997 Sunfire. Underpowered beyond belief and wrong wheel drive. Can’t imagine driving an automatic version.
windswords: Actually they came out at the same time exactly – 1967.
The Camaro debuted in the fall of 1966 (the normal introduction time for the next year’s models in those days).
The Firebird didn’t debut until early 1967, or about six months after the Camaro.
“What the Hell is a Cadillac doing testing a car on the Nürburgring?”
Exactly. You buy a BMW because it’s engineered, assembled and tuned to be driven on the Autobahn (even though you’ll be driving this vehicle over here at 65mph on crappy highways and interstates).
You buy Caddie’s “professional grade” sports sedans because of marketing hype and posture. You definately don’t buy them for the history of driving these vehicle at their limits for years on end.
Well maybe that’s not fair; I’m sure there are 10 or 20 Caddies on the Autobahn at any one moment. That’s a nice sample size…
A few quick items here…
The Pontiac Grand Am did extremely well for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, GM let the basic design languish for WAY too long. As a result they thought the name had a negative connotation to it and shelved it. Quite a dumb move since the Grand Am was a strong selling compact for most of it’s life.
Grand Am’s tend to do very well in the 7+ year old used car market due to it’s uniqueness for that time. The exhaust growl, the upscale options in a compact, and it’s practicality were unique for their time. Unfortunately the Civic, 3, Focus, and Elantra came to the fore and more or less made the Grand Am a remnant of a bygone era.
but what about the G6 GXP!
For $10,000 more, I get . . . .. a cheap plastic . . bodykit? and a batmobile spoiler? and a few extra horsepower? and some gaudy rims?
oh forget it.
OH come on, Pontiac made a few “big” engined cars in the 1960s and some half ass trans-ams from the 1970s until the late 1990s. WTF is all this talk about Pontiac being some kind of performance brand? Get it a break and stop all of this waxing nastolgia about what truly never was!
I’m sorry I almost forgot about that bastard child name the Fiero.
As far as I can tell Pontiacs idea of a performance car in the 70s and 80s was a fake sportcars instrament panel full of blank gauges and a column shifter.
Toyota has more of a performanc heritage than Pontiac!
geeber:
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 am
windswords: Actually they came out at the same time exactly – 1967.
The Camaro debuted in the fall of 1966 (the normal introduction time for the next year’s models in those days).
The Firebird didn’t debut until early 1967, or about six months after the Camaro.
—–
True, but the delay was a planned market introduction. the two cars were developed side by side. It wasn’t like they intro’d the Camaro in the fall of ’66 and then slapped themselves in the forehead and said “hey, we should make a Pontiace version too!”
De Lorean had wanted to build a Pontiac sports car in the mid-sixties, the Banshee, which would’ve had a fiberglass body and either Pontiac’s OHC six or the 326 V-8. (The Banshee was actually built, and was auctioned off a few years ago.) The corporation refused to build it because they didn’t see it as a volume product, even at a base price of around $2,500 (which would’ve made it competitive with the Mustang in cost).
Pontiac in the sixties had a performance image, which is definitely not the same thing as having all the cars in their line-up being performance models. It was mostly a clever marketing campaign built around the publicity effect of the GTO; the Super Duty models died in ’63 after Frederic Donner’s infamous “no more racing” memo. You could still get some powerful engines in most Pontiacs, not just the GTO (don’t forget the equivalent Catalina 2+2), and the mid-60’s Ponchos had arguably the best styling of their A- and B-body relatives. By the late 60’s they had the Firebird and the G-body Grand Prix, which was basically a long-nose GTO. But, other than some clever marketing gimmicks, that was about it.
The thing is, it worked. Pontiac sales for ’69 were over 900,000, #3 in the industry. It wasn’t a matter of doing anything radically different, just of putting the right pieces and the right marketing cues in the right places. In the 70’s, after De Lorean was moved to Chevy, they immediately fell on hard times — they tried to expand both up-market and down-market at the same time, their image became hazy, and their quality sank. In the early part of the decade they had the SD455 and a few things like that, but by the end of it their bread-and-butter product was mostly indistinguishable from Chevy’s.
The Fiero was, as another poster mentioned, a repetition of the Banshee problem. It was initially developed as a cheap sports car to compete with the likes of the Fiat X1/9. The corporation didn’t bite. Instead of giving up, the division pitched it as a cheap commuter car, leading the resulting car (until close to the end of its life) to be hopelessly compromised such that it was neither a good economy car nor much of a sportster.
windswords: Nope, the Firebird was not developed side by side with the Camaro. Ed Cole came to John De Lorean, then GM of Pontiac, in May ’66 and told him to develop a Pontiac version of the Camaro (which was on track for introduction at the end of September). It was very much a last-minute effort.
(I recently wrote about the birth of the Firebird here.)
The assumption that GM wants Pontiac (or Buick) to succeed is probably false. Best way to get rid of a division without inciting dealer ire is to just make no products that sell. Seems that given the products they produce for Pontiac, GM must have a motive, and as is often the case following the money leads to a conclusion that GM is trying to kill the brand. Which is obviously a good idea as GM has too many brands, too many dealers, and too many models.
There is only one company in the world that can build a BMW, and that’s BMW. There is a core BMW customer — certainly the minority portion of their market — that understands how a BMW drives and why, and fully appreciates both. Even if another company builds a BMW clone that achieves the same performance results, it will not be recognized by this core customer as delivering the sensory experience of a BMW. Then there’s the rest of the BMW market, which is comprised of brand buyers who know little of the product but they value (or are slave to) the social aura accorded BMW ownership in some circles. This buyer is difficult to peel away because owning something else won’t feel the same either. But it’s not the product as much as the knowing social acceptance of being in a desired circle.
Pontiac should not try to build BMWs. Cadillacs shouldn’t be BMWs either, but they should have the performance metrics in certain models, and the tech & luxury cred. GM will be better off when it lets Pontiac build Pontiacs.
Forget the aimless years. No, make that decades. And forget about the other eras when Pontiacs were a little premium but dull. “Wide Track,” and all that was a response to making previously pedestrian Pontiacs relevant to a volcanic youth culture during a time of generational change. It was during an era of brand resurgence powered by engineered marketing and engineering, that Pontiacs became dramatic in a way that has led us to measure only loss since. Such was the nature of Bill Mitchell’s cars and John DeLorean’s foresight in building them.
The Pontiacs of that resurgent shift to youth culture were hot cars, variously vivid, fierce, confident and relaxed. They had street presence, refinement for their price, with more than a little unruliness intentionally left in the can. Pontiacs were somewhat more developed hot cars for young-thinking people, with a brand hinge in the 4-door sedan that skewed unruliness toward refinement and pugnacious presence to visual elegance as you moved up the line. A Firebird, GTO, Catalina and Bonneville looked and felt of the same lineage as the mix of Pontiac traits gently dialed the drama rheostat inverse to price. You expected to be noticed.
G8 is a promising car on paper, sufficiently modern visually to appeal to upmarket self-perceivers, and almost certainly will prove a punchy performance value. GM’s advance marketing for the car infuses it with the aura of appropriate emotion. But I don’t expect the G8 to induce the same emotional urgency. It’s not dramatic enough.
Pontiac style ranged from vivid to serene. The defining Pontiacs represented a visual continuum with anchor points that allowed street toughs and beach boy rodders their cred and fun while pulling single males and young-thinking Dads under the brand parasol for some muscled-up elegance that kept the kid inside them tamed. The engineering has to be competitive, but GM can’t sell a badged engine and call it a car. A Pontiac has to feed imagination and induce that urgency to be had.
Phil
I can’t believe some of you who were not born yet are lambasting the Fiero. You’re criticizing a 20 something year old car which, for its time, wasn’t that bad. Problem was GM failed to update to keep up with its competition. Namely the MR2. I bought mine in 1985 and yes…it did catch fire right after I had it serviced at a dealership. I still have it and it runs fine. Even has most of the original lightbulbs in it.
It was sad watching Pontiacs go down the tubes. Also sad to be laughed at because I own a Fiero.
Truth is, the Fiero was full of compromises, the Solstice is full of compromises, the G is full of compromises. Sure isn’t conducive of being called the “excitement division”.
The Fiero was at best an OK car. Lets be honest here and admit that the regular Fiero was equiped with a POS 2.5l OHV engine will all of 90hp. The best the Fiero ever got from GM was a 2.8l ohv v6 making all of 135hp. The Fiero came equiped with the Chevette front suspension in at the rear! The interior was a hot mess, and it took GM until 1988 to find a decent 5spd gearbox for the v6. Do you remember the crappy 4spd?
The Fiero was simply outclassesd one year after introduction by the Toyota MR2. A lighter, faster and better handling car. It was also light years ahead of the Fiero in terms of build quality and fit and finish.
The Fiero was the classic victim of GMs piss-poor culture. Once GM realized it had a car with true potential GM had to hamper it as not to perform better than a Firebird or Corvette. GM had an excellent engine to install in the Fiero back than, the H.O Quad4 that with an output of 180hp back in the late 1980s! Too bad they killed the car before it could have become a really serious player.
I had a Trans Am. ’83. Red, with the Crossfire engine and the T-tops. What a sharp looking and powerfully-fun car.
Until the scabs of rust began to show. Until I had to replace the motor mounts. Regularly. And then that computer problem, Grrrrrr!
About the only thing that worked correctly over the whole time I had it where the T-Tops!
That was one car that I suppose I’m not sad I had. But I now realize that EVERYTHING about that car should have been easier and less expensive than it was. So I would never buy another one.
The Fiero was never a good car, and it definitely wasn’t a looker until the 1988 model came out. Performance wasn’t it’s strong point either. If it wasn’t the anemic 2.5L ‘Iron Duke’ engine, it was the equally anemic 2.8L V6.
There are a number of very perceptive comments regarding John “I-am-Z-one-on-camera-buying-Z-Cocaine” Delorean’s alleged marketing “genius.”
Proof of his fizzled con-artistry, I submit, may be found in the laughable Delorean. Why wouldn’t everyone want an ugly, unreliable, $low, $tainle$$ $teel pile built in Ireland?
Pontiac should never try to “live up” to this fraud’s dreams.
At this point in time, Pontiac and Buick exist to give profitable GMC truck/SUV dealers some cars to sell on the side (most GMC dealers sell at least one of the two, frequently both). Period. So, as long as GMC exists, Pontiac and Buick will continue to exist. The costs of eliminating Pontiac/Buick/GMC are greater than any savings, even though almost all of it is available in slightly different forms over at a Chevy dealer, because killing them will lower sales by a lot (Pontiac/Buick/GMC buyers won’t automatically buy Chevys-killing Oldsmobile showed that). Same goes for killing Mercury over at Ford-it gives Lincoln dealers enough productsto sell so they can stay in business (and they are all chromed up Ford that sticker for a grand more anyways-hard not to find profit in that).
However, this dual dealer network over at GM (not to mention assorted other things like Saturn and Saab) makes it hard to give everybody truely unique products. It’s only profitable if Pontiac/Buick/GMC is mostly a slightly (very slightly) upscale version of Chevy, a Chevy Part Deux of sorts. Likewise, anything important you would want to give to Chevy at a minimum, since Chevy’s sales alone account for about 60% of GM’s domestic sales. Cadillac (which is important and deservedly gets unique product) is about 5% of GM’s sales. So, that leaves only 35% for Buick/Pontiac/GMC/Hummer/Saab/Saturn combined. Obviously, a whole lot of that stuff will be rebadged Chevys, or odd imported things like rebadged Holdens or Opels.
argentla,
I read your article in the link you listed and while it’s a nice writeup it’s not an official history of the car. You don’t list any sources for your article concerning timeframes and when Pontiac was told to “make a car of the Camaro”. Now you do mention De Lorean’s book, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. If the account about the creation of the Firebird came from him, well then, that’s from the horses mouth, do to speak.
I do know that the Firebird like the Chevrolet Camaro introduction coincided with the release of the Mercury Cougar, which shared its platform with another well-known pony car, the Mustang. Since I always thought the Pontiac was more sophisticated looking than the Chevy I wondered if it had been developed to compete with the Cougar while the Camaro went up against the Mustang. Interestingly the Cougar was also the target for Dodge using the new E body for a car of it’s own (Challenger) when it came time for the Plymouth Barracuda to be redesigned.
Huh. I thought the saying was “always a pallbearer, never a corpse.” Well, in recent memory, Pontiac has been a pallbearer for two GM brands I can think of (Geo and Oldsmobile). Let’s see how long Pontiac can put off its own demise….
Gardiner Westbound :
November 1st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Captive imports typically have the longevity of a fruit fly, which crushes resale value. Obtaining competent repairs and sourcing parts is near impossible.
I’ll stipulate that this is largely true, with one reservation: captive imports that are simultaneously sold by their manufacturer (such as the Geo/Chevy Tracker and the Suzuki Sidekick/Vitara) are relatively immune to this effect. After all, I’m reasonably sure that a Suzuki dealer could service a Tracker with little difficulty.
That being said, I think that captive imports are generally a bad idea. After all, why should a customer remain loyal to a brand when that brand is willing to slap its name on someone else’s vehicle and call it good?
windswords,
Jim Wangers’ book, Glory Days: When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit, covers the development of the original Firebird.
Pontiac was not originally included in the F-car program. Pontiac did want to produce the Banshee. When that idea was shot down by management, Pontiac was told to make a Pontiac out of the Camaro. It had a very short lead time to do this, but the car did not debut until early 1967. Argentla’s account is accurate.
Interestingly, Oldsmobile wanted in on the F-car program, but was told “no” by the 14th floor. As a substitute, the corporation looked the other way while it violated the engine-size limit in the F-85/Cutlass to create the Hurst Olds (which actually had the big engine installed at the Olds’ factory, not at the aftermarket shop, as was told in the “official” story).
Even if another company builds a BMW clone that achieves the same performance results, it will not be recognized by this core customer as delivering the sensory experience of a BMW.
The negativity here is stifling.
I think some of you need to step out of the “car guy” box and see the industry for how everyone else sees it. The only reason BMW is on top is that they’re the best. It’s a thin line to walk, a damn thin line. The perch is hugely precarious, as BMW found out when they screwed with the 3-series steering in 2001.
Brand loyalty? Whatever. It’s about buying the best vehicle at the best value. GM has half the market share they had just 25 years. Half. If that plunge tells you anything at all, it’s that people behave rationally. Better car for less money? Fine, we’ll buy that.
The converse is that any brand can be anything, brand identity be damned. It doesn’t matter a whit what Pontiac was in 1969 or 1979 or 1989 or even five years ago. You’re not buying nostalgia, you’re buying a vehicle. If Pontiac came out with a car genuinely better than a BMW for less money, you’d better believe people would jump ship. Or Toyota, or Hyundai. The strength of a “brand” rises and falls in exact proportion to the strength of its product.
Lutz gets it, but some of you seem to think the company is doomed to fail because past products sucked. None of that matters. It’s all about the now, more than ever before.
The converse is that any brand can be anything, brand identity be damned. It doesn’t matter a whit what Pontiac was in 1969 or 1979 or 1989 or even five years ago. You’re not buying nostalgia, you’re buying a vehicle. If Pontiac came out with a car genuinely better than a BMW for less money, you’d better believe people would jump ship. Or Toyota, or Hyundai. The strength of a “brand” rises and falls in exact proportion to the strength of its product.
Toyota is still living off the “reliability” hallmark which hasn’t been true in several years. Hopefully it will catch up with them soon and they’ll die a quick death.
The negativity here is stifling.
My comment about BMW wasn’t negative regarding either BMW or Pontiac/GM. BMW isn’t trading on “better” relative to its primary competitors, it is trading on “different” and distinctiveness. Arguably BMWs are worse than many other cars in a conventional sense. They’re less reliable than many. Their interior space utilization and comfort isn’t best. Their current generation styling is bitterly controversial. And the vaunted “feel” of a BMW is being steadily diluted, acccording to many of its maven customers.
And yet, BMWs still do feel distinct, and the brand is a convincing draw for a range of people who have no real understanding of the product. When you see a BMW driver pulled over on I-80 heading into the Sierras in snow installing mandatory chains on only the *front* wheels of his car, you know you’re looking at a brand and image buyer. Same when you’re at a gas station in Boston and see a 3 series with snows on only the front wheels in January. Brand pulls all sorts of people in.
My point was that Pontiac should build their own idea of a compelling car, not BMW’s or anyone else’s.
You’re right, the here and now of product is the biggest driver. Pontiac slunk through the ’50s with a dowdy image and a conscious decision to make it a youth-oriented brand in the 1960s succeeded because the strategy was backed by product changes. The brand can be taken any direction GM wants, but it must be *a* direction, not many. However, Pontiac has a successful past to reference. It shouldn’t be constrained by that past but inspired by it. The G8 is a hedge. Bring on a real vision for Pontiac and build a compelling value.
Phil
“[T]he part of me that grew up”.
Note the conspicuous lack of hyphens.
HTH!
Samir Syed:BMW is a sporty brand whose flagships are sold with 4-doors (M3, M5).I think you meant to say, “BMW is a sporty brand whose flagships are sold with 4 doors (M3, M5).”
HTH!
Excellent write up there Samir Syed…
Pontiac has been treated like the redheaded step child, of the General for some time now. No wonders why because the engineers and designers over at Pontiac can do things so much better. We barely ever get to see the ideas that come out of Pontiac as most are out rightly rejected by the General.
I wouldn’t stop to give a lending hand to Mr. Lutz. If I saw him broke down on the side of the road. However, even I wouldn’t say all of Pontiac’s woes are the result of his faults. It begin long ago when the scumbags of Chevorlet begin to rise through the ranks. When they crossed that thresehold into the General Motors management they only sought to Cheverlotlize everything.
Frederic Donner’s infamous “no more racing” memo. He might have been a great beancounter but he didn’t know diddle about Marketing or Cars in general. It’s a long chain of people like him that have ruined General Motors over the years.
“quasimondo” You must not know much about Pontiac? I’d rather be driving a rusted out Pontiac than whatever it is your driving.
“whatdoiknow1” The Fiero was at best an OK car…
I think your missing the point. The General wouldn’t invest in Pontiac’s idea as it should have. Have you seen what the Fiero guys can do with a modest budget? It cost a lot more for an individual to upgrade something than what a factory could do on the spot with an assmebly line approach. Some of those Fiero guys have built some awsome machines both in power and handling… Again GM failing to invest in a good product idea, that’s what hurt the Fiero, not Pontiac designers or engineers…
“KnightRT” I think some of you need to step out of the “car guy” box and see the industry for how everyone else sees it… Brand loyalty? Whatever.
I beg to differ greatly with your view. As Harely Earl said “I can sell a young man’s car to an old man but I can’t never sell an old man’s car to a young man”. Meaning if you build something stylish, sporty, dependable and affordable both the young and old alike will want to buy it. If you build only old man styling then you’ve killed off all young buyers and your future… Now this may come as a shock to you but brand loyality still exsist today. There are overwhellming numbers of people who will not own anything else but a BMW, Ford, Chevy, and yes even a Pontiac…
I’d rather drive a 10 year old Pontiac than be given a brand new BMW for free.