so its official GM are bringing Pontiac's days to an end. LINK Its such a shame but I can see their thinking behind it. I'd like to have seen Saturn get the chop and then change the aim of Pontiac to small cars (and the odd Trans Am) since the Pontiac brand has a much cooler image and I'd think it could have been the Scion of the GM family.
I wish more that Pontiac and Saturn became its own manufacturer. Saturn could have resurrected it's EV-1. Pontiac was a good contender in NASCAR. I liked to see Chad Little's Grand AM in someone rear camera. But what can you do. That what GM gets for Killing the EV-1 for Hummer without thinking about the people.
GM should have killed Buick and GMC trucks. Pontiac was it's 3rd best seller... not to mention having arguably the best car (G-8) in it's class/price bracket. Buick is the car for old retirees that can't afford a Caddy, and GMC trucks are exactly the same as Chevy trucks with only a different grill badge and name.
thing is Buick is crazy popular in China and right now China is one of the few markets that's still growing. But I do agree about GMC no point competing with yourself
EV-1 was available only in CA an AZ as a commuter car that suppose to ease pollution from people traveling from work to home. The commercials was as any other WTF advertisements. The cars were available for lease only. In late 90's GM gathered (Even through repo means) the cars. People offered to buy the cars, GM refused to sell. In 2003-4, I believe that was the year the cars were crushed, The rest are used as museum displays. At the time Prius was a good selling car, and years later, gas hit $4 and GM SUV were sitting in other parking lots because no one were buying them. GM deserved it. Honda, Toyota, and Tesla at least provided it
They should really break GM and other large autocompanies down so there is no need for anoter bailout or global economy collapses situation.
Sucks, but was expected. Most of GM's brands are redundant and no cars are truly independent models. For the most part lately all their cars have been rebadged Chevy's and Caddy's
Yeap, there was also a rather decent Documentary I saw on HBO and Cinemax about them a few times. I was suprised when I found out there was one in Madison about 5 years back though.
given that Pontiac was supposed to be a performance brand, it was evident that they had lost their way when they came out with the Aztek and the Montana.
Then you suggest breaking up Ford, GM, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Honda... the size of the company has little to do with why they are in economic trouble. Much of it is due to relying on large sized SUVs. But even that is an over-simplification as the Japanese car companies are also having trouble. Not as much as GM, but they are nonetheless. Much of the car industries problems can be attributed to UAW contracts that are so in favor of the auto-worker that GM and Ford has to add around $3000 on top of what a car should cost just to break even due to the contracts. Then lets not forget about a year ago when gas was over $4 (That is twice what is today) a gallon, is when car companies really started to feel the pinch. GM has actually put out two of the best cars in the last few years with the Chevy Malibu and Pontiac G8. The Malibu has caught on better than the G8 though. Also, and it may seem a little odd to say, but the better a car company makes a car, the worse it is for them. I remember when I was younger my grand-father would get a new car every 3-4 years and rarely if ever had a car over 5 years old. Now I would venture to say most cars people drive are over 5 years if not 10 years old. So people simply don't need to replace the family car as often as they used to. Point is this, the car companies had little to do with the current economic crisis.
