TriShield

By Robert Farago
January 11, 2009

Time to update “the future of car?” Yup. GM’s Car Czar has admitted that Pontiac has a new motto: “Pontiac is toast.”

Automotive News [sub] reports that Bob Lutz has admitted that GM is trimming Pontiac’s line-up to five vehicles– if you count the Solstice hardtop as a separate model. Which we don’t. That leaves Pontiac with four vehicles: the doomed Australian-sourced G8, the G5, the Toyota co-production Vibe and the dead-in-the-water “we don’t need no stinkin’ trunk space” Solstice.

Maximum Bob’s admission that Pontiac is being strategically reviewed to death comes hard on the heels of GM NA Prez Troy Clarke’s assertion that GM will “follow through with plans to shrink to four core brands.” That would be Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC; ditching HUMMER, Saab, Pontiac and… Saturn.

”‘We’ve entered into a very, very open and candid dialogue with our Saturn retailers,” Clarke said. Saturn, launched 19 years ago, has been successful in terms of brand attributes, he said. But ‘it just hasn’t been a good business for us… We need some breakthrough options here. We can’t continue brands that have no prospect of earning their way.’” It took them how long to figure this out? And, by the way, whose fault is that?

demonspeed

iTrader: (7)

Why is GMC staying around?

Would it be possible to throw the G8 at Chevrolet as an Impala?

Silverado_13

iTrader: (5)

Woohoo!

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

HUMMER, Saab, Pontiac and Saturn have been off my radar for years. Last car I liked from any of those brands was the Bonneville GXP, gone since '05. They offer nothing worthwhile now, IMO.

No loss. Less waste means we'll see better cars from the remaining brands.

The Batman

iTrader: (4)

gay...poor pontiac

MY99TAWS6

iTrader: (3)

I like the solstice but just not practical to me being a two seater and when do get a two seater likely get a vette. Still nice looking and with turbo pretty nice preforming car.

I liked the older two door supercharged grand prixs. I was not impressed when they went to four door only grand prixs.

I liked of course the firebirds and especially TA and in my life have owned a 77 bandit as my first car in 1978, thru the years have owned a 78 TA, 81 formula , 80 ta and 96 TA,97 TA and 99 TA my current ride. Only owned one camaro the 96z that currently own.
Also owned 84,85 and 86 pontiac fieros.

Hummer are cool but too big and not my style. Saturn never really did it for me the Sky is a nice looking car and decent performer in turbo form. None of the other saturns held any interest. Saab is interesting company but never really liked the styling of most of the Saabs.

It is only in Gms best interest to not have so many similar cars . I mean they used to have like six versions of their minivan. That was really stupid.

djsanchez2

iTrader: (14)

Work truck fleet. They released sales numbers for 2008 and the #1 selling vehicle by volume was the GMC Sierra and #2 was the F150. Who can argue with that.

I say this will be a good thing. It will end a good amount of the wasteful money burning that has been going on for decades.

ChaseSS

iTrader: (17)

hey, if all this fat trimmed fat will produce better cars down the road (i.e. camaro ) I'm all for it. Whatever it takes to get this company churning again

TriShield

Propping up a brand entirely for low-profit margin fleet sales is quite an expensive endevour, especially considering the brand is entirely Chevrolet clones.

05CherryGXP

Saturn has been doomed ever since GM reintegrated it with the rest of GM. When Saturn first started out it took pains to appear non-GM. Seperate dealers, seperate TV ads, etc. I grew up on the East Coast and knew people who swore they'd never buy American, but owned a Saturn because they didn't associate the name with the Big Three. When Saturn was focused on being an asian import better and appearing slightly asian itself, it did great on the coasts and in markets that were typically unfriendly to GM.

Then GM brought Saturn into the fold, now GM runs these sales and mentions all their brands "See your local Chevy, Pontiac, Caddy, Buick, GMC, Saturn, Saab, Hummer, etc" dealers today! Saturn got lumped in to the Big Three and suddenly just became the Euroe version of Chevy.

Saab these days doesn't really have a place in North America. It basically overlaps with various Buicks and some Cadillacs. No need for it to sell in North America.

I'm a Pontiac man and hope it soldiers on as kind of the rear wheel drive brand of GM. Bring up V8 sedans, wagons, etc from Australia and sell them in a niche market. The G8 has won all kinds of awards, but they don't seem to be moving.

Tri-Shield
I disagree, GMC is quite valuable, if you compare a Chevy product to a GMC product, the GMC product typically costs more. When my father was buying work trucks he bought Expresses because they were cheaper than a virtually identical Savannah. As near as I can figure it GMC is the 'pestrige' truck brand. Peel off the Silverado sticker and replace it with a Sierra sticker, mark the price up, sell it and enjoy the larger profit margin. The vehicles are designed by the same people (they're nearly identical half the time), produced on the same lines, so it costs GM little to keep them going.

Nine Ball

iTrader: (38)

GM needs to get rid of Buick as well. No sense in keeping that brand, it is just another batch of rebadged and redundant vehicles. The goal is to keep Buick as a mid-level price range between Chevy and Caddy, but they could easily just make a lower priced Caddy or more expensive Chevy and get rid of Buick altogether. I know Buick is more popular in other countries like China, well they can just keep that brand overseas perhaps.

Chevrolet = passenger cars (no trucks or SUVs)
GMC = all trucks and SUVs
Cadillac = high end cars and SUVs

Simple.

TriShield

I'm guessing that Buick is being kept alive solely because they think it might tarnish the brand in China if they were to drop it here.

RevGTO

iTrader: (12)

GM has been slowly homogenizing the contents of its divisions since the 1950's. Time was when divisional product was unique and there was competition between the divisions. Brand loyalty was fierce and GM reaped the profits from all of them.
Beancounter geniuses figured out all the savings that GM could achieve by having the divisions use identical parts for everything. Badge engineering became GM policy and their marketshare shrunk as it went forward.

Traditionalists argue that Pontiac died when the last Pontiac V8 was produced in 1981. They are probably right.

05CherryGXP

Buick actually has pretty good customer loyalty. A lot of those people are the walking dead (senior citizens that do 25 mph in the left lane with the blinker on), but hey they are a loyal.

My mother was one telling me how for my grandfather his goal in life was to get a Buick, and once he got that Buick he'd arrived damnit!

I wonder if Buick is being kept around for the older generations that are loyal to it / desirious of it. It could be once they die off Buick dies or else tries to reinvent itself. For a lot of the younger crowd the last car they made that any of us want was the GNX, so I don't see them selling to us, but we're not the only car buyers out there.

Also Buick has a pretty good history for not sucking. Yeah the cars are boxy, kinda ugly, but they are #3 in reliability. When I was looking for a DD I seriousily considered a Buick.

JD_AMG

Wait, so you liked the Bonneville which was a FWD sloppy barge rental car, but the RWD, classy, sleek sports sedan G8 is off your radar??? You need to adjust the radar to stop picking up grandfather cars and start looking for nice ones...

The G8 is arguably the best Pontiac sedan ever.

CrabhartLS1

I guess pontiac's perceived quality is so crappy these days it may not make sense to try and reinvent them like they did with saturn, which was arguably unsuccessful.

American's just don't want the monaro/commodore I guess. It's called the Chevrolet Lumina in Saudi Arabia.

ChaseSS

iTrader: (17)

their perceived quality is bad, my gf has a 2000 grand am which is absolutely terrible (everything electrical has gone wrong in that car) and no one wants to try the new stuff.

Why they don't just keep the Holden name here in the states is beyond me. All of the holden cars look better than the pontiac counterparts IMO and holden would be a name people wouldn't associate with pontiac

Revelation Z28

iTrader: (10)

he's just having moderator PMS

id say the G8 did pontiac good compared to the GTO.

i like tony's idea of the fleet lineup. its more sensible and organized than what they have now.

phirepower

iTrader: (2)

I feel somewhat sorry for saturn it seemed as if they were getting a second wind.

the loss of Pontiac will be devastating, leave it to the blood thirsty, cut throat executives priding themselves with yachts, and pricey vacations while America's corner stone industry erodes from a sea of heartless import horse ****

LS1LT1

iTrader: (16)

Yeah really LOL, well said.