Apr 24th, 2009 by Ross Edwards
According to Edmund’s Inside Line, General Motors will officially pull the plug on its Pontiac division on Monday. Though the source hasn’t been cited, the move seems likely considering GM’s December plan to reduce Pontiac to a “specialty” brand, focusing on performance cars, and the company’s new directive to create a more viable plan in order to receive more government support.
Inside Line’s contact inside GM chose to remain anonymous, and when the news source contacted GM, their PR man Tom Wilkinson said “There’s nothing I can share with you at this time. Keep your eyes on our media site. Officially, nothing has changed with Pontiac’s niche-brand status, until you hear differently.”
Translation “Yes, but we’ll be announcing it on Monday.”
I’m sure the internet and local car meets alike will be afire with muscle car aficionados wailing about the loss of GM’s last real hope, but really, when Gm closes Pontiac on Monday, what will be lost?
The Solstice and G8 are the only cars Pontiac has right now that are worth saving, and both will probably be on sale as Chevrolets before Pontiac’s body is even cold. Really, what makes more sense? Trying to re-brand the company that made the Grand Am and Bonneville as a sporty nameplate, or selling the G8 and Solstice alongside Chevy’s cars that already have a reputation for performance, like the Corvette, Camaro, and Cobalt SS?
economy ftl. im not a huge pontiac guy (besides WS6s) and i am still prety saddened that GM is in shambles at the moment. hopefully better days lie ahead.
I think it would be cheaper if GM had it’s own TV station.
advertise all they want. then sell off advertising. FOX did that back in the day. now fox is huge.
ya it makes sense but im saying it just sucks that it has come to this. im sure performance cars are going to take a back seat with all of this cut-backs by the manufacturers, so this trickle down effect will def impact all domestic owners/fans etc
honestly though, how much money do you think they were making by basically re-badging chevy cobalts as g5’s? next up should be gmc. no more of these bull side brands, just stick to the bowtie and they will probably be fine
ya thats kinda what i was meaning by the performance cars this move takes down. some of those firebird concepts looked awesome. dunno, if theydve ever seen the light of day, but now its certainly not gonna happen. along with another possible GTO and then whatever they end up doing with the Solstice and G8, which i considered to be very nice cars.
Damn, that’s sad to see this setting in as a reality. I really liked the direction that some of the pontiacs were going (association with Holden, and holding out hope for a V8 solstice lol).
The GTO was a really good car in my eyes, the only problem was that too many people expected too much out of that name. I thought it was pretty good looking in a very boring way (if that’s possible?)