Pontiac, A Eulogy: Excitement No More
Welcome,
friends. We're here today to bid farewell to GM's Pontiac. Once a
re-badged middle ground between Chevy and Buick, it attempted to … Read…
When General Motors shut down Pontiac,
it left a lot of enthusiasts wondering why. It was primed with a lineup
of powerful, rear-wheel drive models, and seemed like it had a bright
future ahead of it. It turns out that GM killed it on government orders,
according to former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz.
Friend of Jalopnik and west coast editor for Autoweek Blake Rong
had an interview with Lutz today, and from what Rong is putting out on
his Twitter feed, it's full of plenty of bombshells. None bigger,
though, than this one:
…..the Feds said "yeah, let's just, how much money have you made
on pontiac in the last 10 years?" and the answer was "nothing." So, it
goes. And, when the guy who is handing you the check for 53 billion
dollars says I don't want pontiac, drop pontiac or you don't get the
money, it doesn't take you very long to make up your mind.
But I think it is a shame, Pontiac was on its way back, and it was
killed before it, before the plant could really sprout blossoms, you
know, it was well on its way. So, I agree with you, I think Pontiac was a
great, wonderful history, mismanaged for a number of years in the 80s
and 90s and it was clearly on its way back, and we were starting to see a
very good customer base in solstices and especially in the G8, which
was favorably compared in a lot of road tests to the BMW 5-series,
people would say dynamically the car is as good and it's more powerful
and way cheaper, but that was too bad. but you can't go through Chapter 11 without some really harmful effects. Read the entire story PLUS video here>>>>>>>