umm GTO sold quite well..in case you didnt know GTO was a huge hit, thats why we are getting the G8..has nothing to do with Solstice.
Thats like saying the Cobalt is such a hit that they made the G5..

 

and the other reason they redesigned it is they did not see the shop on here and went and spent millions on a car thats a stopgap when it could of really just been good enough with the grill inserted..

someone email pontiac and tell them the studio better not mess this cars lines up..

 

Well, no, it didn't. And no, it wasn't. This argument has been rehashed a million times, but it's really not that complicated. It didn't meet it's sales numbers, couldn't sell at its $35,000 sticker (my father got one for $26,000), and still remains in some numbers on dealer lots.

That said, it wasn't a total failure, and the basic idea of importing a Holden remains intrinsically appealing and apparently, cost effective. However, GMNA would need to be really stupid not to retool the styling to fit American tastes when they have a fresh example of how our market reacts to Australian styling.

 

Anybody know if it will be sold in Canada?

 

Couple of points here.

First, GM IMHO highballed the number they expected to sell here. If you look at other coupes in or near the $30K, you really start to wonder what drugs the guy that predicts sales targets was on. Mustang Bullitts sold about 5600. Ford sold 9700 Mach 1s in '03 & 7,000 in '04. The Mustang Cobra's best year, 2003, saw just over 13,700 cars (normally in the 10K range). Admittedly, Ford kept production below demand, but no way on earth Ford could have sold 18K Cobras.

Second, against that backdrop, Pontiac sold 15,728 GTOs in '94, and settled into 11,000 the following 2 years. Intrestingly, another coupe that sold around the exact price of the GTO...... the Firebird WS6 Trans Am... sold just around 7,000 annually it's last 3 years (which happen to be it's best years since the package came out in '98).

Finally, GM made money with the car. Monaro was set up to be profitable selling 5,000 cars per year for 3 years. For the same investment a second time GM sold over 45,000 GTOs. So the car not only outsold other coupes in it's price class, it made significant money as well. HARDLY a failure by any means.


As for the GTOs still on lots, in 2006 Pontiac sold 11,268 GTOs. Holden produced 13,948 GTOs in 2006. That leaves roughly 2,680 GTOs. The previous year, Pontiac sold...11,590 GTOs. Roughly the same number.

 

LOL...sums it up nicely!

 

Guy,
Do you happen to have the sales numbers for the Monte Carlo coupe, excluding fleet in those same years?

And how about Camry Solara and Accord coupe, too.

 

 

Good photochopping ....but omg a bottom feeder grill is just not for this car .

 

I think it'll be more squared off than that. I'll reserve further comment until they unveil the car in Chicago.

 

thank you guionM for stepping in with the numbers
I stand by what I said and if the argument has been said many times then I am sure you know that what GuionM has just said and many times before it was a sucsess, not GM's fault if the dealers want to keep it on the lot for 40K..

 

Not mine, BTW. I found it on the internet.

 

I have no doubt that Holden made out on it. But is it a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul? GMNA may have lost money on it. I wonder what the average transaction price will end up being for the '04-'06 GTO's? There's still about a half of a year's production sitting on lots - so we may not know the answer to that for awhile.

 

Your numbers are slightly off. GM-H produced approximately 41k GTO's for GMNA/Pontiac. Only reason they were able to sell most of the '04s was the $10k in discounts ($5k-$5500 incentives, and $5k GM Card roundup $$$ - some folks ended up leasing them for 2 years for $100/mo. or less). I think over 5k of those '04's found homes in December 2004 (got my first one in August, but it had to be bought back and, due to GMNA paperwork screwups, I didn't get my replacement until January '05).

There were about 4k new 2006 GTO's on dealer lots at the end of 2006. But this was partly done because Pontiac planned it that way. Holden had to stop building the Monaro in December of last year, since it still got the LS1 and that no longer met the Euro-III emissions spec that Australia adopted Jan. 1, 2006. Holden still built cars for HSV and Vauxhall (since they used the LS2), and really cranked out GTO's from mid-Jan through May (some months 1500-2000 cars - not a lot by most standards, but, considering the hand-built nature of some of Holden's assembly processes for the coupe, that's a lot). Of course the fact that Monroe Australia changed suppliers of their strut oil, from Shell to something else, and virtually all of the cars built from mid-January through early May had or will have strut failures, didn't help matters.

GM also put about 1200 field reps into GTO's... hence why you're seeing a bunch of 3k-5k mile '06's at GM dealers (dealership-only auctions) for $23k.

But, since Pontiac knew they weren't going to have anything large and RWD until late 2007 (G8), they build more '06's than '05's, just so dealers would have something to sell. Despite the unusual "I bought a new GTO for $24k" threads, transaction prices on the '06's generally don't go below $27-$28k before TTL. Pontiac spent very little $$$ in marketing these cars... they were generally profitable, if very small (GM-H made out better on it, since it extended the lifetime of their car by a year or two).

Is GMNA "disappointed" with the GTO? Sure. I know they wished they had sold 'em all at MSRP. The car was never clinic'd, never qualified to sell in Canada (they thought they'd sell them all in the U.S., no problem). Oops.

Has this experience caused GMNA/Pontiac management to turn their back on the idea of a new GTO? Not at all. Pontiac has so many other problems (we build rebadges) right now, that building a new, limited-production GTO is low on the totem pole of things to tackle. A new GTO could be an "image" car for the brand... but, Solstice notwithstanding, the brand's image with enthusiasts sucks right now (especially with the Bucky Beaver-toothed G6 GTP coming). Maybe if we get closer to the RWD revolution, a GTO concept would make sense (NAIAS 2008, anyone?)

BTW, production numbers are available over on LS1GTO (username=LFP is one of the Pontiac guys who worked on the GTO program), so I'm not just pulling things out of my rear end here (no slam intended to anyone, just backing up my #'s).

 

You have good specific points, and yet I get the feeling we're re-writing history a bit by calling it a massive success. The car recieved a lukewarm reception, primarily because of what Americans determined to be bland styling. A year after its released, they were sitting enmasse on dealer lots.

Sure they had price hikes - so did the Mustang, Solstice, Sky, and 300C's when they first came out. All those cars flew off the lots.

I'm really not trying to pick at the car - I love the GTO. But I think it's unfair to criticize G8 sight unseen for possibly having new styling, when Aussia styled vehicles tend to fair poorly here.