Originally Posted by guionM

Jason,

Pontiac hasn't had the image that is being attributed to it for many, many years. Reading the post of a few guys here would give the impression that we were talking about Pontiac of the 60s or even the 70s. My point is that Pontiac isn't a performance brand because it's been squandered and mismanaged to the point where even Pontiac's own General Manager is completely clueless as to Pontiac's heritage. Even you can not argue with that.

Then there's a few points you brought up.

Pontiac did in fact lose their own engines in '82. Yes, you are correct that Pontiac had a full line of turbo cars in the late 1980s, including the oft forgotten Turbo Trans Am, and the even more forgotten turbo Grand Prixs and turbo Sunbirds. However, as I mentioned, there were Pontiac versions of other engines available in other GM cars (minus the turbos).

The fabled Turbo Trans Am was nothing more than a Buick Grand National engine with heads off of the run of the mill Bonneville 3800 that had a similar interal rebuild as the GNX. The supercharged Grand Prix 3800 was the same Buick engine found under the hood of Regals.

Firebirds from 1980-2002 were nothing more than Camaros with either Corvette-like or Batmobile-like looks, depending on the year and your point of view. The only people who wiould disagree with that are those who weren't around when Pontiac Trans Ams and Chevrolet Camaro Z28s of the 1970s had entirely different engines and personalities.

Grand Ams were THE car that made Pontiac a predominatly female brand.

Fiero was a nice car (once they figured out how to keep them from spontenaously combusting). The GTs were cool cars and decent performers in the end, but even in their day, there weren't exactly road blazers.

Solstice as I mentioned was a way to test GM's development system by Bob Lutz. Even if it was only sold that way to GM's board, it would have never seen the light of day otherwise.

I'm a huge fan of the GTO, and if you look back, I was defending the car while everyone was still whining that it didn't look like a 1960s creature. I dumped my membership at a GTO website when they stuck the new Mustang on their front page as their "Car of the Year" in protest to the GTO. However, that doesn't change the fact that the GTO is still a Holden Monaro, was basically rammed through GM's system from the moment Bob Lutz 1st saw it, and bruised a ton of egos in the process while creating a class of people at GM that resented Holden for a long time afterwards and turned quite a few people against Lutz early on. It was worth it, it was a extremely good car, but like the G8, it's somebody else's car that had a grille added to pass as a Pontiac.

I will give you the Bonneville GXP and the Grand Prix GXP.

But at the same time, you also have no choice but to give that at least 65% and up to 75% of Grand Prixs and even higher levels of Bonnevilles ended up as fleet and rental cars. Something you'd expect from Chevrolet, not a "Performance Division".

Feel free to disagree. However, you and other's here know that I'm a Pontiac fan in many regards. The only GM W-body car I'd reccomend to anyone was the GXP Grand Prix. My favorite car when I was a kid was Pontiac Trans Am (1970s era). I liked the Fiero. I though my in-law's 98 Grand Am was an intresting if underpowered little car. I actually went to buy a GTO cash-in-hand when it 1st came out (destroyed by dealer greed and a decision to buy and fix up yet another Thunderbird SC). I think the G8 sedan is the best 4 door on the market based on value, performance, and quality for the price.

But that doesn't change the fact that Pontiac's only undisputed and unique bright spots in so far as car lines the past 10 years was 2 Australian Holdens and a sports car.

The GXP line is traditional Pontiac performance, but it's a barely a drop in the bucket to the rest of Pontiac's sales and consumer knowledge, and therfore image.

I'd bet more people know about a Pontiac Vibe than a Pontiac Grand Prix GXP.

Back in the 70s, everyone and their grand mom knew what a Trans Am was.

In the 60s, not only did everyone know what a GTO was, there was actually a song about it.

Grand Prix was one of the country's best selling cars in the 1970s.

My mom even knew what a Bonneville was when I was a kid.

Those days regarding Pontiac are long gone.

Vibe being the last Pontiac is fitting given how far Pontiac as fallen over the past 20 and even 30 years.

Originally Posted by Chuck!

The past of GM also got us some important things:

The V8
Starters
Interchangeable parts
The Corvette
The Camaro
Firebird
...

Just because GM's business model was horrible over the last twenty years doesnt give them a reason to forget about their past. Maybe if they looked back to guys like John Delorian, Alfred Sloan, Billy Durant, and Henry Leyland they'd see some guys who took some big swings -- sometimes they missed and sometimes they hit homeruns, but the stuff they did for America was pretty damn important and as auto enthusiasts I hope to hell the current leadership has some of their spirit.

Originally Posted by OutsiderIROC-Z

That is pretty effing sad...