I think that's only half the story. The problem was that GM wasn't making any money selling Sunfires and Grand Ams, so they tried to move the Pontiac brand up-market and make it a more 'mature' brand. That's why they switched to G-names, removed the cladding, and set higher prices.

However they really didn't have the product or advertising budget to pull this off, and they basically killed the brand in the process. Not entirely different from what happend with Saturn.

 

Eliminating these brands are not going to lose 5 points of market share. If anything, by putting money into cars instead of brands, GM's market share loss will be stopped.

Without the government, GM market share would be close to 0 right now.

 

The 2004 redesign was lame, because GM no longer had enough money to do a proper job on a Chevy, Buick, and Pontiac variant of the same car.

That's the whole point of dropping brands -- to focus design and engineering enough to build one good family car instead of three lame ones.

 

I thought the body cladding looked really cheap. It kept me from being a Pontiac buyer.

It would be easy enough to make cladding an option, so that those who want it can buy it -- like the old Camaro RS package.

 

If GM concentrated on making dependable and attractively styled cars there wouldn't need to have both Chevy and Pontiac versions... the buyers will come to the one model.

That's a BIG IFF!!!

 

Exactly! GM has always been far too focused on the "push" marketing and not enough of the "pull". Good product beats having a lot of dealerships and lots of models.

I think they will get this once they are cut down to size and every sale necessarily becomes a conquest sale.

 

Those are good points. I actually think Saturn had the product, just not the advertising budget. But you're correct on Pontiac, other than the G8, nothing materialized to support the "American BMW" image.

True, some like it and some don't, but in Pontiac's modern glory years their bestselling models were the ones that had it, so it must have appealed to some. Most of their 80s models were only visually exciting - without a whole lot of performance to back it up - but they had a much stronger performance image then than they do now.

They essentially do make it an option on the G6 GXP - only the Street Edition has the godawful spoiler, though you're stuck with the ugly grille either way. I think the 90s GA looks positively tasteful compared to the G6 GXP Street Edition.

Whether reliability issues kept the Grand Am and Grand Prix buyers from ever coming back like notgetleft and 94lightninggal have said is another issue altogether on top of the question of brand image.