I almost don't care what Pontiac does personally - I just want them to do something.
In the past decade, Pontiac has been beneficiary of four or five visions and absolutely no funding. Remember back in Zarella's days when they were going to make Pontiac a small SUV brand? They even had that disgusting little concept - the Piranah. Then Lutz came and suddenly Pontiac was going to be an American BMW. What it got was a crappified Grand Prix refresh and a six year old car from Australia (we owned one so no, I'm not bashing).

So now we have two visions - a rear drive Holden USA or a lineup of small RWD'ers.

I won't bet on either until I see it. And honestly, I still don't know why it has to be this damn complicated. Why not take some Chevrolets and make them sporty. By that I don't mean spoilers and fake scoops and silver dash inserts. I mean thicker sways, better struts, boosted engines, and manual trannies. Somehow, Nissan, Mazda and Dodge still manage to sell a sh*tload of these cars every year. SRT-4 anyone? Nissan Altima? Dodge Charger? Mazda 6? GM invented this segment with Pontiac in the 1960's, but now offers nothing of the sort.

 

No V8s? Well, maybe I've purchased my last Pontiac then. Don't get me wrong, I think the Solstice is a cool recipe but little cars aren't for me. A mix of the two schools of thought mentioned in this thread makes more sense to me. And, I am holding Lutz to his word that there will be a new GTO.

 

Could be that GM is about to invent a whole new segment here.

 

i'm guessing either I'm way off with my idea, or I'm on the money and it can't be confirmed.

 

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off.

 

Like I said before, I'm excited by this idea. I'm just concerned and a bit skeptical about riding the future of the brand on it. First of all, at what point are some GM execs gonna look at this and say, "Are we sure this is going to be successful? Have we done 40,000 group studies yet?" And then the project will be delayed and delayed, during which time the brand will rot with a G6 that probably is far off from a redo and a Solstice that has an identical sibling. Then, when the studies are finished, GM execs will say, "Yeah, but look at how damaged the Pontiac brand is - why are we going to invest all this money in it?" As an addendum to this, didn't GM conduct focus groups on the Nomad and come up with terrible results?

Creating a segment of small-rwd cars sounds very cool to people like you and me, but we're people who post on car enthusiast web-sites. Most of the country thinks that you can't get off your driveway in a snow storm with RWD - how does GM plan to convince them that a small RWD will be safe?

Again, I like the idea, I just have a hard time beleiving that the GM we both know and dislike will have the committment to do this the way they'd need to. I'm also still not convinced that this would be as successful as say, Chevrolets with legitimately attractive skins and seriously improved mechanicals. It's not quite as exciting, but there's a definite market. Maybe I'm not seeing clearly, but why is GM trying to reinvent the wheel here with Pontiac when all they need to do is give them some none sh*tty cars?

 

Ok I'm starting to see where this is going...a lot of this has been brought up here before in one way or another......I've got some comments but I'm off to class right now........

 

awesome.

back to the drawing board, then.

 

Well maybe GM feels all of the cars that will be in Chevrolet's lineup, Cadillac's lineup, and maybe even a little bit of Buick, are already overlapping enough(or will be overlapping in a few years that is).

Maybe for the first time they are trying to cut down the overlap in their brands. And doing something to change Pontiac drastically is not bad.

Are we talking something more youth oriented here maybe? Something like what Scion did, but with nice looking cars? I don't know, just taking a stab.

 

Pontiac has no one to blame but itself if it considers the GTO a sales failure the botched 04 launch doomed it.

You will never move any serious volume with small RWD cars. The only similar ones that jump to mind are the Lexus IS, and BMW 3 series. Both are more expensive than this car would be, so it is not an apples to apples comparison.

Most people who buy the volume sellers (Camry, Accord, etc) have a conception that RWD is unsafe, and FWD is the best bet for their families. The people who do like RWD generally like big honking V8's or roadsters. I know there will be people who say "Well BMW sells loads of 3 series". But I would say 90% of that is because it is simply the most attainable BMW,

You might like small nimble cars Charlie, but I do not see many of SUV driving families considering this car. Honestly, I am not sure who would consider the car? Like I said, it seems like an answer to a need no one has.

I am also kind of bothered that the brand that invented the muscle car is sitting it's rebirth out.





Okay, no V8's. That seems to be your main beef. But so what? Does everything have to have a V8? Between both the GTO and GP GXP, Pontiac only sells 20K V8's per year, (barely matching the low volume Solstice in sales). Is that the razor thin niche that Pontiac should be focused in on? I don't think so.
Besides,GM will sell plenty of V8's in Camaro and Impala.[/QUOTE]

 

I think so too, so I made a crappy photoshop:



Now, WHO is going to buy a $30K Pontiac is an entirely other question ....

(Perhaps they should seriously consider badging this as a Saab in the US.)

 

I found a Greek letter that matches up to what Evok posted. It fell out of use in the Greek language, apparently, but it matches up. And if it has any relation to the platform that shares a similar name, I'll be shocked.

 

hmm.. this enticed me to do a quick wikipedia look.. and here's what i found

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_l...solete_letters
the only thing that fits is Digamma.. look at Evok's hint compared to the spelled out word for the greek letter Digamma
---α---
δίγαμμα


Digamma:


so Gamma = subcompact FWD and Digamma=compact RWD?

 

that's the one!

but, does that mean that it's based off of Gamma, and it's basically twice as big? or does it have no relation to Gamma, and it just happened to be the letter GM chose? Or is it a RWD version of Gamma?

 

Am I the only one who has clearly figured this out?

Pontiac's re-releasing the Azztek!