My guess is it will take a year+ for them to close down Pontiac and we will keep getting the Holden Commodore until the end of its life (2011?)

If they close Pontiac sooner is there any chance of the to G8 becoming a Chevy? How about the 2012 Commodore, what Chevy would that be badged as?

 

If the world made sense, "Caprice" is as good a name as any.

 

Pontiac is done by the end of 2010, which essentialy ends G8 production yesterday.

I originally wrote yesterday G8 goes to Chevy in 2012 as GM had just began contract talks for the 2011 MY with suppliers in australia for G8.

I'll still say 2012 due to production tooling changes, etc.

 

Fritz said G8 will be phased out by the end of this year, a full year before Pontiac is closed. That tells me that VE is dead for NA.

 

I was thinking about this on Friday, and I came around to the opinion that the current Impala (and any future full-size FWDs) should be renamed to Caprice, and G8 (and any future full-size RWDs) should become Impala.

 

According to an article on GMI, the G8 will not be re-badged as a Chevy. That's a real shame for a couple of reasons - G8 is one of the best GM cars on the road here and Commodores are already sold as Chevy Luminas in the middle east, so no new nose and Chevy details would have to be designed for the car.

 

GM already sells it as the Chevrolet Lumina in the mid east, so that would make the most sense, especially with other NA plants having dibs on the name Impala.

Heck they killed off the Impala name for almost a decade once before, so what's the bid deal if they do it again?

 

Gone.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/pontiac-...yond-2010.html

 

But they're already building a Zeta car (Camaro) at Oshawa, where they build the Impala. Nobody has dibs on Caprice, so they could move that anywhere. Wouldn't it reduce complexity at Oshawa if both cars they built there were Zeta cars?

Alternatively, since G8 is pretty low-volume and Oshawa is below capacity, couldn't they build all three there, and then when they end-of-life the current Impala, then effect the change?

 

I won't disagree that building a second Zeta model in Oshawa could be done... I just think that GM is gun-shy about building anything else that's RWD and V6/V8 powered at this time.

 

Interesting, considering that Camaro is selling well and G8 is one of the few vehicles whose sales have held steady in the past few months.

 

that was the plan, but a North American assembled RWD Zeta sedan was one of the first things killed off months ago.

 

Dang. Talk about depressing.

I guess on the upside, either dealers markup the G8 GXP as a "limited collectors car" to make last minute bucks, or the GXP gets enough cash on the hood to skin a cat and off-lease their value will be junk.

So hold out 2 years and pickup an off-lease G8 GXP for dirt.

 

They say they won't rebadge the G8, but isn't it rebadged already? Wouldn't all they have to do is certify the Lumina for N. America (which shouldn't take long) and load it on the boat instead of the Pontiac? Technically that wouldn't be rebadging the G8, right? Yes, I know I'm reaching, but I'm just thinking out loud.

 

If the G8 was assembled in Oshawa, there wouldn't be any local suppliers to provide materials, everything would have to be shipped over from Holden. I'm not sure how many components for Camaro are sourced locally, but some are shipped from Australia, IIRC. Wasn't this part of the reason why GM balked at a larger deployment of Zeta here (financial crisis notwithstanding) in favour of Epsilon based cars moving forward, no infrastructure issues for FWD cars?

Besides, I think there are some differences between VE and Zeta that were originally supposed to be dealt with when the Commodore gets its MCE and Zeta was originally supposed to start building here.

I read somewhere (probably on this board:-) that build processes are a little different at Holden than here in NA as well making them somewhat incompatible, so there would be a learning curve/adjustment period before any cars could be built here.