I'm reading the biography of John Z. DeLorean right now and came across a part where he is describing his reluctance to work on what became the Chevy Vega. He had become the new head of Chevrolet and was bumping heads with Ed Cole who was GM's president at the time. The two had different ideas for the car:

"When the project was first sold to corporate management by Ed Cole, I was still at Pontiac, and it was to be a joint Chevy-Pontiac car like the Camaro and Firebird. In the early styling sessions I ran afoul of Ed Cole at every juncture. We were on different wavelengths. I wanted to build a really fine small car, a mini-BMW, not just a super-cheap car. In the technical meetings with the engineering staff I rebelled against his 'novelty' approach."

When I read this, the first thing I thought about was the discussions we've had on here about Pontiac being slated as an American BMW, and the development of the kappa-like small RWD sedans (are they called alpha or are those something else?) that Pontiac and Holden might be getting. DeLorean doesn't go into any other details about what he had in mind for the Vega, but I thought it was pretty interesting. If you can find it, you should definetly check out his biography. Pretty interesting read, even though it's fairly dated. It came out in 1985, and you're best bet to find a copy is to check Half Priced Books or maybe ebay.

Any thoughts?

 

Delorean is an excellent engineer (he started at Packard, and was something of a whiz kid by the time he was at GM) and was also a bit of a rebel and huckster at GM. On one hand, he stole the names of race circuits to name Pontiacs, and basically lied to create the GTO. On the other hand, he was a darn near great automotive visionary even if his methods were questionable.

The GTO created a whole new class of car, he created another new class of car with the 69 Grand Prix. The Solstice is essentially the Pontiac Banshee he very nearly got produced back in the 1960s. Delorean is also primarily responsible for GM's OHC 6 cylinder (in the early 60s!), improved transmissions at Packard (where he started his career). Regardless as to his methods, he was extremely effective in creating a performance image for a division that was known as an old person's car division when he 1st got there.

He had a bit less fortune running Chevy. Vega ran behind schedule and over budget (it was done before he got there, but he still ended up on the hot seat). A planned redesign for the Corvette was cancelled (C3 ended up running 14 seasons because of this). He still got Chevrolet selling in record numbers, streamlined operations, and got promoted to VP of production for GM before calling it quits.



As for Holden, early designs for Holden's new gen cars in the early 1970s had front & rear ends that were a dead ringer for a Pontiac.

http://holden.itgo.com/monaro_history.html (check proposed designs on top and bottom of page)

 

Wasn't Lori Queen one of the people against making a small RWD cheaper car for Pontiac?