G6 GTP should have the 260HP Turbo 2.0L and your choice of 6 speed auto or manual.

G5 should never have existed, or at least came with the 2.4L standard and optional S/C 2.0L

GP has a nice engine lineup but they half assed the 2004+ refresh

Torrent should have been a GMC

 

I too think it's pathetic to see what's happened to Pontiac, and a prime example of the fact that GM still does not quite have it together.

As you note, Pontiac is basically getting its butt kicked by Mazda, not to mention Nissan, and even Dodge. Pontiac invented this segment, and now they can't even compete in it. GM's reaction is to just shrink the brand. Typical. If GM isn't succeeding, it must be because there isn't a market, right? Just like they stopped making the Bonneville because no one wanted American sports sedans (Charger, 300C). Just like they stopped making F-Bodies because no one wanted poneycars (Mustang).

It's nice that GM is bringing over G8, but this isn't a brand fix. In fact, if their shorterm plan ends with this, the car will rot in the showrooms, just like the last great Australian car they brought over.

GM needs to take the little steps and make sure every Pontiac model has a real performance model. Grand Prix did a good job with GXP. G6 did not. Forget awd, even a manual transmission and a H.O. version of the 3.9L (as we were promised) would make waves. Similarly, why not let the G5 coupe be first of the Delta's to get the turbo four? That would immediately draw youth to the brand, and give them an exclusivity they have lacked since Chevy started putting the 3800 S/C into the Impala.

As it is, I highly doubt there will be a Pontiac to which to provide Alphas. The next five years will determine the fate of the brand. If GM has big plans I don't know about, good for them. Even so, I will be dissapointed if they don't make the much needed effort to enliven their volume products.

 

People will hate me for this..but whatever. For me, Pontiac lost it's way when it started decladding cars. The mags beat them to hell over it, but it was in reality the one thing they had going for them. Flash back to 1999 (when I graduated high school). Pontiac had a new Grand Am, which sold like wildfire despite being outperformed by pretty much all it's competition. Despite being FWD, and having no power, it looked like it could suck the pony right off a Mustang. I remember when a manager at the place I worked got one...it was a black Grand Am GT with Ram Air and Chrome rims..everyone was crowded around it admiring it.
Along side the Grand Am, we had the Supercharged Grand Prix, which was still pretty fresh and having an aftermarket explosion at the time. There was the Bonneville, which was at the end of it's lifecycle, but also pretty cool....like an executive express. The Firebird was also new, and though it had priced itself out the market, and the magazines made jokes, there was not a male under 25 who didn't want this car. One day I will have one of those 20th aniversary Blue and White T/A's. Even though the **** fire was a slow seller...it at least looked related to the Firebird. I would imagine there were a few kids who went in looking at Firebirds and ended up in Sunfires, or Grand Am's.

To me, this was the time Pontiac was coolest in my lifetime. Pontiac had a brand that had an aggressive, cool image despite being made up of cars that were lacking the engineering of their competition. Then unfortunatly, Pontiac stated listening to the Magazines, and decided it was time to grow up and look more mature. What that has translated to is a Grand Prix that is uglier than the one it replaced, and a G6 is average, and forgettable. The GP GXP and G6 GXP both have grill treatments worse than the base cars. The G5 is an afterthought along with the Torrent. The GTO was too impractical to be a success and sell in volume.

Lastly you have the little Solstice, which at $20K and 20,000 units a year is nothing. It doesn't even have a halo effect if you think about it. Someone comes in and want's a $20K Solstice...but has a family, or wants something bigger. What do you sell them? A G6 Convertable that is what $5K plus more. Anything nice in a Pontiac dealership will be signifigantly more expensive. I am all for halo programs that make no money, or even loose some money if they get customers in the showroom so you can sell them something else. However, when the halo car is the coolest, and also one of the cheapest in the showroom it makes it very hard to get customers into something else. At least with the GTO, I am willing to bet some people came in looking at one, and left with a Comp G or GXP Grand Prix (I did initally before I could have a third car as a GTO). That is why I have never liked Kappa cars...they were done by the will of Bob Lutz despite there really being no reason other then the "Oh look a cool little Miata like car" factor. I would consider a Solstice GXP...but then you are in used C5 pricing...

Anyway...all Pontiac needs is to turn the styling up a notch and focus of designing all of their cars to look like they can rip the poney off a Mustang.

 

The problem lies with the dealers, I think.

They basically want Pontiac to be Chevrolet. Pontiac cannot be Chevrolet if they want to have a performance image. That means no SUVs. No vans. No econoboxes. I don't think the dealers are thinking long-term - all they see are the potential short-term profits from a car like the G5, and then they complain until they get another lackluster product to dilute the lineup.

What the dealers need to realize is that (we'll use hypothetical dealer Joe Smith) they are not selling "Joe Smith's cars". Joe Smith is selling Pontiac's cars. What is good for Pontiac is good for the dealer. What might be good for the dealer for a short time is NOT good for Pontiac, though.

 

Agreed.

But the dealers are only part of the problem.

- We all need to get used to the idea that Pontiac,Buick, and GMC are going to act as a single division moving forward with no overlap between them.

- The G8 is the start of the new Pontiac.

- The days of the Torrent,G5,Grand Prix, and current G6 are rapidly coming to an end, what follows them will determine Pontiac's fate.

- I believe we will see a new GTO and Alpha Pontiacs to add to the G8 and the Solstice in the showroom. Remember too, that both Zeta and Alpha are intended to support a wide variety of bodystyles and configurations, some can be uniquely Pontiac if GM does its homework.

- The current G6 is the greatest disappointment for me in recent Pontiacs. Anyone remember the concept version? The production car is barely a pale reflection of a great concept.

- Hopefully, the Gx naming scheme will also depart at the first update of the G8 (and with luck, its production moving to North America).

Pontiac can really be what it has claimed to be for all these years, a true performance brand. If GM gets its act together in time.

 

I agree. Torrent and G5 specifically have no purpose in life other than to appease the dealers. G5 only came about because dealers complained long enough and loud enough about not having a car to replace the Sunfire.

This is the problem with GM's portfolio. These dealers are set in their 80's ways of thinking that every division has to have a full lineup. We all know that Pontiac has to be much more focused than Chevrolet, but I'm wondering if it isn't the dealerships that aren't allowing this to happen.

 

Well, I don't know if I would completely blame the dealers. Pontiac has traditionally been set up to move a ton of cheaper sporty cars. It's not the dealers fault they got the G5 rebadge instead of something sexy like the Mazda 3. And it's not exactly fair to take away the volume cars years before the profitable RWD cars arrive.

 

The dealers wanted the Pontiac Pursuit coupe from Canada. They got exactly what they wanted.

 

There is so many great points on this thread I think certain powers that be at GM should read this, whether they already know most of this or not.

First of all, it's obvious that Pontiac has alot of fans and enthusiasts. Although it can be said that GM has too many divisions and needs to either trim or eliminate one or two, they should keep in mind that people who are Pontiac fans and buyers tend to have brand loyalty greater than larger brands such as Chevrolet. Back when I was a teen and was in love with Trans Ams, I also favored the Grand Prix & Grand Am over the Monte Carlo, and thought the 403 Bonneville sedan was more classy than the Caprice Classic (though I favored the Caprice Classic coupe over the Bonne's....I'm talking the late 70s in case you haven't noticed).


Second point is that if anyone at GM is wondering why Pontiac isn't selling the way it was just 5 or 6 years ago, or is desparately serching for ways to bring Pontiac back, they should be fired immediately. Why?

A post I made at another site:

The whole notion of anyone killing off Pontiac cars without replaceing them (even cars that sold slowly, still counted towards numbers) is like how Georage Washington caught a bad flu he probally would have recovered from, yet "doctors" of the day said he died from pnemonia but were oblivious to the fact that their numerous "bleedings" of poor George when he was very sick had anything to do with it.



Finally, shrinking a brand doesn't improve it's image. Has cutting the number of names Pontiac sells actually improved the quality of the cars that's left? Nope. Has there been any of the money that went to marketing the various names been moved towards making the continuing cars more desireable or better in any way? Again, a big fat no.

What you do get for purposely deciding to cut well over 120,000 car sales annually from your lineup is less showroom traffic..... less sales.

Pontiac probally owes it's entire existance right now to rentals. Solstice's sales numbers are just a drop in the bucket, and people walking into a Pontiac showroom and buying a Solstice is just like people going to Chevrolet to buy a Corvette...they probally walked in already knowing they were going to buy one, so it's not a showroom traffic builder like a Viper or GT, and not a car that's going to pull regular customers like a Camaro or Mustang might. The G6 has a decent percentage of retail sales, but you can't run a division on a single name. The Grand Prix has the excellent GXP package, but that is a fringe car that accounts for something like 10% or less of all Grand Prix production.

Jason, as a former Pontiac salesman is 100% justified in his frustration with GM letting Pontiac wither away for nothing. The G8 is the only new wothwhile car at Pontiac (a car obviously better than the one it replaces to potentially sell at any real volume) since GM started dropping cars off Pontiac lineup save the G6.

Brandon strikes a good point of how Pontiac seems to have lost it's visual excitement since it dropped it's excessive body cladding, which obviously affected Pontiac's image (the testosterone designed G8 might fix some of this).

Stars also nails a point that performance versions don't carry a brand. Throwing a manual tranny in one car or a blower on the engine of another isn't going to save a division or build up enough traffic to make a difference if the regular car it's based on is still dull looking, and the pickings are slim when you look at the line up.

BigDarknFast, you are completely right about profit being more important than volume, and that logic will come into play with the G8. It will sell far less total than the Grand Prix (probally only half of the Grand Prix's number), but will be more profitable because it will likely & will almost certainly outsell the Grand Prix in the retail market. But I'd think Pontiac needs a bit more breadth. G8 is going to be a great performance sedan, but where's the executive sedan the Bonneville was?


Don't get me wrong. I know when GM's North American Zeta program collasped, it stalled Pontiac's plans (we would have had a new GTO and Grand Prix by now). I know GM needs to cut their marketing and distribution operations in order to focus on better cars (and plan) to compete. But that still leaves room for Pontiac to be upmarket from Chevrolet or a more exciting counterpart to Buick.

If Buick dealers didn't want the Holden Caprice (as the Buick Roadmaster or Park Avenue) for fear of it's effect on Lucerne sales, why not give the damn thing to Pontiac as the new Bonneville?

Why is it that after 5 years since it was first shown alongside the convertible concept's debut, and the miniscule amont of money needed to create this car, hasn't GM made a Pontiac Solstice hardtop?

Though the G5 is a "temporary" car, it does look arguably better than the Cobalt it's based off of. But why isn't Pontiac promoting the car? IMHO it's a perfectly car to market against small FWD sports coupes from Asia because a) it's quality is very competitive for the price, b) despite it's dependence on rentals, I don't think Pontiac has as much as a "cheap American brand" image as Chevrolet, and c) it has the looks... add the aftermarket supply of the Cobalt (and maybe even Cobalt SS's soon to be discarded supercharged 4) it would fit into Pontiac's "performance" history and, 5) there's no sedan version...at least here in the US.

 

The G5 in my mind is the perfect example of how things can go wrong. I was stunned that the 2.0 S/C wasn't offered. That would have lent it some credibility, but instead we got a ho-hum rebadged Cobalt.

Performance models do not carry a brand, but they DO lend their image to the other models in the lineup.

 

None of which made any money. (Well, possibly the Grand Am.)

I agree with what you are saying -- but GM should have figured they had a problem with cars like the Bonneville and the Grand Prix 10 years ago and started something like the global Zeta program back then. They didn't and now they don't have any product.

But, after the sales have bottomed out and they're losing their shirts, it's too late. Doing a Lucerne-like refresh on the Bonneville would have been nuts I think.

 

Aside from the Sunire, they all should have made money. V8 F-bodies were profitable. The Bonneville was on an old platform that should have been profitable. GTO supposedly made money.

IMO, Pontiac's should be off the shelf GM cars with the styling and performance turned up a notch. I would be all for a cheap econobox Pontiac if it was the most agressive looking car on the platform, and performed better base for base than it's Chevy sibling. They used to be very focused in this regard up untill the Aztek. Then things went downhell from there.

 

pontiac is definitely on life support right now.. it's a brand in transition... in my mind, Pontiac can't be a volume brand like Chevy simply because there isnt a market for it.. gone are the days when GM can have 4 different versions of the same car... Pontiac needs the differentiate itself as a performance brand.. they've been all talk in that area so far, and no substance... the thing with being a performance brand is there isnt as large a market for it, so of course you are going to sell less volume.. but that doesnt mean they would make less money if the business plan is set up right... in my mind the pontiac lineup should have the following

Kappa coupe and convertable- call it Solstice?
Alpha RWD sedan, coupe, convertable- call it Grand Am.. and perhaps even Firebird for the coupe/convertable?
Zeta coupe, sedan, convertable- Call it Grand Prix and GTO?
and even maybe a LWB Zeta Sedan- call it Bonnevile?

is anything else really necessary?

most of these would be low volume mainly cause they are alL RWD... put some good powertrains in there... LS3, 3.6 w/DI... turbo ecotec...

they can sell at low volume and still make money because a lot of the research and development is being done across other, more volume oriented, GM brands.. or am i wrong?

i'm just throwing this out there.. i could be completely off mark

oh, and i agree throw some wild styling back into pontiac... i agree the last grand am when it first came out was a good looking car.. the firebird/trans am was way over the top...

the solstice and G8 has some of that.. but the G5, G6... completely boring.. not bad looking, but just bland

 

I think a turbo Ecotec, RWD Alpha Pontiac would sell like hotcakes with the tuner crowd. Think turbo Nissan 180SX/Silvias. Even a higher-priced model, with AWD, could be an Evo/STI killer.

 

I agree.

For as tacky as that cladding was, it made Pontiacs unique and regardless of my own opinion, a lot of people liked the looks of it.