Tue 30 Jun 2009
MotorGeek: The Final Vestiges of Pontiac
Posted by Administrator under MotorGeek - Automotive Writing[2] Comments

2008 Pontiac G6 - Chicago, IL. Photo by Randy Stern
Amid the sell-off of General Motors’ bad assets, the automaker also announced the wind-down of the Pontiac brand off of their product portfolio. This is the second brand that GM has eliminated this decade.
Since its inception, the brand always had an identity crisis. At first, the Oakland Car Company turned out some pretty good cars back in the 1920’s. Corporate efficiency integrated Pontiac into a brand that was just slightly upward in the pecking order of North American offerings. In Canada, Pontiacs were also built on Chevrolet chassis for local consumption.
It wasn’t until the late 1950’s when Pontiac began to forge a different image for itself. It began to differentiate from the rest of GM not by design, but by asserting its performance image. The full-sized 1962 Grand Prix sparked a different kind of muscle car as it exuded mid-level luxury with big engine grunt. The 1964 GTO gave the mid-sized Tempest something affordable and fast – starting the trend of mid-sized muscle cars. In 1967, the Firebird joined a growing number of pony cars that were smaller, lighter and packing a huge wallop under the hood.





