| Author | Message | ||
     2008xb12scg |
Newspaper said that GM will disco the Pontiac name. First it was going to be a "nich" brand, now it just won't be. I gues this means My letters to GM for a new Firebird based on the new camaro went unheeded. | ||
| Aptbldr |
Things started going downhill after Pontiac dropped namesake's bust from the hood. {http://www.braatenclassics.com/1955pon/lot.jpg} | ||
| Buellhusker |
Does that mean my wife's 67 GTO 4 speed, convertable will become more valuable? | ||
| Bill0351 |
I don't know why they have to "discontinue" any of these brands. If they come out with a new muscle car, why not just call it a Pontiac Firebird. If they decide to have a new Cutlass, just call it an Olds. It's just a name tag. I understand the need get rid of senseless duplication. The '80s Cutlass, Regal, Grand-Prix, Monte Carlo comes to mind when I think of that. It just seems to be a waste to just shut down a great old brand like that. | ||
| Brumbear |
It truly defies any logic thats the beauty of watching the idiots commit corporate suicide | ||
| Xblaw |
What makes even less sense to me is the decision to nix Saturn. I mean, that is the direction I believe they should have been headed. I personally have never wanted a Saturn, but many Americans are buying smaller compact cars that get over 30 mpg. GM should have been putting more effort into that line IMHO. GM does not seem to really care how in debt they are anyhow. Just a couple of weeks ago they revealed the Segway/GM concept piece of crap. GM ought to be looking 18 months into the future not 18 years. | ||
| Spatten1 |
Does that mean my wife's 67 GTO 4 speed, convertable will become more valuable? Sold my '67 for $1700 about 20 years ago. DOH!!!!! | ||
| Ducbsa |
"Does that mean my wife's 67 GTO 4 speed, convertable will become more valuable?" No, just the opposite. I'll help you dispose of it in an earth-friendly, sustainable way. | ||
| Guell |
The saturn brand started out with a new outlook for gm. Sadly, after years of production, they voted the uaw contract back into their factories. So much for a new direction. Dump buick and hummer, not pontiac and saturn. | ||
| Pkforbes87 |
I guess there's no hope of the Fiero coming back.  | ||
| Xl1200r |
What makes even less sense to me is the decision to nix Saturn. I mean, that is the direction I believe they should have been headed. I personally have never wanted a Saturn, but many Americans are buying smaller compact cars that get over 30 mpg. GM should have been putting more effort into that line IMHO. Saturn isn't exactly a super-efficient make. The only have one small car - the rest are mid-size and SUVs (aside from the Sky roadster). The Pontiac decision does baffle me - I just hope the G8 makes it's way over to Chevrolet as new Caprice/Impala. They can keep the rest. | ||
| Marksm |
I don't know why they have to "discontinue" any of these brands. If they come out with a new muscle car, why not just call it a Pontiac Firebird. If they decide to have a new Cutlass, just call it an Olds. It's just a name tag. I understand the need get rid of senseless duplication. The '80s Cutlass, Regal, Grand-Prix, Monte Carlo comes to mind when I think of that. It just seems to be a waste to just shut down a great old brand like that." Exactly the same opinion I had when the new "Plymouth Fury" came out. Calling that 4 door behemoth a Charger was sacrilege. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
The only US car I would consider owning right now is the Saturn Sky Redline. Not a damn bit of practicality to it, perfectly sums up my 'need' for a car. | ||
| Garyz28 |
IMO Pontiac died when they stopped making their own V-8's | ||
| Crackhead |
dump Hummer, Ponti, GMC, and Buick. It is all the same cars with different emblems on the hood. | ||
| Swordsman |
"Saturn isn't exactly a super-efficient make. The only have one small car - the rest are mid-size and SUVs (aside from the Sky roadster). " Well, it WAS, until GM decided it needed to be more mainstream. The ORIGINAL Saturns were the very definition of super-efficient. Didn't matter how I beat on my old S-1, I got at least 38mpg. And those plastic body panels were the shit. Once they ditched the body panels, I knew it was all over. My late father in law who worked for GM swore that the reason GM gave up on Saturn's original game plan was that it simply wasn't profitable enough. The engines didn't require enough maintenance and the little fender benders didn't require body work, so the dealers starved. ~SM | ||
| Danger_dave |
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| Swordsman |
It'd be so cool if some American upstart company purchased the Pontiac (or Saturn) rights and totally reinvented the brand. Maybe then we'd actually get a GOOD American car, without all the baggage. ~SM | ||
| Jb2 |
IMO Pontiac died when they stopped making their own V-8's Every model is built on a platform these days. Pull the sheetmetal and interior out of any GM car and you'd be hard pressed to tell one from the other. Engines, structural parts, driveline and suspension components cover any car made on that particular platform. I was surprised to see it was Pontiac that went. We had been hearing it would be Saturn. The same redundancy exists in the GMC/Chevy truck line. Same vehicles, different trim. Losing one of those lines could be an option too. With the plants shutting down for 2 months or more I'd be a little concerned owning a newer GM car. Crash parts will go fast and your car might end up at a shop waiting months for parts. We just had a car leave our shop that was dead in the water for weeks due to an unavailable wiring harness... on a 2008 Cobalt. | ||
| Swordsman |
yeah, I think they've been having a lot of shortages on various Cobalt parts. There was a guy over on allfordmustangs.com a few weeks back talking about a waiting list for Cobalt factory brake pads. GM is trying to pull some interesting "guarantees" with their deferred payments if you lose your job, and I saw somewhere that the gov was guaranteeing their warranties in an effort to promote sales, but the word is out, and people are nervous. Unless that Camaro is the coolest thing ever and Obama manages some economic hoodoo, GM is busted. ~SM ~SM | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
I heard on the BBC that Chrysler will probably be filing for Chapter 11 sometime this week. The same report said to the effect that GM was basically in a terminal decline, if not an outright nosedive. Ford however had produced results better than expected or not as bad as feared, depending on which way you look at it. Without any gov bailout money either. Just to rub salt in your wounds, do you know who the likely buyer of Chrysler is? The Agnelli's. Or to most of you FIAT. Now you may all scream with rage at this idea but it has an upside, you all will finally be able to purchase some of their excellent cars, the new 500 for example is an absolute gem, (the Abarth version is a pocket racer), The Punto range are excellent, & their jtd turbo diesel engines are superb. Plus you'll also get access to some absolutely gorgeous Alfa Romeo's & Lancia's as a bonus. All you need now is for Peugeot-Citroen to buy GM & you'll be spoilt for choice of excellent vehicles. You never know, it could happen. | ||
| Kyrocket |
The Badweb members should go together and buy Pontiac with all the rights to all the old tooling and make new/old cars. I'd love to have an "old" GTO, Grand Prix, Firebird, or Trans-am that looked bone stock and new for the model year yet had factory air, disc brakes, and all the maintenance free goodies we have today. I'd like a brand new bandit edition please! | ||
| Swampy |
My dad used to handle the advertising for Pontiac, I remember one summer afternoon when he rumbled into the driveway with a white 69 Trans Am convertible. He got out, picked at it, "awh the clutch feels funny" "I think the bosses son has been rodding the heck out of it" "it has a little ding up by the front bumper" then he hopped back in it and drove it back to work. Mom actually thought it was "nice" The next time I saw it was 25 years later, a picture in the back of a Hot Rod magazine with his boss leaning on it.....you know there were only 8 made, 4 autos and 4 sticks and given out as swag to execs at the time. Yeah, its a real shame, I remember years ago when I worked at the Milford Proving Grounds that they had a V8 Fiero, the Corvette group put a stop to that before it went too far. | ||
| Edgydrifter |
I used to work for an ESL program that had a contract with the UAE. They'd send over cadets from their military schools for a year to learn enough English to do joint exercises with US forces. Anyway... most of the guys had little interest in their studies. They were much more keenly-focused on two things: girls and cars. On cars, in particular, they were quite specific. They loved Pontiacs. They'd pool their stipends, buy them and have them shipped back to the Emirates. Several Firebirds and Fieros are now somewhere in the distant desert thanks to those guys. Sad to see an internationally-loved brand reduced to nothing. | ||
| Firebolt32 |
My letters to GM for a new Firebird based on the new camaro went unheeded. Or started this whole downward spiral of GM...  | ||
| S1wmike |
Does that mean my wife's 67 GTO 4 speed, convertable will become more valuable? No it will cease to exist. | ||
| Swordsman |
"Does that mean my wife's 67 GTO 4 speed, convertable will become more valuable? No it will cease to exist. " Er.... what would cause a car built in 1967 to vaporize if Pontiac went belly up?  I LOVE the Fiat Punto. Sharp looking little thing. It's my favorite car in Sega GT for Xbox.  ~SM | ||
| Froggy |
They got them, and you are not the only one that wanted one. Personally I knew it never was going to happen despite how much I wanted one too.
Who still does that? I can’t even think of a single car that still has a brand spelled out on the hood. Ford doesn’t count, its a little logo, same with BMW. I recall on the older pickups it was common to see 5” lettering for GMC or FORD.
No.
Because they don’t have the resources to support them.
So you are going to pull a car out of your ass from out of nowhere that has no R&D invested in it? Also, due to the economy, it will sell like crap, and when gas prices go back up in a few months, it will linger even longer on the lots.
Where would they sell this? At those stand alone Buell dealers?
It’s easier than killing dealer agreements and union agreements.
Explain please, they need to do this to cut costs. The new CEO is doing what nobody else wanted GM to do, but it necessary.
It never became what it intended to be. It was constantly a poor seller, even with spectacular cars.
300 Million other Americans said the same thing.
Saturn has the freshest line out of all of GM, in fact by the 2008 Model year the oldest car in the lineup was the Sky convertible. GM has more 30mpg cars than anyone else.
You are greatly mistaken.
And people will bitch they didn’t look into the long term and didn’t see the decline of the SUV and the rise of gas prices. Pick one, you can’t have both.
Noob.
There never was. It earned its Fire-o name, so if a MR car was to return, it would use some other name that wouldn’t remind people of that disaster.
Looking like that won’t be happening based on what I have been reading.
What happened to you? It thought you were in love with the Camry or something.
Buell died when they stopped making their own motors. Oh wait….
Hummer, Saab, Pontiac, and Saturn are all dead unless someone coughs up some cash. Also, what in the 4 brands you mentioned lineups; can you find a rebadged version of even one of their products in another of those brands? Oh wait; there is one, the GMC Acadia and the Buick Enclave, both very nice vehicles for two different segments.
Hard to be profitable when nobody will buy a car that has 4” panel gaps and tons of wind noise as result. The plastic panels had the huge gaps because of heat expansion. They were a great idea, but never caught on with the public. Kind of like a certain white Buell that lasted only two years.
If I had the dough, I would have done it years ago.
GM decided to kill Pontiac back last August, but was intending on phasing out by 2014. The announcement was about speeding this up to the end of 2010. Similar deal with Saturn.
Needless speculation. Plenty of parts now, and in the future.
And people bitch about a one month backorder on a belt on a current production Ulysses.
Being that the Cobalt is one of the few cars on the market that’s still doing relatively well in this economy, this is not surprising. I heard last fall that GM added another shift at the factory to pump up production.
Yep the warranties have never been an issue, despite rumors you might have heard from the media.
Well the Camaro is the coolest thing ever, and Obama is the next coming of Jesus, so GM will live. 
Pretty much.
They just had more money stashed under the mattress.
Part of the bailout was to strike a deal with FIAT.
Look what happened to GM when they got together with FIAT. You can keep your FIATS and SEATS and whatever funky euro cars you got, we got enough Volkswagens here already to thin out the heard.
What’s next? Nissan buying Renault?
Umm I guess you never seen the new Challenger then. Also there is a company that is authorized by GM to make reproduction modern 69 Camaros, I need to dig up that info for you.
Ah, that explains why the LT1 and LS1 fit like a glove in there
If it was made by Apple, it would lock out and say you need to buy the 2009 edition for $99 that looks the exact same except comes with a bigger glove box.
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| 2008xb12scg |
If GM is bought by Fiat, is it an American car company? If not, why are we bailing out a foreign car company? I never realised that fix it again tony was that big. Shows what I know. Funny thing is I was saving up for a Pontiac when I made the mistake of walking into a Harley dealer. Then I had to go to the restroom and as I walked to the back I fell in love with a girl named XB...Back to the original plan, save for a classic Ponch as a new one is out. | ||
| Gearhead |
I've always driven Chevrolets but it baffles my why GM doesn't either dump Chevy Trucks or GMC. Get rid of Cadillac SUV's and rebage them as an upgrade to what ever truck line they keep. Apparently, it's too simple, imo. |
