Comments on: R.I.P. Pontiac: General Motors Kills Iconic Brand

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:16:20 +0000

GM is a bloated dinosaur and this is recession is the huge kick in the butt / wake up call it needs. Sure, I know GM was in the middle of it’s pseudo-renaissance, but with cars like the Lambda Traverse/Outlook/Acadia/Enclave, Epsilon Malibu/Aura/Lacrosse, and my personal favorite, the GMT360 (takes a deep breath…) Trailblazer/Envoy/Bravada(x)/Rainier/Ascender/9-7x, it was completely asinine to retain so many brands. Chevrolet alone in its heyday had 25% of the market share; today, GM in its entirety doesn’t have it. They need to lean themselves out, make sure they stay on top of R&D so that new generation cars are always in the pipeline as to not get overshadowed by the competition (a la Saturn of the late 90’s early 2000’s), and focus on long-term sustainability rather than next-quarter profits (thank you 90’s SUV-fad). I know GM can’t lean themselves out too much and they need to: 1. Keep costs down and 2. Sell enough units so that the economies-of-scale allow them to be profitable and platform sharing is a good way to get nail both of those so I’m not saying every car needs to be 100% it’s own. Also, “Mr Marchionne, who successfully returned Fiat to profit in 2006 after six years of losses, has long maintained that in the future carmakers will need to sell more than six million vehicles a year to survive.” (BBC) so, again, I’m not saying dump the whole idea of platform sharing. I love my Saturn Sky Redine but if shedding these brands off it what’s going to make GM viable in the future then so be it. Of course, there’s the whole other side of the coin with these greedy, overpaid union workers who are so indoctrinated into this whole UAW worker’s environment they have no clue what it’s like for the rest of America gladly accepting pay cuts and what not to keep their job, but alas, that’s for another post.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 02 May 2009 03:40:48 +0000

As much as I do not agree with the Obama auto policies it`s GM`s own fault that are sliding down hill fast!First they destroyed Olds,now Pontiac and I`m sure another brand that dates back to the early 1900`s will fall next.The runaway greed at GM has turned the greatest car company in the world into the saddest excuse for a car company in the entire industry!GM`s quality has been on a steady decline since 1972,I`m surprised it has taken this long for them to fall!Maybe they will survive if they finally wake up and realize that they do not have to worry about market share and the bottom line if they worry about turning out quality cars that people want,as they did in there glory days of
1955-1972!

By: miguel

miguel — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:43:49 +0000

Just another little bit of America that’ll be gone under the hand of Obama. He really didn’t grow up in American in the ’60s, so he has no real idea of the place in our culture held dear by Muscle Cars or any other cars for that matter. Obama probably never drove a care until his mid-late 20’s, if at all, and you can be sure he’s had very little experience in a V8 car. Elect a poor man, get a poor man’s car…and the real tragedy is that Pontiac was the best performance value in all the automotive world. I know..I drive a GTO.