Ever wonder where Pontiac owner’s are going shopping for new cars since the brand folded? Honestly, we hadn’t, until this new study came to our attention.

Oklahoma car collector Tim Dye is well known in the enthusiast community for his stable of Pontiacs. Now, he’s decided to open a museum dedicated to the now defunct marque, in the town of Pontiac, Illinois, through which passes a stretch of the historic ‘Mother Road,’ Route 66.

Barrett-Jackson celebrates 40 years in the automotive auction business in 2011 and given the company’s reputation over the last decade there’s no doubt it will be pulling out all the stops this year.

Backing up the last reports from a few months back, General Motors appears ready to bring back the only truly exciting product Pontiac had to offer, the G8. Now with Pontiac dead the car will be badged as a Chevy (likely wearing the Caprice name), but the important part is that it will be based on the rear-drive Holden Commodore platform, just like the G8 was.

Heide Performance Products, a Michigan company that helps convert Chevrolet Camaros to modern day Pontiac Firebirds, has unveiled their latest creation, a replica of the 1969 Trans-Am based on the current Chevrolet Camaro.

Back in GM’s glory days, when John Zachary Delorean assumed the mantle of General Manager at Pontiac Motor Division, the flamboyant engineer had begun work on his own pet sports car project – the XP-833 – designed as an affordable two-seater alternative to the Chevy Corvette.

Clear of any bad PR for at least a few weeks, Toyota has been hit by yet another safety issue with its cars, announcing a recall of 1.1 million Corolla and Matrix models. The recall involves the 1.8-liter 4-cylinder engine in the cars and as such also affects 200,000 Pontiac Vibes. Models affected include the 2005 to 2008 model year cars.

At issue is the Engine Control Module (ECM), which may have been “improperly manufactured.” The unit could crack at certain solder points resulting in the check engine light to come on, harsh shifts to occur or the engine to simply not start.

Three accidents are been reported related to this issue (including one injury) but none have been confirmed.

Toyota will replace the units starting in mid September.

See after the jump for the official Toyota and GM press releases:

Here’s a great David vs Goliath story that’s sure to get you all fired up at “the man” on a Monday morning. G8Board.com member “jackalope” was recently ticketed for having what a police officer deemed to be illegal tail lights. Knowing that the lights are factory equipment on his Pontiac G8 GT, and are certified by the DOT, he took the ticket to court, considering the whole thing to be some kind of mistake. Knowing he was in the right and had the law on his side, Jackalope was shocked when the judge found him guilty and upheld the ticket, meaning he had to pay the $85. Worse still, he was told by the judge (this time “the man” was actually a woman) that she would continue to fine him if he refused to pay. And to add insult to injury, the judge even went so far as to advise the defendant that he should consider selling his car as its not legal in Maryland.

As General Motors’ sole brand in Australia, Holden’s lineup gets most of GM’s better products, like the Cruze, Captiva (a re-badged Saturn Vue) and 6 varieties of the Holden Commodore, formerly known as the Pontiac G8. While GM claims that Cadillac is ready to go head to head with the Germans, in truth, the G8 was the closest GM has come to making a car as good as a BMW.

Pontiac owners are abandoning the brand when it comes time to purchase their next vehicle, according to a report in Automotive News.

This author has loved hip-hop music since the tender age of 3, when Digital Underground’s “ The Humpty Dance” caught my attention. I didn’t really understand the lyric “I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom” but it had a fat bassline and a character from a nursery rhyme, and that was enough for me.

In the same way that rock and roll groups mythologized American muscle in the 1960’s, rappers have taken to lionizing the automobile in all its forms, whether it’s an East Coast rapper like Jay-Z rapping about Maybachs or Jaguars, or Snoop Dogg cruising through Long Beach, California in one of his famous 1964 Impalas.

Recently, the Southern United States has had a stranglehold on the hip-hop scene, and their love of American muscle has seen a resurgence of interest in rear-drive American cars. For those with money, a new Dodge Charger or a classic muscle car is the must have ride. But not everyone can afford a new car, and so ordinary folk turn to cars like the Chevrolet Caprice, Mercury Grand Marquis or 1980’s G-Body General Motors cars and customize them with cartoonish 24inch rims and custom lift kits.

As with any fashion-driven culture, huge chrome rims are now out of style, and the new trend is “ swangas“, the street term of wire wheels from a 1983 or 1984 Cadillac. Since the wheels were made for a rear-drive offset, they tend to poke out on many of the front-drive vehicles that are affordable to young people, like Oldsmobile 98s, Cadillac Devilles or Buick Park Avenues. While automotive purists may scoff, the “poke” aesthetic is a signature look of the “swanga” movement.

Houston rap group “Block Boyz Click” released a video, imaginatively titled “Ridin Swangas”, and the song is a decent, if amateurish attempt to capture the slowed-down, soulful styles of fellow Houstonians UGK, the video is chock full of truly ghetto American iron that should have been consigned to the junkyard long ago. Aside from the aforementioned cars, sharp eyes will also spot a Chrysler LHS, Buick LeSabre and Pontiac Bonneville.

The artistic merits of the song may be a matter of opinion, but we happened to enjoy the use of some under-appreciated Rick Wagoner-era General Motors machinery, rather than having the (rented) supercar du jour being driven at a snails pace, with a blinged-out hand gripping the wheel at 12 o’clock. Long live the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Dirty South. Keep swangin on ’em, H-Town. Check out the official video after the jump.

[Source: Cardomain blog]

In an effort to provide better customer support and head off problems before they get out of control, General Motors has created a new “task force” aimed at monitoring social media sites for complaints about GM vehicles and looking to find solutions.

With the NHTSA likely applying plenty of pressure after it was questioned over Toyota’s recent recalls, General Motors has announced a recall of 1.3 million vehicles due to power steering issues. The recall affects 1.3 million models including the 905,000 Chevrolet Cobalt models in the U.S., assembled for model year 2005-10. The recall also affects the 2007-10 Pontiac G5, as well as the 2005-06 Pontiac Pursuit in Canada and the 2005-06 Pontiac G4 in Mexico.

Things just couldn’t get any worse for Toyota Motor Corp. The automaker has announced yet another recall, this one for 1.1 million vehicles in the United States, and is essentially an expansion of last year’s floor mat/pedal recall that affected 4.3 million vehicles.

Several months ago GM’s Australian Holden division announced that it would offer a special edition of the Commodore, dressed up to look like the Pontiac G8. Called the Holden VE Commodore SS V-Series Special Edition, the new model looks mostly identical to the Pontiac model (itself based on the Commodore), except for the absence of any Pontiac badging.

Frederick “Fritz” Henderson has resigned as General Motors chief executive officer.

Earlier this week General Motors produced its last Pontiac for the U.S. market, ending the brand’s 82 year run. The final vehicle to roll off the assembly line at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday, November 25th at the Orion Township plant was a rather unspectacular white G6 sedan which is scheduled to be sold to a fleet. It’s hardly the sort of send-off one might expect for a brand that has produced such memorable legends as the GTO and Firebird.

Get out your old Whitesnake muscle shirt because the Trans Am is back… sort of. The Corvette and Chevy tuning experts at Lingenfelter have announced that they will bring a modern Trans Am to the SEMA Show in Las Vegas next week, taking inspiration from the 1971 second-gen TA. That means it will have a 445-cubic inch V8 engine under the hood making 655-hp.

If you’re a car junkie, Twitter is the place to be today. Ahead of a webcast tomorrow morning by GM CEO Fritz Henderson, the General arranged for a select few media to meet with its PR folks and get a preview of what the New GM has to offer.

Earlier this week General Motors officially turned off the lights and locked the doors at its Boxwood Road assembly plant for the last time, marking the end of the line for the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky.

Yesterday we urged GM CEO Fritz Henderson to sit down with his new Vice Chairman Bob Lutz to get their stories about the future of the Pontiac G8 straight. Now they have, and the news isn’t good.

Perhaps General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson and his newly appointed Vice Chairman Bob Lutz should sit down, have a talk and get their stories straight.

Today the sun rose on a New General Motors, a move which will also see the sun set on a lot of people’s careers. GM emerged from bankruptcy protection at 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time with news of a serious corporate restructuring plan that will take effect over the next few months.

Late Sunday a judge approved the sale of GM’s assets to a group comprised of the U.S. government, the UAW and the Canadian and Ontario governments under the name NGMCO, Inc. The decision will see GM exit bankruptcy court quickly with the ‘New GM’ assets going to NGMCO, while the ‘Old GM’ assets will be sold off to the highest bidder.

Hurst Performance Vehicles is looking to send the Pontiac brand out with a bang as it prepares to launch a high output version of the G8 sedan. In collaboration with automotive legend “Doc” Watson, Hurst will build 52 G8 models  complete with superchargers, suspension modifications, custom interior, wheels, a Hurst shifter and, of course, the company’s iconic white/gold and black/gold colors.

The Hurst/Pontiac G8 H.O. will be a modern day version of George Hurst’s “Executive Hot Rod.”

Along with those G8 models, Hurst will also build 10 G6 Convertibles.

“Doc started all of this with George back in 1960 with Hurst Performance Research.  His Hurst H.O. Pontiacs have stormed drag strips and main streets across the country for 50 years,” said Hurst Chairman, Nate Shelton. “There could not be a better time to honor Doc and the legendary Pontiac marque.”

Over those 50 years Watson is responsible for bringing over 80 different performance vehicles (both for the street and the track) to life.

Specifics like power output and price are not yet available but will be made public on August 1st on the Hurst website:

www.hurst-performance.com

Official release after the jump:

Contrary to recent reports that the Vibe would be the sole Pontiac model to continue on into 2010, General Motors has now decided to end production of the utilitarian vehicle early. Production of the Vibe at the GM/Toyota joint-venture New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated (NUMMI) facility will end this August.

The 2010 model lineup for the soon-to-be-terminated Pontiac brand will consist of just one model – the Vibe.

There is hope, be it ever so slight, that the Pontiac G8 may live on even though the brand it’s attached to is most certainly slated for elimination.

While President Obama and General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson are both expected to hold press conferences today, officially GM has already filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection.

General Motors will cut 1,124 dealerships loose by October of 2010. The struggling automaker on the verge of bankruptcy sent letters out to the dealerships last week as it searches for ways to reduce it’s current dealer network of 5,969 to just 3,600.

It’s not exactly the sort of news worthy of a celebration, but some cautious optimism is certainly appropriate as word comes that the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky might not suffer the same fate as almost every other fun vehicle under the General Motors umbrella.

Late last week we reported that GM was ceasing production of the Cobalt SS Sedan and now the automaker has confirmed several other performance models will get the axe.

General Motors has once again posted a massive quarterly loss, coming up short to the tune of $6 billion for Q1 of ’09. That is roughly the equivalent of the value of 473,000 Chevy Aveos.

Jim Waldron, the owner of a Pontiac dealership in Michigan has revealed that he and a group of investors submitted an offer to buy the scheduled-for-termination Pontiac brand from GM. Waldron made the announcement on ABC’s local WJRT station and said that he expects to hear back from the company this week.

With news today that the Pontiac brand will in fact be eliminated, General Motors is eager to get working with Toyota to build a new shared platform to replace the Vibe.

As we reported last week, General Motors has indeed made the decision to kill the Pontiac brand. The news comes as a part of a new viability plan (yes… another one) submitted to the federal government today.

As the saying goes, “It’s all over but the crying.” Edmunds is reporting that its source inside General Motors has let slip that the Pontiac brand will officially be eliminated. The announcement is expected to be made next Monday as a part of a more thorough reorganization of the struggling automaker.

Several major news outlets are reporting that General Motors is planning extended shutdowns of its U.S. plants this summer. The plants would be idled for as much as nine weeks from mid-May through July.

When General Motor’s first submitted it’s viability plan to the Obama Administration, Saab, Hummer and Saturn were put on notice, while other brands like Pontiac and GMC (as well as Chevy, Buick and Cadillac) were guaranteed to stay on.

Just ahead of the Obama Administration’s press conference today, some of the most important details are already out.

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner will be stepping down as the head of the deeply troubled American auto giant by the end of the month – this according to several reports including CNBC and GMInsideNews.

With General Motors recently announcing a hold on any future performance vehicles, speed freaks will have to go elsewhere. And where better to go but to one of the most trusted named in the aftermarket, Lingenfelter?

Along with asking for $16.6 billion more in loans from the Federal Treasury, General Motors has made it clear that Saturn, Saab and Hummer will be sold off or eliminated.

General Motors is now offering a dealer-installed performance upgrade for the Pontiac Solstice GXP, Saturn Sky Redline and Chevy HHR SS, that will give the cars almost 300hp and more than 300 ft-lbs of torque.

It has become abundantly clear that we are a society that doesn’t accept compromise. Love TV, but hate commercials? Tivo your favorite shows and watch them whenever you want. Can’t decide between three side dishes at Denny’s? Get em’ all!

Based on the current Australian Holden Commodore sedan, the Pontiac G8 is a new model for North America. The first time I saw one on in my area, I was drawn to its deeply sculpted fenders, arching waistline and aggressively-styled fascias. A rear under diffuser and dual polished exhaust outlets evoke a strong European style that’s emphasized by the beefy, rip-snorting front end.

Since its introduction in 2004, the G6 family has been a best seller for the Pontiac brand. In the hopes of keeping the car relevant, Pontiac has decided to give it a series of mid-cycle updates. Interestingly, the refresh also comes mid-year, so the updated G6’s will be classified as 2009.5 models.

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