GM'S PONTIAC DIVISION ENDS, BRINGS BACK MEMORIES OF AN ERA OF MUSCLE CARS-GOODBYE OLD FRIEND

GM has finally pulled the plug on a car brand named after an Indian Chief who led the Midwest Indian tribes. Why the car was originally named for him, nobody remembers-other than there were a lot of native names used for cars, for some reason.

I remember that my first contact with a Pontiac muscle car was when my best friend in college got a new PONTIAC Le Mans muscle car from his parents as his present upon getting into college. That was his present, and we loved riding with him as he sped on the tollway for our weekends off to his parents lake house in Michigan.

We could make that trip in very short order from our college campus due to the 80 mph average that the car could do on the toll road and our CB radio and "good buddy" talk with truckers alerted us to any "smokeys" on the road ahead of us. heck it was not unusual for us to do 100MPH back then when the speed limits were 75 on the highways, and trucks would pass you up at that speed.

The Pontiac had it all; muscle, speed, air conditioning and a 8 track player to blast the music of the day that we sang along to on our road trip.

What great memories we had in that Pontiac. Cruising for girls on Saturday nights, going to the drive-in theaters, and having little worries in our adolescent lives. That was 1971, and it was the era of the Pontiac-Pontiac ruled with its TRANS AM, GRAND AM, LE MANS and even with popular bigger cars like the BONNEVILLE, fit for a whole family.

There was something unique to that car's engine, it had a unique sound to it. I always remember it to this day, and it had that sound always.

After college I ended up owning a few Pontiacs, a couple of Grand Am's and of course a couple of the sporty and powerful Fieros , the 6 cylinder "sport car" two seater with the engine in back of the driver. They all made that unique Pontiac engine sound. The Fiero was the first car with plastic body panels so it never had any rust ( in those days rust was a major reason to get a new car). Also, it looked really cool.

The car lost its luster as we teenagers aged and needed a family car or van, but the memories live on.

What killed Pontiac
GM pulls the plug on a brand credited with originating the muscle car.

The Pontiac car brand, once marketed as General Motors' "excitement division," will be killed off by the end of next year, the carmaker announced Monday.

The decision to shutter Pontiac was one of several aggressive steps GM spelled out in an updated survival plan Monday. The government has given the company until the end of next month to restructure and slim down in order to survive.

The new GM will focus on four core brands: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac.

The fate of three other troubled lines -- Saturn, Saab and Hummer -- will be decided at a later date, GM said. They are likely to be sold off or shut down, while Pontiac will be shuttered.

Pontiac's problem was not sales, GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson indicated during a conference call Monday. In 2008, Pontiac was the company's third-best selling brand behind Chevrolet and GMC and sold twice as many vehicles as Buick, a brand that will apparently survive the changes at GM.

The problem for Pontiac has been profitability. GM doesn't generally break out profits by brand, but Buick and GMC, which are sold in dealerships alongside Pontiacs, are more profitable, Henderson said.

"We didn't have a strategy that we were satisfied with that would allow us to win with the Pontiac brand," he said.

Roots in the 1950s

Pontiac's identity as a "performance" brand dates back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pontiac cars were designed with wider bodies for cosmetic reasons and the wheels were pushed out to match. This "wide-track" design became a selling point and was advertised as giving Pontiac cars a distinct cornering advantage over other cars.

The idea of Pontiac as a performance brand was solidified in 1964 with the creation of the Pontiac Tempest LeMans GTO. That car quickly evolved into the GTO and is often credited with creating a new class of American car, the muscle car.

"There was a time, a long way back now, when you knew exactly what Pontiac stood for," said Kevin Smith, editorial director for the automotive Web site Edmunds.com. More recently, under vice chairman Bob Lutz, GM tried to revive Pontiac's image.

One strategy floated for Pontiac was to sell only, or mostly, rear-wheel-drive cars. That would have set it apart from other GM divisions, and most cars sold in America. Rear-wheel-drive is associated with performance brands like BMW.

Unfortunately, the 2004 model year reintroduction of the Pontiac GTO name on a performance coupe imported from Australia didn't result in big sales. So far, the Pontiac G8, a rear-wheel-drive four-door sedan also imported from GM's Australian Holden division, hasn't been a sales success either despite good reviews.

Pontiac's most popular products remain the G6, a decent but unexciting midsize car available as a sedan, coupe or convertible, and the Vibe, a small wagon shared with Toyota, which sells it as the Matrix.

Any plans to return Pontiac to the heavy-horsepower days of the 1970s ended as gas prices rose and Congress prepared stricter fuel economy rules for the industry.

In response to those pressures, GM quietly introduced the Pontiac G3, which had been sold in Canada only. Once again, Pontiac was selling a rebadged Chevrolet product, this time the Korean-built Aveo subcompact car.

Pontiac's lack of focus as a brand may finally have brought its demise, said Smith. "That's just death in a marketplace where there's so much competition and so much quality," he said.