GM To Drop Pontiac - Bad Vibes All Around

[Matt Herring]

News from GM that their Pontiac "Excitement Division" is on the outs...

Read below (note 2008 GM car sales by brand listed in the article...also interesting)...

GM to pull the plug on Pontiac car brand - Apr. 24, 2009

[dcb]

I liked the fiero, knew a lot of folks who had one. Dad-in-law has a 64 goat.

[cfg83]

Matt -

I keep trying to figure out Pontiac vs Buick. One thought is politics. Maybe Buick has a more powerful political block within GM. The article confirms what I have heard, that Chinese love Buicks. Are the sales figures in the article world wide? Lastly, I think it's arguable that the customer demographics of Pontiac are closer to Chevrolet.

Poor old Vibe, it came through but was ignored (how many commercials did you ever see?) :

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.

CarloSW2

[wagonman76]

Same here, it seems that for financial reasons, it would make more sense to drop Buick, since their numbers clearly show they sell far fewer Buicks than Pontiacs. And one would think financial reasons is why they are dropping anything in the first place.

Out of the long running lineup, Olds and Buick were most similar, and Olds is gone. Maybe they don't want to get rid of the remaining middle-luxury line. Pontiac and Chevy were a lot alike too, but they did have quite a few models not shared between the two.

It could be politics too. If they drop Buick, what would Tiger Woods drive? I don't watch a lot of TV, but I don't know of anyone endorsing Pontiac.

[dcb]

A couple more pontiac icons for the obituary:

The bandit:


Gotta love the "Turbo Boost Tribute", it *almost* made night rider worth watching

YouTube - Turbo Boost Tribute

Here's a few of the pontiacs I remember owning at one point
1. 68 Catilina sedan.
2. 72 ventura 2 door
3. 68 tempest sedan
4. 96 bonneville sedan

[dcb]

And of course, how could I forget about this Pontiac branded icon (you get a fuzzy glimpse of it at the top of every ecomodder page)

[Silveredwings]

I'd like to see actual sales vs. average selling price (ASP), and profit by marque.

[Matt Herring]

cfg,

My guess...based on the chart in the article, is that it includes all sales for GM in 2008 including over seas. I googled "number of cars sold in US in 2008" and wikipedia lists about 8 million cars sold in US in 2006 (not 2008 but it's probably close). That would mean the article chart quoting 3 million GM sales in 2008 is a little less than half of cars sold in US were GM...so the Buick sales number in the article is probably close to correct if the source is accurate.

As for Buick, I have also heard over seas sales of the brand were unusually high compared to Buick's homeland sales. I can honestly say I have not seen more than a dozen Buick's in my area...when I think Buick I think old person driving to the golf course (no offense to anyone out there)! The only Buick I can count on seeing every year is the one perched in the middle of the pond at one of the PGA events sponsored by Buick.

[Peter7307]

Sorry to see the brand no longer being sold...more so from an Australian point since some of the models sold (GTO and G8) were built here and sent to the US or where ever to be sold.

I always thought Pontiac had a more sporting image for GM than most of the other brands (apart from the Corvette perhaps) and would have stayed for that reason.

Oldsmobile just sounded old even if the cars were as modern as anything else.

Pete.

[99LeCouch]

Chevrolet as the everyman division with a "vehicle for every person" to compete with Toyota, Buick as the mid-tier offering, Cadillac as the luxo brand. And Saturn to have the Euro vehicles?

I don't get it. Although I do get that Pontiac and Chevy had very overlapping offerings, and were possibly cannibalizing sales from each other.