Quote:
Originally Posted by MSD
I may raise some eyebrows with this comment, but the beginning of the end for Pontiac was in 1963, when Chevy released the big block Chevrolet Corvette instead of the Pontiac Corvette. A flagship sports car that for some reason wasn't released with the badge of the company's performance division. It was all down there until the mid- to late-'80s, at which point they got their act together. They finally got their quality control issues sorted out, and pissed it away with brand dilution. The same car with 3 different sets of body panels is not seen as 3 different cars competing with the imports, it's all the same. With the G8 and Solstice, and even the G6, Pontiac had been turned around, but why would you buy a G8 instead of an Impala SS, or a solstice instead of the Sky? Maybe if they had brought cars that people actually wanted to the US ten years ago, this could have been avoided.
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Brand dilution wasn't the only thing that killed Pontiac; GM actively neglected their 'excitement' brand by doling out high performance variants to every division except Pontiac. Aside from the GTO and Firebird, I'm hard pressed to name any other performance model, while I have no trouble coming up with loads of high performance vehicles from Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, and even GMC. Instead, they were saddled with nothing more than Chevys with split grilles. If Pontiac was a real person, GM would be arrested and charged with criminal negligence for the treatment of their 'excitement' division.