I'll tell you who killed Pontiac.
The aholes at General Motors.
Shit product for years now.
A great brand, with legendary cars, ruined by marketing aholes, and bean counters.
Vibe; I mean Toyota Matrix.
Fiero catching on fire with oil leaks.
How about that Aztek?
Or the super-lame G3, G5 and G6.
Why didn't these POS's sell!!!!!!
So F'ing LAME!
Chevy Cobalt with a Pontiac badge stuck on the front.
They needed guys with cajones like John Delorean
Bunkie Knudsen
The Pontiac GTO (sometimes referred to as “the goat”) is arguably one of the two most important history making cars of its generation, the 1960’s (The other is the Ford Mustang). The baby boomers were craving more power in their automobiles, but GM mandates clearly stated that engines larger than 330 V8 could not go in an intermediate sized car. Previous PR problems with past designs, lawsuits, and a book by Ralph Nader really made the automakers “nervous” of making any more negative PR noise.
Lower Pontiac managers found a way around this mandate in 1964. They were able to put in a 389 V8 into the Tempest by creating an “option package”. Upper management did not see the “option packages” on the final reports of each model line; this was decided by lower management. Upper management obviously let this go through once they found out, because the GTO option was selling like mad. Lower management estimated 5,000 to be sold. 32,450 GTO’s were produced that first year, and the rest of Detroit jumped on board building their own muscle cars and pony cars.
The first true performance car for a decent price was finally available to the public. Before this, people had to spend a lot of money and time “hot rodding” their own cars. Now you could drive something off the showroom floor and be racing it in 5 mn’s, probably smoking most other racers.
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