ALAS POOR PONTIAC, WE KNEW THEE WELL[Get
the latest Truth With Speedzzter here]
In General Motors’ rush to placate the appliance motoring braniacs who compose
Obama’s Car Czar Central Committee and avoid bankruptcy,
Pontiac was offered up in sacrifice. Pontiac, the “pirate” division of GM.
Pontiac, the builder of “driving excitement.”
Pontiac, the progenitor of the first truly popular, mass market 1960s “muscle car.”
Pontiac, the audacious one whose clued-in managers of times past once named beautiful, pavement-shredding brutes after the world’s most famous racing series, venues and automobiles – Grand Prix, Trans Am, LeMans, Bonneville, Gran Turismo Omologoto, SJ . . .
Pontiac, the youthful one who for a time defied the stodgy GM Board and the American Automobile Manufacturers Association ban on the promotion of power, speed, and racing.
Pontiac, the one who peppered the language of hot rodders with evocative phrases like “Ram Air,” and “Super Duty,” and "Wide Track" and “Hurst,” and "Rally Wheel" and "Tri-Power" and “turbo.”
Pontiac, the Detroit company who built and sold more “shaker” hood scoops than all the rest combined.
Pontiac, the division who refused to cave into the malaise of the 1970s gas crunch and who kept building 400+ cubic inch supercars (albeit less “super”) when everyone else was playing with small blocks.
That Pontiac -- who although 83 years old, did not really come of age until Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen decided in the mid 1950s to abandon the brand’s prosaic flathead past and seize a high performance, youth-driven, overhead valve V8 future –
has actually been dead for a long time. GM politics, government interference, and mindless bean counting had already killed it. Bean counter Fritz Henderson merely recognized what his predecessors had already accomplished.
Pontiac’s mortal wounds began decades before its sales peak in 1978.
GM politics for decades deprived Pontiac of a true sports car in order to shield Corvette from intramural competition.
GM politics killed Pontiac’s dominating motorsports program in the early 1960s.
GM bean counters slaughtered the Super Duty parts program.
Without racing, Pontiac coasted through the halcyon 1960s on the inertia of its thin competition heritage and on the smoke and mirrors of savvy ad men such as Jim Wangers.
While production GTOs, Judges, Sprints, Firebirds, Formulas, Trans Ams, Grand Prixs, and 2+2 were seldom the dominant performance vehicles in their respective classes in actual competition or on the street, Pontiac’s advertising and styling departments kept them at the forefront.
The irony is that while Ford was actually winning races and championships in the 1960s, Pontiac was the brand that was “takin’ it to the streets.”
Its reputation was so solid that Pontiac could credibly run an ad with a photo of a GTO in front of a Woodward Avenue street sign. Everyone who mattered knew what it meant. GM’s Board made them stop using it.
In the early 1970s, the government and the insurance industry, however, succeeded in squelching Pontiac’s party better than GM’s Board and bean counters ever could.
Yet Pontiac reintroduced the Super Duty V8 for a time – perhaps as one last jab in the face of those who cannot stand high performance excellence in the marketplace.
In the 1970s, however, Pontiac often seemed like that fat, old Elvis of the postage stamps. Lots of swagger, but lacking the athleticism of youth. GM’s bean counters forced Pontiac more and more into “corporate” molds. The Firebird was allowed to age not so gracefully.
Even so, the antique second-generation Trans Am was the “poster car” of 1970s rebellion, staring in the quintessential anti-establishment automobile film of its time: 1977's “Smokey and the Bandit.”
The message was simple. The insurance companies can take our money with unreasonable surcharges. The oppressive central government can force us to live with engine strangling regulations, fuel economy standards, and other market interference. The Arabs can jack up oil prices with embargos. The Congress can cut the national speed limit to 55 m.p.h. The greedy land grabbers and zoning police can close our drag strips and race tracks. The "suits," lawyers, and bean counters can try to kill all our fun. But as long as there’s a rumbling, snarling big block V8 in a bespoilered, black and gold, T-Top Pontiac thundering on a stretch of country blacktop, they can never take our freedom!
That next year was the best sales year in Pontiac history.
The real last stand of the “true” Pontiac was during the Iranian hostage crisis. Stripped of its proprietary 400 cubic inch engine, in 1980 Pontiac equipped its huge, holdover F-Body relic with an optional, downsized, turbocharged 301 V8. The turbo engine was underdeveloped and not very impressive. Yet it was still "all Pontiac" in the hearts of the brand’s faithful. It was more genuine than the Oldsmobile 403s and Buick V6s that had defiled some Pontiacs in the past couple of years.
California emission regulations meant that some received their ancient Trans Ams and Firebirds with 305 Chevrolet engines. By the 1982 season, the “real” Pontiac V8 was gone. Replaced at the behest of bean counter efficiencies by “corporate” Chevrolet power.
The heart and soul of Pontiac was gone. The
raison ‘d’etre for the brand was history. In some quarters, the death watch began.
Although Canadian Pontiacs had long used Chevrolet power due to a quirk in Canada's protectionist auto rules, Chevrolet V8s in U.S. Pontiacs were the final blow for all of those who’d lived and fought the Chevy-Pontiac rivalry on the streets in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
The corpse of Pontiac struggled for identity in the 1980s. In essence, it was a zombie.
Its brilliant Fiero was compromised by its horrible choice of engines and a penchant for bursting into flames. GM’s protectiveness of Corvette and its parsimony, however, were probably most responsible for its failure.
Pontiac’s sporty cars became little more than upscale Chevrolets festooned with ever more bizarre plastic body kits, gewgaws, and unreliable gadgets.
Pontiac never hit the combination in the emerging sport compact market, again hamstrung by what the bean counters allowed to be installed under the hood and the lack of factory performance development.
Pontiac's half-hearted attempts to become some sort of "American BMW," with cars like the forgotten 6000 STE were still-born as a result of GM's corporate-enforced uniformity and affection with "badge engineering."
While Pontiac arguably had the most successful of GM's badge engineered '80s compacts -- the N-Body Grand Am -- its FWD performance and image were more exciting among secretaries and rental car purchasing agents than among the potential next generation of Pontiac fanatics.
It was hard to believe that the same company which had once defied corporate oversight to cram a triple-carbureted 389-cube V8 into a mid-sized Tempest and audaciously name the creation after a top-of-the-line Ferrari racer could sell a sled as bland and forgettable as the Grand Am.
As Mustang sales dominated the Second Supercar Era, Pontiac's languished.
Pontiac’s reentry into NASCAR and other motorsports was powered by Chevrolet. Its NASCAR ambitions did not tie into the bland, low performance FWD cars sold in the showroom. And most of its competition intentions were ultimately sacrificed for the good of Chevrolet.
Near the end, Pontiac motorsports was consigned to the low profile ghettos of NHRA drag racing and Grand Am sports car racing. However, no one was fooled. The Chevrolet powered “Pontiacs” were wholly unrelated to anything for sale to the general public.
This time, smoke and mirrors weren’t going to be enough.
Pontiac’s alleged “resurgence” in this decade was principally through rebadging Australian-built, Chevrolet powered Holdens and in the Miata-fighting, corporate-powered Solstice sports car.
It was too little, too late. Sadly, the introduction to Pontiac for millions was through a hideous Aztec, a dust-buster Trans Sport minivan, or a plastic-clad, FWD Grand Am rental/"program car." The alphanumeric Pontiacs of the last few seasons hardly register a blip on the popular consciousness.
Thus, the torred conflagration that began back when Bunkie Knudsen removed the “old man’s” “Stratostreaks” his father had symbolically placed on all Pontiacs during the Great Depression has now been completely extinguished in GM’s great depression.
“Government” Motors has no place for toothless octogenarian "pirates," badge engineering, and fading dreams about muscle cars.
Labels: Bunkie Knudsen, Car Czars, Detroit 3 Bankruptcy, Detroit Bailout, Economic Crisis, GM, Jim Wangers, Pontiac Division, Pontiac G8
