Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

[ZeGerman]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

This is sad, but I think it will probably happen. GM hasn't known what to do with Pontiac since the late-'60s to early-'70s, and Pontiac has subsequently become a confused & misguided division in the time since.

[CDMBill]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

I'm bummed about the Pontiac thing too, but in addition we'll likely see Mercury go away along with Dodge and maybe even Lincoln as these kinds of plans won't just be pursued at GM. What we'll all see is far fewer dealerships and the jobs that go with them.

As far as bankruptcy goes I think a Chap. 11 reorganization is the only chance any of the former big 3 have to survive somewhat intact. As a tax payer I can't see providing funds indefinitely to keep them running as money losers under their current structures. Their primary debt is to former employees for retirement and retiree health benefits. I suspect that all of that will be shifted to us tax payers through the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. ( think Fannie Mae for pension accounts and all that implies) and Medicare. And, yes the retirees won't get all they expected.

Absent that its hard to see how they can compete when their costs per vehicle are so much higher to start with. Add noncompetitive work rules and essentially mandatory overproduction requirements to suit bargaining unit contract requirements and you have companies that have no long term future.

This has been coming for a long time and if we want to have viable American auto manufacturers we will all have to pony up and suffer some financial pain. I realize that paying more taxes is nothing compared to losing a job or whole towns dying but we should be asking our political and business leadership to make the tough calls and give our industry a chance to get it right instead of creating far worse unintended disasters by keeping their heads in the sand.

[Monster]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

I guess we aren't going to see a Pontiac El Camino afterall ..

:P

[purplecobra]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

anybody on here bought a pontiac lately?. The union will be a big sticking point in any plan.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

anybody on here bought a pontiac lately?. The union will be a big sticking point in any plan.

My friend bought a 2008 GTP with the 5.3L last March.

[BangShift McT]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

Sad to say, CDMBill, I see Linc/Merc going, too. They both have been going ballistic with advertising, trying to get sales going. They're even more confused than what's going on over at GM. Lincoln tanked around for almost decades, pushing the Town Car and pretty much nothing else...Mercury has been a C.F. since about '72, from my opinion, and I can't tell when it simply became a different Ford and nothing else.

Out of the two (Buick vs. Pontiac), it's hard to call. Pontiac has the performance heritage and name recognition that will probably be it's saving grace. I loved my Regal to death, but there's not many truly noteworthy Buicks that the general population will remember...Grand National, maybe GranSport, and ....?

And as far as Hummer is concerned, H2 and H3 are simply Tahoe and Colorado to me. Just my opinion.

[tunnelport-470-Pontiac]

Re: Friday Excuse to go Home Early and Drink: The Seemingly Imminent Death of Pontiac

It's probably going to happen, and the writing was on the wall when they stopped making the Firebird/Trans Am platform years ago. That was one platform that soldiered on and sold in the millions of units, when the original full-bodied GTO-type musclecar market died out back in 1972. When they stopped making the FB/TA, it spelled impending doom.

bottom line- the cars are too expensive. There's no incentive to drop $30K on cars that are worth $10K the day after you buy them- they've become a bad investment- end result GM sells less units, profit margins go down.

remember, if the original 1964 GTO wasn't a sales success, it was going to die a quick death- the original management plan was only 5000 units. But it only cost around $3000.

not $30,000

the only upside is, our vintage Pontiacs will shoot up in value- and perhaps more aftermarket attention will be directed toward the traditional Pontiac V-8 aftermarket parts programs, by other vendors/mfrs.