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Was The Late-Model GTO The Car That Killed Pontiac? These Guys Seem To Think So, We Disagree


Was The Late-Model GTO The Car That Killed Pontiac? These Guys Seem To Think So, We Disagree

The 2004-06 Pontiac GTO was, depending on your view, either a great modern musclecar that suffered from a bad exchange rate with the Australian Dollar or was a bland attempt at reviving a storied nameplate in an attempt at selling an imported car. The truth is that when it debuted, GM had been without the F-car twins for two years and wanted a RWD coupe to fill the void, and that there was plenty of backing to bring one of the Australian Holdens to the United States, especially after Bob Lutz drove a Commodore that was brought to the U.S. for a quick visit. On paper, it sounded great: it was a horsepower jump over the baddest factory fourth-gen Camaro or Firebird, it came with a manual transmission, and it seated four fairly comfortably. In execution, the first year GTO’s were panned for looking like any other Pontiac product, it took underside photos to prove that the GTO had a true dual exhaust, and there was no aggression in the styling. Pontiac remedied both the next year, but the damage was done and the cost of the car was suffering as the Australian Dollar gained in value.

Whatever side you are on, the one thing that shouldn’t be considered when arguing the late-model GTO’s existance is whether or not the car was responsible for killing off the brand. Yet, that’s exactly what gearheads.org claimed in an article titled “The Car That Killed Pontiac: The 2004-2006 GTO”, which accuses the GTO of being the downfall of Pontiac. How offbeat is this piece? “With the end of the Firebird in 2002, the 2006 GTO was the last muscle car the automaker ever produced. The worst part is that, despite its awful aesthetics and Australian origins, with its Corvette C6 powertrain the GTO easily outperformed (and outperforms) its neo-muscle competitors—the Charger, the Mustang, the Camaro, and even the Challenger.

I beg to differ. The aesthetics were far from awful, though they were admittedly not in-your-face aggressive. Even the 2005’s have a nice, pleasing shape to them. You want an awful aesthetic? Go look at a 2005 Grand Am: it’s rolling Tupperware. Holding the GTO’s Australian origins against it just shows ignorance. The Australians completely understand muscle cars, and as a bonus point they understand road racing and that a car must be durable to survive that country. How is that a bad thing? The worst part was that the car was competitive against it’s peers? That doesn’t sound right, does it? Sounds pretty damn good to me.

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If you want to see where Pontiac really started to fail, look to 1978. The car pictured above is the sole survivor out of two 1978 Pontiac Grand Am CA’s built. It’s a prototype that someone in Pontiac had green-lit in the hopes that performance would come back. It packed a 301ci V8 that was pushing forty more horsepower than stock. The silver car (it was crushed by GM in the early 1980s) backed it up with a Hurst-shifted four speed. The black car is an automatic. Both cars had upgraded suspensions, four-wheel disc brakes that would compare well with a Nissan 370Z Nismo, and special body pieces that made the Grand Am a looker. The goal was to bring the A-body platform back to performance in the same vein as the GTO. Instead this was shot down in flames by Pontiac. The only time they attempted to have any kind of performance leaning outside of the Firebird/Trans-Am was the Grand Prix 2+2, and that didn’t have any performance to back up it’s new nosecone and Aerocoupe rear treatment. Pontiac’s narrow vision, addiction to plastic body cladding, and lack of individual, standout vehicles is what led to the choice to kill off the division, not the GTO.

gto drag


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20 thoughts on “Was The Late-Model GTO The Car That Killed Pontiac? These Guys Seem To Think So, We Disagree

  1. jerry z

    I bought my 2004 GTO 6 spd brand new and may people thought I was nuts. But every time I took someone out for a ride in it, they were impressed! A few of them actually went out and bought one themselves!

    Over the years, many of the people that criticized the car never sat in one let alone drive one. Yes maybe the car looked bland but to me it was like driving the car under the radar, only had 2 encounters with LEO and one ticket in the 5 yrs that I owned the car.

    I drove it like I stole it!

  2. anthony

    I think it was more like all those shitty cars they built to fill some sort of void. That and GM s stupid rules and politics that ruined the whole company. Bunch of shitheads.

  3. mooseface

    The late Goat was a good car on paper, but its appearance was blander and less inspired than a 1998 Chrysler Town and Country. That notwithstanding, I doubt that it killed Pontiac, the company had been circling the drain long before.

    If you want to see an ugly Pontiac, look at the back end of a 2004 Grand Prix. WTF was GM thinking? Stretched-looking details around the headlamps? It looks like a fat person in spandex. Proof that the division had arrived at total creative bankruptcy long before the failed Goat revival.

  4. Nick D.

    I never got the “It’s boring-looking complaint”. After all, wasn’t the original ’64 GTO nothing more than an old man LeMans with a big motor and some badges. Personally, I think the ’05-’06 cars look pretty damn good, especially with a spoiler delete.

  5. Shagg77

    Pontiac would have survived, but for two reasons. When the government bailout happened, the egotistical, investment banker, ass-bag Steve Rattner was put in charge of the bailout by the Obama administration. He was not a car guy. He’s not a manufacturing guy. He’s a banker. He decided that the cleaned up GM should come out of bankruptcy with only four divisions. Not a bad idea really… So he tasked the existing GM Board and Management team to determine which ones should live and which ones should die. This was a really bad idea…

    They new they could not cut their bread-and-butter Chevy, or halo brand Cadillac, but what about Buick, Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, Saab and GMC?

    The team easily cut Saturn, Hummer, and Saab loose which left Chevy, GMC, Cadillac, Buick and Pontiac. GM had already conducted a study that looked at what would happen if they ever killed off GMC and determined that it was a rung on the ladder to Cadillac. SUV owners went from Chevy to GMC to Cadillac. Without GMC, those buyers would move to Ford/Lincoln after a Chevy and never return for a Cadillac. Therefore the bean counters could not kill GMC.

    Now they were down to Buick and Pontiac. Pontiac sells more in the states, but Buick sells more world wide (i.e. China). In fact, it was the number one selling vehicle in China. Turns out the Chinese love Buick because the last Emperor of China purchased two in 1924. They were the first cars ever allowed in the forbidden city. They meant a lot to the Chinese people. So much so, that to this day Buick is still considered the holy grail of cars in China. There was no way the bean counters could kill Buick. It was going to be (and is now) the only thing propping up GM overseas.

    The new GTO, the last of the Grand Prix, all the body cladding in the world, hell even the Aztec did not kill off Pontiac. Bean counters worried about a missing mid-rung GMC is what killed off Pontiac. Chevy, Buick, Cadillac and Pontiac should have survived the automotive apocalypse.

    1. Brendon

      Shagg- you nailed it. Agreed, well stated.

      As for the last iteration of the GTO- also agree that it’s a great car on paper, and a great driving car (never owned one, but I have driven them) but they are bland, at best. I think they were also mismarketed. I remember the commericals on TV put them up against BMW’s. Not Mustangs… I think folks were expecting the latter, as well as where the brand quality and perception was. Cadillac would have been better suited to be placed against BMW, imo.

      As for what got GM into the position of being bankrupt in 2008, well, the last 30 years of bad management decisions in an attempt to maximize quick quarterly profits versus investing in their brand by producing top quality products. This is what the competition did and they didn’t need a bailout…

  6. BeaverMartin

    Well I read both articles (Gearheads’ and Bryan’s) and both miss the elephant in the room. Not to sound all Mitt and stuff but the market killed Pontiac, not Pontiac’s actions. Pontiacs just didn’t sell well in China the would’s biggest emerging car market, However; the Chinese can’t get enough Buicks which they view as a luxury brand. Therefore GM made the decision to ax the chief instead of Buick. Both divisions had similar sales figures, and an equally hideous rouges gallery of badge engineered crap from the 80s-02ish. Pontiac was on a real up swing with the Solstice and G8 at the time, Buick had a series of jelly bean sedans. The General gambled that it would be easier to get American “youth” buyers (presumed Pontiac “Excitement” demographic) into a new exciting Buick then it would be to get the Chinese to embrace excitement over luxury. This is why all the new Buick ads show young couples parking and the neighbors saying, “What kind of new car is that?” To wrap it up. Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick all made some horrible cars, the GTO was NOT one of them. The reason Buick survived is because Chinese folks like em’ end of story.

  7. HotRod

    The car that killed Pontiac was it’s whole lack luster lineup and low sales were killing the company. When folks could get the very same car in a Chevy for less why spend the extra money?
    I used to see a lot of new Pontiacs around here years ago. By the time GM finally dropped it I’d see maybe one new Pontiac in a hundred cars. Our local Pontiac dealer added Hondas because he couldn’t sell enough Pontiacs to make it worth getting out of bed.

    1. Shagg77

      While I would agree that the Pontiac lineup was lackluster, it was better than Chevy or Buick offered. They were getting mired down in rebadged GM SUV’s and minivans where they did not belong. They were great at delivering performance cars on a budget.

      However, after Pontiac left, there was a definite void in the GM market place. The only stick shift coupe 4 seater under $30,000 left too; the G6. They don’t make a Malibu 2 dr. There is no cheap Chevy or Buick 2 dr. You have to buy a Camaro (hey look, I have a belly button too!), or a Cadillac CTS or a turbo Buick Regal (a rebadged G6 with the turbo Ecotec), or a Chevy SS. The rebadged Chevy SS used to be the better looking G8 which will go away in another year or two when Holden is shut down in Australia.

      Pontiac also had the Solstice, which looked better than the Saturn and Opel versions.

  8. Rattler

    I agree with “Shagg” without the demonization of the US Govt. If you are going Chapter 11 you want a “bean counter” not an automotive engineer. Bottom line; 1. Without the Govt. bailout there would be no GM. No Camaro, not Stingray. 2. If the GTO and it’s cousin, the G8, were such popular cars, why were they not just rebadged as Buicks? Because nobody but a very few performance enthusiasts bought them.

    1. Shagg77

      I agree that the bailout need a bean counter and that without the bailout, nothing would have survived. I’m not against the government bailout, just the ‘private equity’ guy they chose to lead them through it.

      There are various types of private equity companies. There’s ‘buy great companies and hold them’ private equity like Warren Buffet. There’s ‘buy depressed companies, fix and then hold them’ and then there’s ‘buy depressed companies, pretty up the pig and sell them’ private equity like Sun Capital, Bain Capital or Monomoy. Kind of like flipping houses…

      Rattner is the last one. All he knows is buying struggling companies, leveraging them to the hilt, pretty’ing them up (short term profitability), and selling them; buyer beware. If an occasional patient dies on the table, so be it. They all would have died without any intervention. Before we all get too down on these guys, they do occasionally save a company and save a few jobs, but their whole motivation is just money.

      And I’m ok with that, because without these vultures, more crappy companies would never survive. More jobs would be lost forever. Most of these vultures make money just on leveraging the poor struggling company to the hilt. If they can sell it too, it’s just more profit to offset their risk. I just don’t like them patting themselves on the back for saving the company/jobs when they do it (ala Mitt Romney or Rattner). Especially, when all Rattner did was listen to the existing management buffoons at GM. He didn’t bring in any skill or new talent to make these decisions.

      If a great private equity guy (with ‘fix and hold’ experience) would have been put in place instead, I just think that GMC would have been killed instead of Pontiac. They would have made decisions more based on long term. Rattner just relied on the wrong people to make the wrong decision. Either way, GM needed a bailout or nothing would have survived.

      Oh, and to respond to Rattler’s comment about a Buick version of the G8. I think it would have been awesome! Can you imagine a G8 rebadged as a Buick GS for the base model and a GXP rebadged as the Buick GS Stage 1 or even a GSX!?! I can already see the GSX spoiler on the decklid of a G8. That would have been the greatest rebadging ever!

      By the time the G8 hit showroom floors, Pontiac was already DOA. Who wanted to buy a car from a company that wouldn’t be around next year? Where would I get my Pontiac serviced? That didn’t help G8 sales at all.

  9. Whelk

    The GTO couldn’t have killed Pontiac, they were so bland looking they never registered with anyone but gearheads. The people who had them loved them but there just weren’t enough buyers. It wan’t uncommon for new GTOs to sit on a lot for more than a year before selling. No, the cars that killed Pontiac were the prior badge engineered garbage, and too little differentiation from Chevrolet. It made more sense from a demographic standpoint to keep Buick and GMC.

    1. S3bird

      This is all true.
      My wife has an ’05 Grand Prix in the garage as when we were looking she loved the interior over the Chevy/Buick….not as “old man” inside

  10. Matt Cramer

    If there was any one “car” that killed Pontiac, I nominate the Trans Sport from the ’90s. When the guy running their “excitement division” thinks that the brand needs a minivan, it was clear they had abandoned any real effort to make Pontiac stand for anything and were content to make it a Chevrolet with different styling. And as a duplicate brand, it was a redundant brand.

    Having avoided a minivan by itself wouldn’t have saved Pontiac. But if they’d taken the excitement thing seriously, given every car in the lineup at least some sporty suspension tuning, had a rule that there would never be a Pontiac without a manual transmission option, made sure every new Pontiac was spotted being tested at the Nurburgring – I’m not entirely sure that would have saved Pontiac, but it would have been real brand management giving it a real identity by real changes to the product to make a real difference. And that would have laid the groundwork for a case for saving Pontiac.

      1. BeaverMartin

        I couldn’t agree more the General quit caring about BOP as soon as they corporatizatized the engines (79′ ish). It became only about the money at that point. Before that it was about pleasing consumers and making money.

  11. ratpatrol66

    Pontiac died a slow death. It started when they didn’t have Pontiac engines! They made a great mistake in the Fiero owners manual causing engines to blow up and/or cars to catch fire. Nobody mentioned the Aztek? FUCK!!! Then the think tank came up with the bright idea to badge change to G5 this and G6 that G8 an Aussie car that was great. The Solstice was what Delorean wanted years ago. A long slow death

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