Instead of We Sell Excitement, the new slogan at Pontiac will apparently be We Sell Obsolescence, at least until the remaining ones are sold.
Still, this is a good buying opportunity for those looking for a really reduced selling price.
http://www…ped_b.html
Definitely might be a good time to see about snatching a deal on one since many people have the perception that an obsolete brand means parts and service will be difficult to obtain.
Kind of sad but GM will march on; just a bit slimmer.
The one that I don’t quite get is the GMC pickup division which is basically a Chevy truck with trim tweaks and badge changes.
One would think GM would phase those out but maybe they’re selling more GMC pickups than I realize. ???
Saturn, too in a few years.
I still would not spend any money on a new one. The used value will freefall now once the “nameplate” disappears.
I cannot believe some depreciation values. The 2008 Chrysler/Dodge minivans are tempting, ~50% depreciation!
I’ve wondered over these past years why GM kept so many redundant badges. While I see an occasional Grand Am out and about, Pontiac has been largely absent from the roads for some time now. It was clearly struggling.
I agree that anyone considering a GM vehicle has a good buying opportunity right now. And under the skin it’s pretty much all parts that will continue in production, so it’s a safe bet.
GM has been considering what to do with the GMC division as part of their proposal to Obama, the new czar. They’ve publically admitted that redundancy is expensive. However, GMC division is profitable. Perhaps all GM trucks will become GMCs.
Yeah, for far too many years, the “badge engineering” of Pontiacs was simply the matter of taking a Chevy, and adding:
*A louder muffler (try to fool people into thinking that it is more powerful)
*Heavy plastic lower-body cladding (an attempt to disguise its Chevy roots)
*8 tiny A/C vents on the dashboard instead of the normal-size 4 A/C vents (try to fool buyers into thinking that the A/C was more powerful, I guess)
*Different taillights and grill
For a while, these types of cosmetic changes did fool enough people to sustain that marque, but as buyers became more sophisticated, this type of stuff failed to lure them. The more recent changes to the Pontiac line-up are commendable, but they are essentially too little, too late.
Least we forget about the rebadging of other makes as well. Rebadged Daywoos, toyotas, and other various cars
There is rebadging, and then there is rebadging.
When you take a REALLY bad car–like a Daewoo–and rebadge with little real change as a Chevy or a Suzuki, what you wind up with is a car that still lags far behind all of the competition.
On the other hand, when you take a car that is very good to begin with–like a Camry–and rebadge it with some nice luxury upgrades, you come up with a Lexus ES, which is a car that competes well with its competition. That being said, if I wanted a car in that class, I would simply buy a top-level Camry and wind up with essentially the same car as the ES, for maybe $6,000.00 less, but at least the buyers of the Lexus ES are getting a very nice car, unlike most of the other rebadging efforts on the market.
And, of course, the body of a car like the ES does have some noticeably different body panels and a more luxurious interior, as compared to the Camry, whereas heavy plastic cladding and twice as many A/C vents is not really sufficient to convince enough people to buy a Pontiac, rather than a Chevy.
I wouldn’t worry about it just yet . . . GM ditched the Camaro a few years back and guess what? Once a major corporation owns a piece of intellectual property they keep the rights to it . . remember the Ford 500 in the 1960s-70s? It’s back. Circumstances change and I’ll bet that the Big Three will weather this current crisis somehow, and Pontiacs will return just as soon as GM wants to “introduce” a “classic”. Rocketman
I think people started to wake up to the trick when GM did the Caddilac Cimmaron. They really “crossed the line” with that thing.
All corporations have a life cycle, even the big ones. In order for our new czar to approve holdover handouts for GM they have no choice but to eliminate nonprofitable operations and redundant badges. Chrysler’s hoped-for savior, Fiat, is having serious problems of their own. Chrysler is on the verge of folding.
IMHO Ford will weather this safely, GM will struggle like an obese man with heart disease trying to stay away from the buffet table, and Chrysler will become a part of history. Pontiac will join Oldsmobile as a historical relic.
History is repleat with lost car companies and lost divisions, many of them leaders at one time. History continues to be made every day. There will be no “big three” soon. There will be only Ford and a much changed GM.
The “pie” that represents the different players in the automobile marketplace will remain, but the names of the players and the sizes of the segments will be very different from what it was 30 or 40 years ago.
Saturn will be gone as a GM brand in a few months; this is one money losing division GM HAS to unload ASAP! They have pledged to keep supplying cars to the new owners of dealer network of Saturn dealers; the Saturn division within GM WILL BE SHUT DOWN. The Saturn dealers will be importing economy cars from China and India to round out their product lines.
The US car industry is going the way of the major appliance industry. When I was a kid, there were about 20 manufacturers of kitchen appliances, all American. Now there are 2, Whirlpool and GE are the only US based ones. You can now buy Electrolux (Swedish), Bosch (German)., Miele (German). Samsung (Korean) LG (Korean), Haier (CHinese), Fisher & Pekel (?). etc.
GE has their major appliance division up for sale, and it will likely be bought by a foreign company.
After the big auto shakeout, experts predict there will only be 6 major car companies left: Volkswagen, Toyota, Renault/Nissan, Ford, GM, and Honda.
The next tier will be more specialized and include BMW, Mazda, Citroen/Peugeot, Fiat/Chrysler, etc. This situation will persist until the Chinese and Indians start gobbling up the remaining small players.
The used value will freefall now once the “nameplate” disappears.
Of course the means absolutely nothing unless you want to sell it soon. If you keep your car for as long as it will function properly no loss.Remember the Tempest!
“Still, this is a good buying opportunity for those looking for a really reduced selling price.”
I’m in the market for a small car, but only the Vibe fits the bill. They aren’t discounting them enough to make me want one.
If you are referring to the original one–the 4-cylinder model with independent rear suspension–I would rather not! Those were true dogs.