Remembering Pontiac

The GTOs were awesome cars; especially up to 1969.  I will never forgive GM for shutting down Pontiac and Olds....not they they care of course...Lol.

Jack, I agree with you. Both divisions were shut down due to GM's ineptness. On top of that we the taxpayers had to bail GM out only to be rewarded by them moving many jobs to China.

There was a time when the Oldsmobile Cutlass was the number one selling car in America, Pontiac always was creative with their performance image cars. 

General Motors let first Oldsmobile wither away on the vine with little real creativity and investment until the brand was an afterthought then they shuttered Oldsmobile. GM's biggest mistake with Oldsmobile was the Aurora, it was actually a good car but GM decided not to put the Oldsmobile name on the car so it was lost identity for Oldsmobile, I think the Aurora could have been grown upon and Oldsmobile could have made a comeback. 

Pontiac followed the same path Oldsmobile did, GM let Pontiac start to wither on the vine until their image fell like Oldsmobiles did and GM shuttered them during the bailouts. 

Saturn was a company that should have never been at GM by the time they actually produced a decent vehicle Saturn was shuttered during bailouts as well, but I think Saturn drained resources and funding from both Oldsmobile and Pontiac. 

Buick has at least one model made in China now and imported to America, the Buick Envision a midsize sport utility is made in Shandong province in China. Their 7 seat SUV may be made in China as well but the information on it is sketchy on where it is built that I found. 

The car business is extremely challenging.  The industry has a demonstrable history of cutting fat from automotive production. We all know throughout its history, it's been littered with shuttered brands. There must be hundreds. Indeed, all of the industry's historic failures make Tesla's emergence and survival even more remarkable.  Its market cap valuation is more than Toyota, GM, and Ford combined!  That's impressive. But I digress.  I think the source of GM's failure with Oldsmobile and Pontiac can be traced to Roger Smith.  His decision to combine design and manufacturing to where there is almost no difference between nameplates was the beginning of the end for those brands.  Ditto with Plymouth and Mercury.  

Further, what is puzzling is that even with decades of industry experience, some companies ignored the overarching rule that controls the fortunes of almost all businesses.  That rule of "Differentiate or Die" seems to have been routinely lost.  For example, today, the popularity of the Crossover configuration has replaced the sedan.  Lincoln features a 100% SUV and Crossover lineup and no longer manufactures cars!  As we all know, now the trend is moving towards EVs. Semi-autonomous driving is already di rigueur on many vehicles, and fully autonomous driving is likely destined to be ubiquitous in future models. 

Differentiate or Die is not unique to the automotive industry.  That rule applies virtually everywhere.  Airbus blew it big time by allocating resources to develop and build the A380 Jumbo Jet.  Boeing had the vision to see that the jumbo jet market was shrinking and not expanding.  So it allocated its resources to developing smaller planes like the Dreamliner and the 737 Supermax.  GM had a virtual lock on the American municipal street bus market.  Ditto with train locomotives. GM failed to identify future market trends.  I could go on.  Schwinn bicycles and Fruehauf trailers were once dominant.  The bottom line is that today's automotive companies that lack vision and fail to accurately identify industry direction trends are destined to be the latest nameplate of former car makers.   

Thanks for your perspective Marty; very interesting!  I suppose with "Big 3" marques like Olds, Pontiac and Plymouth for example always being part of our lives we find it almost unthinkable that, whether through executive bumbling or corporate planning, they could be taken from our car-loving world.  It staggers me as a layperson that such critical and often colossal errors in judgement could be made at such high levels.  I guess the light should have come on for me when I witnessed the extremely late response to the Japanese car surge into North America in the late 60's-early 70s and the concurrent quality control issue beginning in the 70s.  I know it's easy to be an armchair quarterback but the apathy and arrogance displayed and its repercussion in North American lives is shocking.