Quote:
Originally Posted by Thrillz
Anyone else feel the decision to drop pontiac now with cars that actually would fit the excitement idea was a brain fart. I would have loved to be in the room when they said ya we have the G8 the best pontiac ever and the trans am based off the 2010 camaro lets kill the line now. 
Attachment 125878
Attachment 125879
If you build it they will come. If all future pontiacs are as good as these rides this would be a solid money making line. |
Here is the problem, it takes more than 1 model to make a brand, and the majority of Pontiacs were not G8's or Solstices. They were mainly G5's and G6's. And of course you had the recently introduced G3 Wave (aka rebadged Aveo). I can't come up with a good reason to buy a G3 or a G5, their price point forced them to be nearly identical to their Chevy counterparts, from styling to features to price. They were the same except for some very minor changes. This practice is stupid, and GM was right to end it. BUT they couldn't differentiate the cars more like they do with more expensive models because nobody would pay for the extra cost involved. So, stop the practice and Pontiac becomes a very small niche brand with only a few models. And those models will steal sales from the other core brands.
Lets use the Firebrid and the Camaro as examples here. It looks like the Camaro is set to hit about 130k for 2010 MY (from here on out I'm just guestimating the numbers). So say there was a Firebird that sold ... 30k units a year. How many people are out there who would buy a Firebrid but never a Camaro? Certainly not all 30k buyers. Maybe 1/3 of them? So that would make for 140k sales total. Spending a hundred million dollars (by a company with serious financial problems) on tooling and testing for 10k more sales per year doesn't sound like a good business plan to me, unless they can sell those cars for $10k more a piece, which they can't since its a Pontiac. Buick or Cadillac? Maybe (I wish for GM to make a Camaro based Grand National/GNX someday).