I don't think anyone within GM wanted to see the Pontiac Division go away.
Everytime I watch this commercial, I get a bit choked up:
The reality of all of this? The world Changed.
Let's take a walk back to 1969 --
"The Big three" were "Chevy/Ford/Plymouth" --
While there are still some that call "GM/Ford/Chrysler" the 'big three' -- most now call them "The Detroit three" -- corporations now, rather than Divisions back then.
In 1969, there was no Nissan - it was Datsun. Foreign brands consisted primarily of VW/Toyota/Datsun -- Mercedes - and a small company called BMW that most in the middle of the nation had never seen. Honda was still offering motorcycles -- no cars - in the U.S. No Subaru other than perhaps in California - no Mazda (yet) So - Alfred Sloan's GM business model of people entering the market in a chevy - and then progressing 'up' thru the various GM Divisions until they 'arrived' and bought a Cadillac -- made sense up until the early to mid sixties when suddenly the market fragmented -- into 'compact' cars - 'intermediate' cars - 'pony' cars - 'sports' cars -- and since then the fragmentation continues........
Meaning that it's no mystery why Plymouth, Mercury, Eagle, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Saturn have gone away - the reality is that anyone building cars in the world were going to bring them to the world's largest automobile market (...and the U.S. was until 2008 when China surpassed the U.S. Market in terms of volume)
So - now people have about 400 nameplates to choose from when they go to buy a car or truck.
Bring back Pontiac? I'd love to see it - but unless Japan and Korea and the European union either stop building cars - or Americans (and Canadians) decide they're going to choose cars built by GM/Ford/Chrysler instead of Toyota/Honda/Nissan/BMW etc -- I don't see it happening.
Someone said "well.....make a Firebird from a Camaro" -- the investment to do so properly would cost 10s of millions of dollars --
......to sell how many "plus" cars? One has to ask: if the firebird is not offered -- what do they buy? Camaro or Mustang? -- the data that exists suggests Camaro - -so the 'plus' sales would not begin to cover the development costs.
Something else to consider - if we were to have offered a Firebird three years ago - the funds to do ZL1 and 1LE would not be available - after all, there is only so much Development money - and it has to be spread across Divisions and platforms and segments.
Yes - I'd love to see Pontiac come back - but virtually no chance of that happening. :(