Yeah, it is definetly a pretty nice truck, especially for a first try. Toyota's had years to perfect the Tundra, and I still think the Titan is a nicer truck.

 

And that's the problem. The powertrain and chassis tuning will stay "just ok" as long as the same resources have to be spread among so many fronts. I'd much rather GM spent the money to tune the G6 to near perfection than slightly reskin the 'nox to shovel out as a Torrent or the Cobalt as a "G5" or whatever.

The Tempest G6 sounds right on the money though.

It could look like this:
Base: Tempest G6
Mid: Tempest GT
Perf: Tempest GTP

 

Bah. Olds had already lost most of it's sales years before it was shut down. The customers at the end were people looking for import-style cars. Those people left because GM didn't provide them any other options -- the overlap for Aurora and Intrigue was very low. (Why GM didn't move those models over to Saturn, I'll never know.)

Now which Pontiac cars don't overlap other GM models? (other than gto)

 

Yes, Olds lost a lot of it's sales from it's peak in the 1980's.

Still, GM basically lost the exact number of total annual sales equal to the number of the last year of Olds sales after Olds had been phased out. That number was around a quarter of a million vehicles, if I remember correctly. And that was with a scaled back offering from Oldsmobile, since it wasn't getting any new product for some time.

I think that is pretty telling.

 

Seeing as how I sold Olds from 1 month before the December 2000 announcement through the very end (hell, even our SIGN was just removed about a month ago), my .02...

1) Olds were the best cars no one knew about. I never gave them enough credit myself. I almost bought a brand new Alero GL2 5 speed coupe in 2002 before I bought my Grand Am GT. I should have bought the Alero. The interior style and quality was so far above the Grand Am, its inconceviable the 2 were sister cars. The Intrigue was head and shoulders above the GP in interior design and quality as well (not as blatant as the Alero, admittedly). When the Aurora debuted in '01 and Lutz showed up shortly thereafter, even he said the Aurora had the best GM interior bar none...so SOMEONE at GM was paying attention to interior design way before it became their new mantra.

2) No one knew about Olds because the marketing sucked. Period.

3) Alero was a GREAT import conquest purchase from '99-'01 or so. When fears of resale value began rearing their head during Summer '01 (6 mos after the death announcement), our import trades dropped off a lot.

4) The OSV Intrigue with the Northstar...the OSV Alero with the blown 3400...those were cars that would have given Olds MAJOR sales and cache, without needing to appeal to the boy racer crowd like Pontiac. If OSV had come to light? Wow...

5) To answer Robert's question about Olds dealerships: All of us had a buyout of a varying amount, I believe based off sales, area etc. GM began buying out franchises in early '01. Some jumped ship VERY early...I remember seeing a single-line Olds dealer close its doors within a month or two, so maybe the buyout was pretty good? I know many held on for awhile and tried to negotiate better. I can't even speculate what the average payout was, or what our own was...

 

I think we can all agree that GM totally mishandled the shutdown of Olds. First they wasted a ton of product development money, second they scared away their traditional sofa-mobile customers, and finally, they just sudden stopped, and didn't provide any transition for their new "import-buyer" customers.

Had they "merged" with Saturn and done a slow wind-down, I bet GM would not have lost that quarter-million in sales. Either that or they should have "merged" with Buick back in the 90s before wasting money on Aurora et al.

The point is, if GM is smart (big IF), they could wind-down Buick and Pontiac without causing a big drop in sales. (Which it seems like the are doing by merging dealerships and reducing each brand to core product.)

 

Well, now GM is saying they're gonna cut back on advertising. Guess which brands will be seeing less marketing?

http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/inde...06-000301-1034

And riddle me this, if Pontiac's future is so assured, then why have we not seen or for that matter even heard of a substantial Pontiac future product?

What will replace the Grand Prix? Does anyone know? Bonneville we know is gone to the world, because GM says there's no market for sporty large sedans *cough*Charger, 300C, GS, M45, 500, 7-Series*cough* GTO is going next year with no solid replacement.

This leaves us with four rebadges that are in fact, nothing more than rebadges - Torrent, SV6, G5, Vibe.

The only two Pontiacs that are actually Pontiacs and are not going anywhere are G6 and Solstice. GM kindly gave Saturn better versions of each of these cars.

What here looks good?

 

This is how it is done:

Current Projects:
GMC Torrent
GMC Minivan
GMC Acadia
Saturn Midsize Sedan
Saturn Outlook
Saturn Flagship

Now onto status unsure projects:
Saturn Zafira
Saturn Meriva
GMC Sub Theta

Now what is Pontiac left with:
Vibe
G6
Solstice

G4/G5 are temporary adjustments while the Ion is phased out to be replaced with a version of the Astra. Temporary portfolio adjustment.

 

Actually, maybe their super secret source should have told them that the majority of that cut back is from incentive advertising. Its all part of the new pricing strategy. When you place a $5000 incentive on a car, not only does it cost you the 5k, you also have to pay to advertise that rebate so people will know the fire sale is back on. Do you have any idea how much GM spent advertising incentives and not product last year? The employee pricing ads probably could have paid for a small market sports franchise all by themselves.





Until last month we had not seen or heard of any substantial Chevy car future product except for the almighty 07 Chevy Aveo. What will replace the Impala? What does it look like? Will it be FWD or RWD? What platform is it on?
What about the Malibu? When will the new one be here? Will it be Epsilon again or Epsilon II? Will there be a replacement for the Monte Carlo at all? As we all know, GM is fairly tight lipped about future product in most cases. That's just how it is.

OK, just so we're clear here, the Pontiacs are rebadges of the Chevys but the Saturns aren't, they're "better versions" of the Pontiacs?

 

I'm not exactly sure where you're headed here. It looks like you're in agreement that the brand isn't going anywhere, but that the lineup will be trimmed down, which is true to some degree. Personally, I don't see Pontiac going a model year without a V8 powered car again. Its part of the brand identity. V8 GXPs were/are the hottest selling versions of the Bonneville/Grand Prix.

Some of you may not know this but GM has been moving to align Buick, Pontiac and GMC into the same sales channel since the early 90's as part of an initiative known as "GM 2000". GMC and Pontiac are virtually considered as one brand and share showrooms almost universally except where there were single point dealers who were grandfathered in and refused to participate. Pontiac+GMC is equivilent to Chevy car and Chevy Truck. Which GMCs aren't rebadges? Maybe GM will cut them too. Or not.

 

The Saturn Aura is supposedly getting the 3.6L OHC engine along with a better interior. The Vue has a 3.5L Honda engine with 250hp.

The Torrent on the other hand, is identical to the Equinox. For that matter, so is the G6 to the Malibu.

Uh, no, that's not what it looks like he's saying. It looks like Pontiac has no new individual products, while other brands are getting what it would have.

What Evok is showing, IMO, is how you phase out a brand.

 

Yes. The projected 500k is buried in the programs, I mentioned.