Pontiac an Orphan

My van cracked a windshield because of rust in the window channel. Between that and the rocker arms bolts being stripped out of the aluminum head was enough for me to say no more GM in my house. Their engines were great, except for the 3.4 Liter in our Silhouette that kept breaking down because of carbon clogging the injectors. Sweet engine all right.

 

I think i'll keep looking for that 69 buick.

 

Yep... Like He Said!

 

I find it interesting that GM stated they kept Buick because it sells well in China. Is that an indication that GM is in it only for the money? Americans don't matter? I would say pride is lacking.

 

I wish they would bring back a sporty buick here,not an old farts car but one with it's own engine. I can dream can't i? I wonder how hard it was to put that 455 rocket motor in that 69? was only 2 when they did the swap.

 

Does this mean that now all Plymouth and Pontiac parts will be interchangeable? I'll have to pick up the Hollander Orphan Interchange Manual, I guess.

dj

 

Yes, pretty much. The past couple decades, GM killed off all of it's interesting cars a few years after debut. Allante, Reatta, Fiero, etc. All had loyal followings and all made money, but the bean counters would not stand for anything less than a home run and only the highest volume vehicles were allowed to continue. Same mentality as closing entire plants to maximize profit. Pontiac as a whole is next on the list. This is because the beancounters are in control, not the car people. Corvette is exempt because it's such a high profile vehicle and an image vehicle, and it does make them a lot of money.

 

The problem is not the chineese, it's us. People want $20 an hour and all sorts of benefits to do jobs that trained monkeys could do (don't read into that too much, not talking about auto workers), but these same people refuse to pay more than $80 for a dvd player. People want high wages and low prices, and it just won't work that way. I feel bad for everyone thats losing thier jobs and all, but when it comes down to it, we have a ba-freakin-zillion cars over here, we really need more?

 

I can second that its "CHANGE" we dont want.

 

Do you really think that the demise of Detroit happened in the last 3 months?

 

No, the progressives have been working on us since about 1905 or so -

 

Don't forget all the fine idiots who supported NAFTA and ran the Country into the ditch...

 

everyone blames the imports no one put a gun to anyones head and made them buy one, people had a choice, we built some real crap back then,some good cars,but a lot of crap. which would you have bought? what pisses me off is we were perfectly capable of building cars as good as and probably better then the imports, but we didn't,bottom line, yes it was probably the corporate offices,whatever it was, we didn't. we could have but we didn't. decades of crap later,we decide to build some decent cars, but now no one wants to buy them,because of all the junk we built before. thats what it comes down to. there are some American cars i would like to own,but the fact is a lot of them are now priced out of the range of the average person. It was the American car companies that destroyed decades of brand loyalty, now they want it back. I hope some of them survive, this country has a great history with cars, but they better wake up and smell the coffee and figure out how to build cars people will want to buy. I love this country, but thats pretty much how it is sad to say. no way to sugar coat it.

 

There is a lot to say on this topic, and I have just as big a mouth...

Firstly, a lot of Americans need to buy a globe and LOOK at the damn thing. There is more than just the USA on it!!! This is a global market!!

GM sells to the same countries that Toyota and Daimler sell to, meaning most of the area you see on that globe. GM is failing WORLDWIDE, failing folks, not just losing money for the first time in 70 years (Toyota). This means that it isn't JUST Americans that aren't buying GM cars, its HUMANS that aren't buying GM cars.

As for Chrysler, try this little test: ask the man who owns one, whether he'll ever buy another. The answer I get has always been - "Hell, NO!!"

Nowadays, GM has brought it's quality up, no doubt. But it's not the cars being sold today that stick in people's memory. It's rapidly rusting Vegas; It's Buick V8s fogging for mosquitos after just 50,000 miles (the last couple years they seem to have just wore out the tooling and kept going); it's GM vans that ate front brakes at 25K, the earlier ones lasted longer, but the suspensions wore out faster; it's early 700R4 memories; it's the every GM looks like every other GM syndrome; it's HT4100's; it's V8-6-4's; it's motor mounts that failed and locked the throttle on full. And on and on.

There is more than enough blame to go around to fill both management and labor's individual hats over and above the quality problems.

I truly believe that the American auto industries' problems started just after WW II. I think it goes like this: After the opposing forces did their level best to bomb each other back into the stone age (Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima, just for three), the only major manufacturing left was right here, in the USA. So what is a company to do?? Why manufacture the shit out of whatever it was they made. Pretty soon it became apparent that no matter what the quality, the product sold on it's looks, so that was what it was they concentrated upon. Example: the 1949 Chrysler was damn near indestructible, very impervious to rust, and practically ran forever. And was damn quiet, too. The 1959 Chrysler rusted to pieces before anyone knew that it was only the powertrain that was appreciably better (413 wedge/Powerglide). But the LOOKS!!!! The '49 was as stodgy as you could get.

This lasted at least halfway through the fifties, more likely into the early 60's, though the compact explosion of 1960 meant that there was someone who saw some sales being lost. And the downward spiral continued. Falcons rusted nearly as they were sold; Corvairs spun rings around everyone (never mind your experience, I'm talking the everyman, he who didn't check tire pressure, or ran 'em all at 32 psi), and Chrysler was entering it's ugly-er than anything era.

Leaving the 60's, we were hit twice in the 70's with a gas crunch, and the Eldos never dropped under 5000 pounds until '79. Vegas and Pintos, Gremlins and Darts, all had their fair share of problems, some more than others, really. Don't tell me that it was only one PInto that ever caught fire, I smelled 'em in the 'yards, and it wasn't the smell of burnt upholstery that put me off, lemme tell you...

Now, going forward into the 80's, GM decides that every division can share a platform. BRILLIANT . Now we have Cavaliers that, besides being so slow that grannies on their Schwinn tricycles are passing them, they look just like Cimmarons, or is it the other way 'round, do the Cadillacs look like Chevies?? The only way to tell a Pontiac from a Buick is the split grille (which will bolt into the Buick), or the taillights (which will bolt into the Buick). No one can say for sure that there even WAS an Olds built during this time period...

Oh, yeah, they DID have Camaros and Firechickens, powered by Iron Dukes. If powered is the right word.

Towards the end of the 80's, someone finally saw the damage being done, but by the time it was corrected, well, that time is now. The cars from the mid-90's to today are the good ones, but they only represent the cars that the truly faithful bought, as most of the rest of the GM buyers have become Other Vehicle buyers.

And THAT, my friends, is what GM has to erase NOW.

Can it be done??

Fritz Henderson stated today that he felt that GM would have to be restructured in bankruptcy.

Cosmo

P.S. Chevrolet, in 1964, was to be split off from GM under the Sherman Anti-Trust act, because Chevrolet had 50% of the total auto market at that time. GM in total now has less than 20%.

Some notes:
Those advocating protectionism should read about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and its effect on a recession just begun (at the time, 17 June, 1930).

GM is in trouble, Toyota is just losing money for the first time in 70 years.

Truly, every automaker has a different set of rules from it's respective government, however, most (all?) have factories around the world, offsetting most of any advantage.

Most automakers issue stock. This means that the profits go to the stockholders. Example, if I own GM and Toyota stock, any profits made by either or both benefit MY pocket directly (dividends). Any further discussion in this line would require a book.

I do not wish any company harm, but these are hard times, and require good, solid business decisions, not romanticism. And it still may be too late.

 

that is kinda weird

 

There are a lot of factors at work here. One of the mechanisms that has been used for the last ten or fifteen years is the lease. Cheap credit made it easy for someone to get into a higher end car than they would normally buy, and then the vicious cycle of returning your leased car and getting another every two or three years would kick in.

The result was an artificiallly inflated market for new cars, and more expensive ones at that. Cheap and easy credit goes away, and -poof- suddenly folks start realizing that maybe they can keep the same car six or eight years, or perhaps purchase an import that gets better mileage, is dependable, and costs less.

There is no one reason, there are a lot of little reasons, and together you get to a tipping point.

It's too bad to see Pontiac go away but let's be real; they have not produced a good-looking car since the 70s. Thirty years is a pretty embarassing dry spell; with all of the horrendous designs and body cladding up the yin-yang it still took a depression (oops, recession) as bad as the one we are in now to kill them off.

 

at the same time that is the whole reason toyota came out with the scion so young people would buy xb's and tc's then when they can spend more buy a rel toyota

 

GM started their platform sharing crap WAY before the '80's

Can anyone say "Pontiac Ventura"?

I'm sorry Pontiac is gone, just like I'm sorry Oldsmobile is gone, just like Studebaker, Willys, Packard, and a host of others that built some wonderful cars in their time.

But, just like those others, Pontiac outlived itself in a world of corporate greed and slavery to the almighty dollar. GM will survive, heck, they'll thrive in the future, but at what cost? Losing Pontiac might be the least of our woes...

 

Actually this may be true. A few years ago, The University of Illinois set up a remote emissions testing unit out on one of the interstates in the Chicago area. With this equipment they could check car emissions when it drove by the sensors. The results showed that the worst polluting vehicle was a two year old Jeep. It also showed that the oldest car tested, which was a 1933 Chevrolet, easily passed the current emissions standard.

 

Like Bill Clinton?

 

exactly like Bill Clinton!

 

so if they are getting rid of pontiac can i buy it, i love my old pontiac, i will give 1000 bucks,

 

They were still buying the brand "Toyota"..not switching to another..
Lexus is the only other brand..(still obviously a Toyota)
Scion is marketed at Toyota dealers.
GM was....setting up competitive branding..different dealer groups..in COMPETITION
Olds..was not a Pontiac..which was in competiton with Chevy..Buick..and ultimately Caddy.

If GM was a brand then perhaps the analogy would be similar..

 

So which party..or parties do you blame for AMC..Packard..Studebaker..Rambler...hell..Checker..

Sometimes it's not some political chest pounding..just poorly run business..
Seems to be a lot of talk radio Kulture spewed here..

Somtimes folks need to put on big boy pants and accept that not all they dispise caused all they lost..and blame a political party or some nefarious group..
Just bad business..

Success has a thousand fathers..only failure is an orphan..

 

i blame management and there bean counters to fat and so rightious man 5 years ago at a car show for new cars they where doing feed back and i said why not remake the nomad and hurry the camaro to the marketing people
and look where we are today
mor ugly cars cheeply made and so bee it they dont listn and dont care

 

So Toyota is who makes that wierd scion box, i was wondering about that one, box might be nice for transporting the dogs around, but i wouldn't want to drive it every day. as far as imports not lasting i have a 25 year old one in my garage, motor has 300000 miles on it,runs fine, it's down getting carbs right now to add some horsepower, there are entire sites dedicated to these old ones, we put as much work and time into them as everyone does here with the domestics, I like both which is why i hang out here, grew up around traditional rods. if anyone thinks they are ugly go look at some of the early 240 z cars, straight six,carbs, cars actually had real chrome. rear wheel drive. they did build some great cars then. we had the ability to build cars just as good,but we got stuff like the pacer, pinto,vega,gremlin, etc. lets all just hope that someone at GM gets their head screwed on straight, if they want to restructure,they can fire a lot of people at the top, and bring in some people who really like cars, maby then they can build something resembling a real car. People still love to drive, build a car that makes it fun to do that, price it so the average working person doesn't have to morgage the house to buy it, and it will sell.

 

Yer wrong Cosmo- GM HAS been selling well in China, Europe, & Latin America. Unfortunately, those markets just aren't as big as the US.

Several folks rightly referred to the quality #s & the customer's perception of GM. Buick has been ranked above Lexus & Toyota for Quality by JD Powers for several years now. But getting the cars right is only part of the battle.

IMHO, the biggest reason why the US OEMs have such a crummy rep lately, is because the dealer network still doesn't fully grasp the concept of Customer Service! Some dealers "get it", but too many don't. When J.Q.Public plunks down over a year's wages on a new car or truck, too often they get treated shabbily in the Service Dept. I have seen, heard, & experienced this problem. Customers expect the dealer to help them repair the bloody thing if a problem occurs & not have to rent a car, bring it back a 2nd time, or argue with the Service Mgr about some added fee.

In most customer's minds: Dealer = (GM, Ford, Chrysler) So if a tech repairs a dash faceplate with butyl & it falls off in the sun, the customer's pissed @ the OEM, not the dealer.

My 2cents.

 

Maybe Lostforawhile is right! fire all those guys at the top! then replace them with guys from the HAMB! Then maybe we could get a "back to basics" cool car with some real power!

 

Instead a geo-political-economic bullshit rant, I drove my Pontiac to work yesterday. My own little tribute to my favorite marque. I wish I could afford a new G8.

 

I made a point of looking at the cars on the road this morning on my way in to town. Besides new cars I saw a couple of US cars from the 90's, one from the 80's, but I did see a bunch of 80's-90's imports of all types, Hondas, Volvos, Toyota's, and more. There was a definite lack of older US cars. Didn't see but two 70's cars, a Monte Carlo and a Porsche 911. Nothing earlier.