- One of my favorite movies ever
is Smokey and The Bandit,
starring Burt Reynolds, his mustache,
and the 1977 Pontiac Trans Am.
For decades, the film has been responsible
for putting the Trans Am somewhere
on everybody's dream car list.
It's fast, it's sleek,
and it's got a badass fire chicken on the hood.
Badass fire chicken on the hood.
The pairing of box office success
and a great car cemented Pontiac's place
as an automotive icon in pop culture.
Pontiac's not around anymore,
and that really sucks.
Why'd we lose one of America's most legendary auto brands?
What happened to Pontiac?
I'm Nolan Sykes, and this is Wheelhouse.
(hip hop music)
Pontiac was around for a long, long time,
opening their doors in 1926.
General Motors introduced Pontiac
to fill the gap between Chevy
and the more expensive Oakland brand.
Imagine GM as an apartment building.
Chevy's in the entryway, and Cadillac's in the penthouse,
with Oakland, Oldsmobile, and Buick
filling in the floors in between.
GM formed Pontiac and three other brands,
Viking, Marquette, and LaSalle,
to build more floors.
GM believed that filling these gaps
would help brand loyalty,
and inspire customers to buy their way up the stairs,
eventually making it to the penthouse.
But Pontiac was the only one
of the companion brands to survive,
and did so by outselling Oakland
by such a wide margin that Oakland
was merged into Pontiac.
Pontiac kept building their affordable
and reliable cars through the 1950s
when sales started to decline.
The brand was gaining a reputation
as a car for old people, and like cable TV today,
young people just weren't into it, man.
I'm Nolan Sykes, and I'm 63 years old.
(people laugh)
So Pontiac boss Bunkie Knudsen decided
to get Pontiac involved with several racing series
like NASCAR and the NHRA
with legends like Mickey Thompson
and Smokey Yunick driving his cars.
It was a good first step,
but Pontiac really got into factory performance in 1963,
when Pontiac designers led by John DeLorean,
yeah, that John DeLorean,
decided to soup up the Tempest Coupe.
This Grand Tempest Option, or GTO,
was a watershed moment for the brand.
It was a mid-sized car with a big engine
from a full-sized car, and the result was fast.
This formula of combining a small car and a big engine
would help set off one of
the most important movements ever in Detroit,
the muscle car era.
(dramatic music)
But the GTO wasn't Pontiac's only muscle car.
They released the Firebird in 1967,
and with the GTO and Firebird killing it
with looks and performance, Pontiac was cool.
More importantly, it was making money.
Trouble started in the mid '70s.
People didn't want a muscle car anymore.
They couldn't afford the gas.
Pontiac started to develop a car
that was economical while still being fun.
Originally pitched as a fuel-efficient,
two-seat commuter, the Fiero promised to do just that,
and it did.
People loved the Fiero, and high sells helped
reignite Pontiac's reputation for affordable performance.
Throughout the '80s and '90s, things were good.
The "Wider is better" slogan was revived from the '60s
to help promote the new Grand Prix's wide track technology,
which didn't really mean anything,
but it sounded really cool.
The excitement around the Firebird and the Fiero
had successfully trickled down
to Pontiac's more practical models,
but despite Pontiac's successful turnaround
from the '70s to the 1990s,
the turn of the 21st century marked
the beginning of serious problems for the brand.
Sales were slumping hard,
and Pontiac had to reinvent itself once again,
this time with a cutting-edge SUV
featuring new-age styling and some unconventional features.
The seats were water-resistant.
The tailgate had cupholders.
There's even a camping lifestyle option
that included a two-person air mattress.
It also had a cool name, Aztek.
It was a good car.
Critics praised the Aztek for
its comfortable ride and practicality.
But unfortunately for Pontiac,
the Aztek was plagued with airbag recalls
almost immediately after release.
Despite the Aztek's great safety ratings,
the recalls really tainted the car's reputation.
Also, it was kinda ugly,
Pontiac needed to sell 30,000 Azteks to break even,
but they only sold 27,000.
Not a great start to the reinvention.
The great Pontiac refresh of the early 2000s
continued when Pontiac brought back the GTO in 2004,
this time as a rebadged Holden Monaro from Australia.
It was a handsome car with good performance,
but the GTO didn't quite scratch the retro itch
like Ford's new old Mustang.
Everyone was like, "Yeah, it's a cool car,
"but Ford's new Mustang looks like a Mustang.
"I'll just get one of those.
"This GTO doesn't."
As a result, the GTO was canceled
after only three years of production.
Pontiac then introduced the Solstice in 2006,
the brand's first two-seater since the Fiero.
Like the GTO, the Solstice was an attempt
to spice up Pontiac's otherwise stale lineup,
and like the GTO, it was a good car.
Car and Driver called it a surprisingly pure roadster
from an unlikely source, a quote that summed up
what people thought of Pontiac at the time,
like being voted least likely to make an exciting car
in your senior yearbook.
The Solstice's only crime was
being released at the wrong time.
Unfortunately, the Solstice wasn't
the only Pontiac killed by the economy.
Pontiac had brought another Holden to American shores,
the legendary Commodore.
Pontiac called it the G8.
It was a four-door sedan with a V8 engine,
and it looked awesome.
The G8 was so good that auto journalists
were calling it the American M3.
That's high praise.
It was definitely a high point for Pontiac,
but 2008 came, and with it, a global economic crisis.
- At one point, the market fell as if down a well.
- Down over 16%.
- Dow, at the same time, has fallen about 18%.
Everyone agrees the clock is ticking for Detroit,
and the casualties are already mounting.
- Consumers didn't have any money
to spend on a new car, let alone something sporty
like the G8 or Solstice.
Obviously, Pontiac wasn't the only brand
affected by the crisis.
General Motors as a whole had been
hemorrhaging money for years
For the 2007 fiscal year, GM had reported
a loss of 38.7 billion dollars,
So in order to survive, Detroit asked
the government for a bailout.
GM received 30 billion from Uncle Sam,
but on one condition.
They had to slim down.
Saturn, Hummer, and Pontiac all closed their doors,
and Saab was sold to Dutch automaker Spyker.
This decision wasn't easy for GM,
but the reality was that Pontiac's attempts
to rebuild the excitement just weren't successful.
Despite consensus that the GTO, Solstice, and G8
were all great cars, they just didn't sell well enough
to be saved by GM.
In January of 2010, the last Pontiac
rolled off the assembly line.
There was no ceremony to mark the occasion,
and no journalists were invited.
The final Pontiac was a white G6 sedan,
built to fill a fleet order.
It was a meek representation of a brand
with a long history of pushing the boundaries.
They helped invent the muscle car.
They were one of the only American companies
to mass-produce something mid-engined.
The Aztec, yeah, it was ugly,
but it was ahead of its time.
It was one of the first crossover SUVs,
which are huge nowadays.
But in the end, Pontiac was a mismanaged shadow
of its former self that only returned
to its performance roots when it was too late.
(melancholy piano music)
Thanks for watching Wheelhouse.
Remember to like, comment, share, and subscribe.
What else makes you go, "Hmm, I never thought about that"?
Like, where did racing stripes come from?
Where did cupholders get invented?
Why do we drive on the right hand side of the road?
We're gonna be covering all this
coming up on Wheelhouse.
We got a lot of new shows now.
We've got Wheelhouse with me on Monday.
Tuesdays is Matt Field's Corvette build,
love watching that.
Thursdays, come on, it's Up To Speed.
Fridays is The Bestest with Tony.
He's ranking the top 10 everything in the automotive world.
It's a different list every week.
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shop.donut.media, you can get yourself your own,
and I'll see you in the street wearing one,
and think you're one of my coworkers,
pat you on the back, and guess what,
I don't know you, and it's weird.
Thanks for watching.