ShadowDog

Alright, it's true we're looking at this as the last gasp of the company; however, with accepting the current information of Chrysler's bankruptcy as common knowledge and another chapter in a company's life, then you read this story? You don't get the idea that it's probably a lot worse than 'just bad'?

Par for the course. Everybody else is producing vehicles thinking the public won't notice the problem, maybe Chrysler can get away with it, too?

I feel your pain. Been there at merely 30,000 miles - the tranny internals turned into mince.

Quite frankly, I think it's a better car than anything else GM has in the North American market in this segment.

Some of the same points I considered true.

Quite tragic a story of desperation. The economy itself dealt the final blow.

Certainly not my complete impression; however, only based upon the regions across western Canada from B.C. to Ontario. Of the owners I spoke with, I would guess less than half of them bought Pontiac for what we'd hope they represented. Their vehicles were on the other side of the coin when it came to performance image and offered the same as their sister-counterparts from Chevrolet. Of those buying within the performance category, the majority purchased their cars used in order to heavily modify them. Fieros and W-Body Grand Prixs made up the mix, with most of these buyers shunning the J-body and Grand Ams as being too soft and simple, covered in sculpted cladding to be their only performance image traits. These guys were all across North America, creating tuner cars the way they'd hoped GM would produce them. I was even hoping to see a true production vehicle come from the original Grand Am SC/T concept. As true and high reaching that performance car would have been, I was merely shocked to finally see a performance V6 Pontiac with a manual transmission!!! That alone was something missing from Pontiac, and practically every other GM division for nearly a decade! There wasn't anything available as a complete package for enthusiasts to do anything more than 'settle' with. Not too many of these enthusiasts were highly impressed with the GXP styling or the paddle shifting gimmick when it was introduced. These guys focused on a particular era that had more to do with what was available to them at that time, not what once was, or would apparently never be. That's where the majority of my impression comes from.

I'm surprised by this thinking. Some can't believe it, while others can't understand why they lasted this long after the 70s and early 80s. As I see it, Pontiac was clinging to their successful times and not providing themselves with enough forward-thinking to attract enough new consumers. Innovations seemed to have tapered off at the same time things like HUD and supercharged GTPs came out. From there, IMHO, the only thing left was image. I'm not sure how anything can survive with this alone; especially when its been watered down by blatant rebadge non-engineering. It is quite sad, truly. There was enough of a legacy to work with after dramatic changes could have been made; perhaps only to have been executed in better times. The sub-35 age group I have talked to about Pontiac have only the present and the past (up to the early 80s) to speak about. They have nothing overwhelmingly positive to say about the products Pontiac has offered during those times; however, all of the people I speak with over the age of 35 have a connection in some way that merely refer to the 60s and 70s as the glory years. The leapfrog in years between then and now is WAY to long to provide enough consumers with a solid impression of the division's image and direction. Some of these people were in the sit-and-wait mode for Pontiac to produce anything that would take them back to the glory days. I say, these people would have been better off moving to Cuba to enjoy the good-ol' chrome of old Pontiac... despite the lack of muscle cars, I suppose. Pontiac clearly lost their way and GM was reading their map upside down.

I'd have to look in another city to even find one on the road, much less seeing the same ones at our local BPG dealer for weeks. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see one rolling around here, but apparently interest isn't high while people are checking their wallets and looking ahead; but, there could be any number of reasons why they aren't selling.

Resources, yes, money, no. It's unlikely very much money exchanged hands at all during the course of the building of these home. The banks just used their 'fictional' money.

They already offer their lack-lustre engines, so why not?

A little pug-nosed with the split-grille being so high up; but, consistency is key in the market, so I guess it'll have to do. Criticisms aside, it needs to get here much sooner than intended.

Camino, you're worth the read. The only foresight I have if you were to stay is that most of your future posts would likely have a great deal of skepticism and potential negativity for a car maker that has wronged its particular brand fans. If that's the case, perhaps your choice is just; on the other hand, that note I mentioned in another thread of lodging complaints and letter writing campaigns now may help steer direction later, but for the better. Food for thought?

While I mean absolutely no disrespect in saying this, especially to those enthusiasts of Pontiac, the many here you indicate as failing to realize that Pontiac and its fate are very important to many here do, in fact, realize this. The many also have a clear understanding of the reality of Pontiac. The jokes and quips regarding 'Excitement!!!', the power of rebadged Daewoos, Oprahs panty-wetting-free G6 fan car-club and the awe-inspiring FWD "Widetrack" W-Body all culminate to spell out the words we all knew was coming. Pontiac lost themselves decades ago and the results are hardly surprising. It's the relentless banter and crying foul time and time again that just baffles me. These are the passionate threads full of ideas and letter-writing campaigns that were needed twenty...fricken...years...ago!!! Not today! Okay, I took a breath. I'm just saying that all of these passionate expressions of anger and frustration are terribly lost on me, and likely a few others here as well. While I won't say they're too little, too late... I will say that they were just not soon enough, if they would have ever mattered at all to those with the power to have changed anything at all. <-- To me, that's the saddest part of all of this.

It would be easier on Americans, and the rest of the world, to make cars with better fuel mileage than to even attempt to get the cost of oil down. Just how would you expect the cost to go *poof* half-price?

I guess GM should have stayed away from government-sponsorship and chose their own path to profitable success that included all of its brands. I guess they'll also start issuing hunting licenses for flying swine, too.

There is a large majority of individuals here with points, concerns and facts I find worthy enough to sift for. Just sayin'...

Tomorrow just can't come fast enough so I no longer have to exercise my right to ignore others' freedom of speech. Can we just go from the point of the announcement so we can further repeat ourselves in 16 page-long threads before we turn this one into a 32 page-long thread before then?

If buying a car for good resale value after 3-5 years is smart; and a Corolla has good resale value; and if you buy one, you're stupid; does Einstein's brain explode trying to solve the Camino-logic equation?

Yeah, it's a calm and semi-sunny day here. Had plans, but needs changed that. I used the loader and tiller on the garden yesterday and drove my friend's PT Cruiser to his place while he had another loader spreading topsoil for a small city-size garden plot. (Those Cruisers aren't half-bad... but it's tough to really tell because my friend doesn't spend the time keeping his vehicles tidy) Then we figured while we had the loader there, we might as well get ambitious and remove the concrete slabs from his front yard walkway. I got home at 11:00 am to continue to work on my son's bedroom reno; BUT, my wife needed to go out so I stayed with my son and played. I had planned on taking a rip in the car since I swapped on the summer rubber. I really should post how fun the valley roads are around here; a real blast for spirited driving. Not all is lost since a day with my son is the best I could hope for. ...Though, I still wanted to have my taxes finished today. Grr.

When it comes to expenses, I'm more likely to ramp up my appearance care with regular cleaning and waxing. I'll be moving to synthetics for them as well. I'll certainly be doing a better job than the GM dealership when it comes to scoping out preventative maintenance. The last time I took the car in for an oil change, I asked them to perform a semi-annual inspection before its 5-year-long warranty expired and check out a couple of muffler heat-shield clamps that were loose and causing a bit of a rattle at certain RPMs. My wife gets the car back and tells me that she thought she could still hear the rattle. It turns out they must not have even checked the clamps because I had to replace two completely corroded ones myself with stainless steel hose clamps. They'll probably last longer anyway.

Blame game, a pointless and endless argument. What I cannot completely accept is that everyone points the finger at GM for making Pontiac what it has become. If anything, GM is merely guilty of accepting the wishes of the dealerships to have the lack-lustre and mediocre models to drive volume sales. If Pontiac didn't even want to be a quality niche player, the only thing GM is guilty for is not forcing them to be.

If squealing really is the problem... well sure, I'll agree with that. I imagine GM could have done a better job by telling customers that little known fact about how "high-performance racing car brakes tend to squeal". Maybe that would start a new trend of ego boosting. "Hear that? My brakes squeal! Jealous?"

Yay money! How well you treat the world. Maybe we should all just go back to trading beaver pelts?

Apparently it's lost on the old farts. The grand majority of people letting me know about my lights have all been over at least 60. This reminds me about my mother-in-law's Aurora. It's headlights and reverse lights stay on for a minute when you press the lock/unlock button on the FOB. It's funny to observe people hesitate from walking along the rear when it's parked after they see the reverse lights come on and there's nobody in the car. I also find these lights quite stupid because they don't really help illuminate the pathway to the car; but rather, they blind you as you approach it.