@Moanalua — Having incorporated nine businesses so far in my lifetime and having a slight edification in business law, I’m well aware of the legal intricacies of a business. But that was not my point: the fact remains that a corporation is still NOT a person. It’s a legal entity… but it has no feelings.
So it constantly surprises me that individuals blatantly state that “GM wanted x, y, and z”. There are multiple levels of decision-making at most multinational companies, GM included. So while GM employee Joe Smith may have wanted item x, her colleague Jay Doe may have wanted item y. The point is that a company has backers and detractors of certain business ideas and decisions. I know that there were, indeed, folks within GM who were not fond of continuing to throw resources at Pontiac. End of story.
To your question: no, of course I was not present during the Chapter 11 proceedings, board meetings, etc. But neither were you, or @PontiacRulz. So for us to sit here and conjecture about what “GM wanted to do” and what “GM didn’t want to do” doesn’t lead to anything and doens’t help your argument and wishes to bring back Pontiac. Again, the point is that there were many within GM’s ranks who wanted to trim the brand and product portfolio in order to deliver a better product where it matters most. And there were those who didn’t agree with them. Perhaps one of these ideas got to GM’s primary decision makers first. Who knows?
Point is, GM got a ton of money in the bailout and had the added pleasure of having their eyes open in relation to what was and what wasn’t working for them. Pontiac wasn’t working.
Finally:
“Pontiac wasn’t selling well.” What? We just said that it was #3 in sales, exceeded only by Chevy and GMC, and was outselling Buick two-to-one.”
It doesn’t matter if Pontiac was GM’s #3 or #303 best-seller.
The point is that Pontiac was selling poorly for what it was supposed to be — a mainstream product. At its best, Pontiac topped out at roughly 40,000 vehicle sales a month (some time in 2002 or 2003). By comparison, Chevrolet sold over 161,000 vehicles in December of 2011. It sold close to 200,000 in the month that Pontiac delivered its 40,000-some unit sales. Does those numbers seem a success to you?
Lastly, you keep bringing up Buick and the fact that Pontiac was outselling it. This is irrelevant, as Buick is a premium/luxury brand with a wider profit margin. This margin will continue to grow over the next decade — as Buick introduces an all-new line-up and keeps moving upmarket to, in my opinion, be a direct Lexus competitor.
Buick allows GM the luxury of efficiency: it doesn’t have to run its plants at full capacity to make enough vehicles and meet a higher break-even. In other words, the break-even occurs at a much lower volume for Buick than it does for Pontiac and Chevy. For Buick, the plants don’r require strenuous and inefficient overtime (that more often than not leads to poor quality), and the market doesn’t get a dump of over-supply and not-in-demand vehicles. So can we avoid comparing the sales of Buick to those of Pontiac? You wouldn’t compare Lexus sales to those of Pontiac, would you?
Now, to reuse your closing statement:
Yes, Pontiac was a mainstream brand. But it failed to achieve mainstream sales success due to low volumes — and was therefore discontinued.
