I can’t pin down the percise time period, but I belive it was somewhere between when I first heard “we build excitement” when I was looking at a 3rd gen GA, and when Lutz said “Americas’ BMW”.
But to get to the point, it’s not so much “anti-pontiac”, it’s more like “what would be the point?”. For the last 40 years, Pontiac never had much to differenciate it from Chevy, and even when it wanted to pursue that “excitement” that it vaunted so much, it was always done so with money losing cars.
It was a workable business case to make affordable performance cars. It last worked 40 years ago during Pontiac’s heyday. Nothing is as it was then and that’s why we had things like the SV6, the Torrent, and the G3; cars that had to be sold just to keep the brand viable when it’s mission statement of 40 years ago was all but a memory.
Pro-Pontiacists seem to think that the brand is “coming just around the corner”; the aforementioned and laughable 5-10 years that you think it will take to herlald Pontiac’s return. It’s not only short-sighted, but outright weird that you think such a think could happen.
Whats more, it’s blind people of the new “pontiac faith” that always play the “tradition” card like it matters any more. Tradition is dead and some people just can’t accept deadfisted facts of life. Just because your daddy had an GTO or your uncle had a turbo TransAM DOES NOT IN ANY WAY ENTITLE OR GUARANTEE that you’ll be able to have the same thing in your time.
Furthermore, you’re a minority in the car world. Not everyone wants “excitement” in their cars, they really do just want A to B transportation, not a car with t-tops and a fire chicken. Many people would have their commutes automated, and if trends are anything to go by, they soon will.
The only realistic way I could ever see such a pointless brand ever coming back, AND marketing affordable performance as it’s key selling point, would be the to kill the ICE and have full electrics take over. With the energy security bullet dodged and significant lower operating costs, you can have people move performance up their list of demands. That’s if you can get the majority of people to actualy care about such a matter so that you could market Pontiac to them.
and you think that’s going to happen in 5 to 10 years time?
Remember, it’s not “anti-pontiac”, it’s “what’s the point”?
