P.S. Nice use of the word hyperbole, that word of the day dictionary stealthee sent ya is working...
....please don't tell me you needed to look that word up. It's called having a vocabulary beyond 5th grade English. Comes naturally for those of us that prefer reading to being retards. Of course, for someone who has so much trouble putting together a coherent, grammatically correct sentence with words used in the proper context, I can understand why it strikes you as "a big college word!!".
So you are Anti-American? Does that mean you are a Ford Loving Nazi?
And what the hell brought on the comparison to Honda and Toyota..we are talking about GM, and the last time I checked they don't own any of those foreign car companies.
...are your reading comprehension skills seriously this low, or are you trying to divert attention away from the fact that your claims have been exposed for being baseless? Try to keep up with the conversation. You claimed the '04 - '08 GPs are more popular than ever. I stated an easy way to refute that claim is to look at the resale value of the GP vs. its competitors, because it is a good benchmark to determine how desirable/popular a car is. The stats on ANY website, including your "preferred" sources of KBB and NADA, clearly show that the last GP, which is only 4 years old, has lost more than 50% of its original MSRP. On the other hand, its competitors have only lost about 40%, and actually sell for higher, clearly indicating that even today, the mass public prefers to buy an import competitor over Pontiac.
Want to keep it in the GM family? Fine. You still loose. The 2008 Impala SS, which had an original MSRP of almost exactly the same as the GXP, currently retails for (rounding DOWN the differences): Edmunds $1700, KBB $2400, and NADA $1200 MORE than the GP. Despite being an equally low quality car, thus why the differences in values aren't huge, and still a massive loss from the MSRP, it STILL holds slightly better value than the Pontiacs. This is because Chevy has much bigger name recognition than any other brand of GM. Funny, isn't it? Even when you try to make a point by attempting to discredit my evidence while presenting your own, when analyzed, your own evidence ends up DISPROVING your claims.
Now on to the bit that matters. Pontiac and Buick are much closer in name recognition, as Olds also used to be, thus similar new sales figures and resale values in the US. This made deciding between Buick and Pontiac for the axe a virtual toss-up based on US sales. The tie breaker was the fact that Buick sells so well in several former communist countries (2:1 in China alone). GM came to this solution with an emotionally difficult, but mathematically plain and simple equation. The only reason you refuse to see this, or are trying to distort and complicate a very easy equation is because your emotions towards Pontiac are clouding your judgement.
Here's what you fail to realize buddy, I would trust the opinion of someone who has owned a Chevy/GMC/and at one time Pontiac dealership since 1967, and lets not to mention a Saturn dealership 3 years before GM killed that lineup as well. over you any day.
Why would the mere act of someone owning a business automatically give any more credence to a person's opinions about how the companies he deals goods for should be run? In fact, if anything, your next sentence HURTS his credibility.
To this very day, HE still thinks axing Pontiac was a bad idea, and he was the one who told me that when GM execs came to the dealership to discuss it with him a year before they did it, regardless of the numbers, he wished that they would have retooled the line up, came back in 2014 with products that were gonna challenge all the other competitors.
.....so what exactly is it that you're "trusting" about this guy's opinion? His FEELING that regardless of the numbers, they should have kept Pontiac around? How does that make any sense, or lend any evidence or validity to your argument? All you're doing is quoting someone who's doing the same exact thing as you: Forming an opinion that completely contradicts the evidence (by his own admission), and is solely based on emotion/feeling. Finding someone that agrees with your same baseless opinion is not EVIDENCE for your opinion. Neither of you have given a single legitimate, logical answer or explanation as to WHY it should have been kept around. You've simply said "they just should have kept them around. Just....shoulda' done something, and kept them around".
And why "retool" to sell a 3rd version of the same cars they already offer through Chevy and Buick? The set up they have now is perfect, and IMO, is the way it should have been to start with. Chevy = cheaper/entry level GMs that can be fairly nicely equipped if the buyer desires so, Buick = slightly upper scale versions of those cars with more/better amenities, and Caddy = luxury/high-end. Where would this "retooled" Pontiac fit into this equation? And what guarantee do you have that they would sell? What if after dumping those millions upon millions of dollars into "retooling" the brand, it bombed again anyway? Why take that kind of risk and jeopardize the entire company when they already have an enormous uphill battle just trying to erase the general public's perception of the divisions they still have?
Truth, GM wasted opportunities to keep themselves out of the position they were forced in to, they should have realized that because of bad management ideas.
There is no argument that. There is an endless stream of stupid things GM did over the last few decades to put themselves in this situation, the biggest of which was letting themselves get handcuffed financially for years (and many years to come) by the UAW, followed closely behind by the giving of the final say on every aspect of production to a bunch of MBAs who don't know jack sh*t about cars, and more than half of whom don't even DRIVE GMs themselves. Couple that with all the little things like poor marketing and ad campaigns, or going from leaders, to falling behind on features and amenities, etc, and you have the recipe for this current disaster. If you REALLY want to begin to understand the inner workings of GM, and why things fell apart, I highly suggest you pick up Bob Lutz' book "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business". EXCELLENT book with tons of info about how things were structured at GM Corp.
The only point I was trying to get across was that I wish that that Pontiac arrow was still on the front of the dealership I drive past frequently.
No. See, if that WERE the point you were trying to make, everyone would have been fine with it. Just about all of us feel the same. We all have some degree of passion for the brand. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. Some will miss the brand more than others, but no one was HAPPY to see it go. I haven't been to a Chicago Auto Show the last few years because, as much as I love cars, and I wouldn't mind seeing the other displays, it's not the same without Pontiac there. It's the first display I'd run up to every year when I'd go. I still remember taking a ton of pics when the first prototype of the G8 was introduced with the much nicer (IMO) 2-tone interior. I had been following the car a couple years prior to that, so I was in awe when I finally got to see the US version that we'd be getting. The point is we all miss the brand, and wouldn't have had an issue if that was your only point.
However, the point you were ACTUALLY trying to make is that it's STUPID from a business standpoint that they got rid of the brand, which is indubitably wrong. Yes, it sucks that it got to this point. Yes, they made a lot of stupid decisions along the way to allow it to happen, and yes, had things been handled differently, they might still be around. Unfortunately, it happened, and there's nothing that can/could be done to change that. What they had to focus on was how to deal with the situation as it sat. What they did was the only logical thing they COULD do. Cut their losses while they could by letting Pontiac go, and retool/restructure the brands they had left. Is it financially stupid that Pontiac is gone? No. What you SHOULD have said all along is that it SUCKS Pontiac is gone. There's a big difference.
