Pontiac joins Oldsmobile as car brands killed by General Motors

Photo 2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP courtesy General Motors

The announcement that GM is killing off Pontiac to save itself is a sad one.  Say the words Pontiac GTO, Bonneville or Firebird to muscle car fans and their eyes will glaze over either happily or sadly.

Pontiac has a proud history.  So did Oldsmobile, which General Motors killed off in 2004, also to save itself.  That leaves Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, GMC,  Saturn and Hummer -- and Saturn and Hummer might not be long for this world.  And GM still has to do something about its interests in Opel.  Certainly enough brands and model choices for most buyers.  But today's news is about the end of the road for Pontiac, which I wrote about here on Examiner.com last December.

I think the beginning of the end for Pontiac was the Aztek SUV, which was laughed out of existence because of its looks.  I never understood why buyers made fun of the see-through dark glass panel on the rear hatch.  It is the same design concept as the best-selling hybrid car on the planet, the Toyota Prius.  Nobody laughs at the Prius design.

As sad as the demise of the Pontiac nameplate, and the Olds nameplate before it, there are entire auto companies which have driven into that great garage in the history books.

Here are just a few:

Some of the most memorable cars of the Roaring Twenties and post-Depression 30s were made by Packard.  The winged hood ornament made the vehicles look as though they would fly down the road, and they did, thanks to Packard’s powerful V12 engine.  The 1935 Sport Phaeton was an open, four-door touring car, with a second windshield behind the front seat, to protect those in the back. 

Duesenberg also made some of the most elegant and expensive cars of the Twenties, and one of the first to introduce a closed sedan design.  When Duesenberg suffered serious financial problems, it was bailed out by Cord, which replaced the clumsy, bulging headlight style of those days by concealing them within the unified rounded front bumper.  That revolutionized   car design.  Cord also pioneered front-wheel drive -- a ‘37 Cord V-8 could go 0-60 mph in 13.5 seconds.

The Studebaker brothers were sons of a Gettysburg, Pa., wagon builder and blacksmith who got rich in his trade in the Civil War.  The sons built their first ‘horseless wagon’ in 1902.  In the Fifties, Studebaker’s front design looked like an airplane engine without its propeller. Studebaker was working on a low-cost, lightweight fiberglass body when it folded in the late Sixties, decades before fiberglass became used widely.

And let’s not forget the 51 triple-headlight, rear-mounted engine vehicles with never-before seatbelts that an automotive maverick named Preston Tucker produced in 1948, before he was sabotaged by Detroit’s big boys – the very same ones having so much trouble today.  How ironic that one of the few Tuckers left in the world is parked at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, near a Ford Edsel.

And I haven't even mentioned the brands that Chrysler has killed off -- Plymouth a few years ago and DeSoto before it. 

Sigh.

For more articles by Green Car Examiner Evelyn Kanter, check my website www.car-and-travel.com.

Follow me on Twitter@evelynkanter