Later this morning, General Motors will announce a restructuring plan that includes shutting down an 83 year-old brand:
DETROIT — The storied Pontiac brand is dead and more car factories and jobs are about to disappear — the latest casualties of a massive restructuring plan that GM is counting on to help it stave off bankruptcy protection.
The struggling automaker will announce details of its plan at 9 a.m. ET Monday as it makes an offer to its bondholders to swap debt for company stock. GM (GM) owes $28 billion to large and small bondholders, and under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, it must disclose its operational plans when it makes an exchange offer.
Two people briefed on GM’s plan confirmed that it includes the demise of Trans Am sports car brand Pontiac, 83 years after the first Pontiac car was introduced. Within three years, half a million Pontiacs were sold, and the brand quickly grew in popularity, from early models like the Chief and the Master Six Coupe, to the Bonneville convertible, to the GTO — one of America’s first muscle cars and so popular it was immortalized in song.
But efforts in the last few years to market Pontiac as performance-oriented brand failed. The company had said it wanted to keep Pontiac as a niche brand with one or two models, but is buckling under tremendous government pressure to consolidate its eight brands, several of which lose money.
While this is the right decision from a business perspective, it’s still somewhat bittersweet. We were a Pontiac family growing up, and my first car was a Pontiac.
In fact, other than Pontiacs, I haven’t owned or driven any other American-made car.
I suppose the good news is that we won’t see the Pontiac Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition. Of course, the way the various swaps are structured, if one is either a shareholder or bondholder in GM, one is screwed to the tune of, at a minimum, 80%-90% as it transitions to Government Motors, with the UAW being the second-largest stakeholder behind the federal government.
Pontiac will need a miracle to come out of this one. I want to know what will happen to all the parts. These cars still sell. I got my new 2009 Pontiac G6 GT Convertible at Hare Pontiac in Indianapolis and now I’m seeing this. You always think everything will be ok. Ive had 3 Pontiac’s in my life. One of them I still have the 79 Pontiac Firebird.