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Identifying the First-Gen Ford MustangThe Best Pontiacs Ever Made
The Pontiac brand ranged from mass-market offerings like the Bonneville to the imitable GTO. These are the best Pontiacs ever made.
Pontiac: From Maverick to Mainstream
GM has had a lot of brands under its banner. History has seen fit to winnow GM down to just four domestic brands today, Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, and Cadillac, but century ago, GM’s roster looked quite different. At the time GM was the big fish eagerly gobbling up smaller automotive companies, keeping some running and shuttering others. One particular to our story is Oakland of Pontiac, Michigan.
Part of GM’s strategy then and now was to have a brand ladder with Chevrolet at the bottom and Cadillac at the top. In between were brands like Oldsmobile and Buick. In the 1920s, GM purchased or created brands like Marquette, LaSalle, and Viking to fill price gaps in their vehicle lineup. Pontiac was born as an offshoot of Oakland debuting its first car, the Pontiac Six, in 1926. By 1933, Pontiac had eclipsed Oakland in popularity and sales, rendering its big brother Oakland obsolete.
Over the years, Pontiac built its reputation on affordable, sometimes sporty cars. The brand took a decided turn in the late 1950s under Semon “Bunkie” Knudson. With designs from Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell and brand vision provided by John DeLorean and E. M. Estes, Knudson was able to distinguish Pontiac from being just another badge swapped marque within GM’s portfolio.
The financial crisis of 2008 forced GM to seek a government bailout and brands like Saab, Saturn, and Pontiac were considered dead weight. But we’re not about to let Pontiac’s anticlimactic end obscure the great cars the brand produced over the years. Below we look at some of the most important, influential, and interesting Pontiacs ever made.
Pontiac Chieftain
The Pontiac Chieftain was the brand’s new post-war design premiering in 1949. The Chieftain’s distinctive hood ornament and copious chrome made a powerful visual statement. Under the hood was Pontiac’s Silver Streak straight-eight. Pontiac, like Packard, held on to its straight-eight engine while the rest of GM and competitors were switching to V8s. A second generation of Pontiac Chieftains got with the times and adopted a V8, aligning with the rest of GM’s Tri-Fives on which the Chieftain was based. A brief, one-year third generation Chieftain for 1958 offered advanced features like a limited-slip differential and air-suspension.
Pontiac Bonneville
The Pontiac Bonneville was after the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah where land speed records have long been sought. Fittingly, the Bonneville began as a performance version of the Pontiac Star Chief loaded with power windows, steering, and brakes and powered by a fuel injected V8. Introduced in 1957, the Bonneville carried a hefty price tag of around $5,000, putting it in competition with Cadillac.
The Bonneville is also an excellent example of Pontiac’s “Wide Track” designs which debuted in 1959. The Wide Track design added five inches of width to the Bonneville providing better handling and a more commanding road presence which distinguished Pontiacs from their GM brethren.
The Bonneville saw a full ten generations spanning from the late 1950s through 2005, with a brief hiatus in the mid-80s. For most of that time, the Bonneville was a rather ordinary sedan that never managed to regain the style and panache of those early generations designed by Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell.
Pontiac Tempest
The Pontiac Tempest was the brainchild of John DeLorean as the brand’s new entry-level offering starting in 1960. The Tempest, while essentially a GM parts bin car, impressed automotive journalists and car buyers alike, earning Motor Trend’s Car of the Year for 1961. The Tempest featured an unusual layout for the time, a front engine with a rear transaxle, similar to later transaxle Porsches (924 through 968). The Tempest is best remembered, and overshadowed by the car it spawned, the GTO, a performance version of the Tempest’s Le Mans trim debuting in 1964.
Pontiac GTO
The Pontiac GTO, debuting in 1964, is widely considered the first shot in what became the tit-for-tat muscle car war of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Also the creation of John DeLorean, the GTO was intended to attract youthful buyers to Pontiac with an exciting yet affordable performance car. The GTO’s second-generation evolution beginning in 1968 gave the car the era’s popular Coke bottle curves and a bigger 455 V8 option.
The GTO’s famous/infamous Judge variant debuted in 1969 as a stripped down, street racer. Another variant, the Humbler was less successful. Offering a VOE, a.k.a. vacuum operated exhaust, the Humbler option allowed for a louder exhaust note but a tone-deaf Super Bowl commercial promoting the feature led to its immediate cancellation. Like the rest of the muscle car segment, the GTO was nerfed by emissions and fuel efficiency regulations as well as the advent of unleaded fuel. By 1973, horsepower was down and two years later the GTO was no more.
That is until Pontiac brought back the GTO in 2004 when they granted the badge to the Holden Monaro as a captive import (Holden being GM’s Australian brand). Despite an LS1 and then an LS2 V8 under the hood, the new GTO failed to catch on with the public due to its banal styling. It didn’t help that the early aughts saw sports cars waning in popularity. The Holden *ahem* Pontiac GTO was cancelled after 2006. (As an aside and to demonstrate how much looks matter in the car industry, the follow-up Pontiac Solstice outsold the GTO, moving over 65,000 units in four years compared to fewer than 40,000 for the GTO in three.)
Pontiac Firebird
The Pontiac Firebird, launched in 1967, was Pontiac’s entry into the pony car segment and was based on the Chevrolet Camaro that debuted that same year. The Firebird featured the same Coke bottle lines as the Camaro and the signature Pontiac split grille design. It offered a range of engine options from 326 to 400 cu.-in. Pontiac V8s.
The second-generation Firebird is where the car got its now iconic hood decal and where the Trans Am variant debuted. A pair of Ram Air (III and IV) V8s, like those of the GTO, attracted new devotees to Pontiac. Again like the GTO, the Firebird’s firepower was tamped down by regulations, but where the GTO was canceled the Firebird persisted. A 1977 facelift gave the car its classic look, immortalized a year later in Smoky and the Bandit. Indeed, the Firebird became a bit of a Hollywood darling, appearing in television shows like Knight Rider and The Rockford Files.
A fourth generation would finally see the Firebird regain some of its lost horsepower with the introduction of an LS1 V8 in 1998. But this was not enough to save the Firebird from cancellation after 2002.
Pontiac Aztek
The inclusion of the Pontiac Aztek on a list of the “best Pontiacs” is destined to be ironic. Both the Aztek and the Fiero deserve passing mention not for their success, which they did not have, but for their ambition. The Fiero’s story of corporate corner cutting ended in a literal ball of flames. Not so funny. The Aztek’s is more a story of corporate hubris, of marketing surveys run amok with an unforeseen and ironic coda tacked on the end.
The Pontiac Aztek, by all accounts, was a disaster. Calling this “Xtreme” crossover’s design unconventional is about as nice as you can get. Most deemed it outright ugly. It’s not that Pontiac didn’t have its act together. The 1999 Aztek concept debuted as an outdoorsy and innovative crossover SUV targeting adventurously minded Gen-Xers.
The eventual production vehicle suffered from a lack of cohesion. There were the slabs of black cladding on the lower third (so rugged!), the split grilles and vents up front (gnarly, dude!), and the origami on acid body panels folding every which way (woah!). The V6-powered crossover underneath it all was actually good, plenty of utility and innovation to go around but not enough to compensate for a polarizing design and a higher-than-average price tag.
The Pontiac Aztek did get a second life on the used market following its appearance as Walter White’s ride in AMC’s Breaking Bad series. What better vehicle to personify middle aged ennui than a used Pontiac Aztek?
Pontiac G8
The Pontiac brand got its last hurrah with another captive Aussie import, the G8, based on the Holden Commadore. The G8 was a proper rear-wheel drive sports sedan like zee Germans build and debuted here in the States in 2008. Offered with a V6 or V8, the pinnacle of the G8’s short run was the GXP variant with an LS3 V8 under the hood. Good for 415 horsepower and 415 lb.-ft. of torque, the G8 GXP was the most powerful Pontiac ever. At a fraction of the price of an equivalent BMW, the G8 was about as legit as it got for American sports sedans at the time. Sadly, that time was right smack in the midst of a financial meltdown which ultimately claimed the Pontiac brand, and the excellent Pontiac G8 along with it.
