Thankfully, though, the brand will hang on with collector clubs. We guess the intellectual property department at GM will try all sorts of licensing stuff to keep Pontiac away from the Chinese.

One way the brand will be kept alive is in the popular media. A recent Daily Variety article listed some of the top Pontiacs that will live on in television, the movies and music. They include:

• GTO in the Beach Boys song
• Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit and K.I.T.T. in the original Knight Rider
• Firebird in James Garner’s The Rockford Files
• Pontiac Star Chief on I Love Lucy (Lucy, Fred, Ricky and Ethel road a Star Chief cross country)
• Pontiacs on Jimmy Kimmel Live
• Pontiac G6 on Oprah
• Pontiac Solstice on the original Transformers

One other way the brand will stay alive is through conversions. We found a fascinating conversion company, mentioned in Autoblog. It is Warren, Michigan-based ASC Creative Services. They started out putting sunroofs in cars, and now do all manner of conversions. They have gotten a flurry of press for their 2010 Pontiac Trans Am.

Here is their idea. ASC turns the new 2010 Camaro into their own version of a Pontiac Trans Am. I know this can be done because my brother in law has a Dodge Sprinter. He got a Mercedes grill for the thing and viola! He has a Mercedes. It’s funny for him, and customers love the joke. These cars, after all, were always made in the same factory, with just a bit of difference in trim.

That’s probably not a bad approach for General Motors with Pontiac. Contract with companies like ASC, either by license or directly,  to develop specialty cars under the Pontiac and Olds brand names. There is a market for these cars, albeit a small one. It does not make you much much money. But what the market does do is allow you to experiment with new car designs all the while bringing in a bit of profit from the exercise. While you will never make as much money as a full line division, you are keeping the brand fresh in case you want to bring it back. And remember, this has been done many times. Auto brands that died and came back include Mini, Abarth, Audi. Heck, even the ENTIRE U.S. car industry shut down production during World War II, and returned.

Also, if you actually make some cars, you have a good chance of keeping the intellectual property viable.

So put Pontiac on hiatus for a few years. Fix the old ones up. And allow folks like ASC to come up with some fun things in the interim.

ASC Creative Headquarters
6115 Thirteen Mile Road
Warren, MI  48092
586-446-4701

GM did not get in this mess overnight. This is about 20-plus years of bad management, poor marketing, poor decisions and GM being insulated and isolated. It is also due to GM feeling that since they were big and powerful, they could dictate to the public what we should buy. This is not so, as they have found out.

With that out of the way, I could name many things that went wrong. But instead, I will present the GM that I think would work in today’s market. In the 1960’s when GM was successful, brands were semi-independent and they had fewer models. GM made more with less.

Today, GM must globalize. There must be platform sharing across the world.

Chevrolet will not get every car and every platform. Let me make that clear up front. It does not matter what they are doing at GM Middle East, or at Holden.

• Buick will do a complete 360 in image. It will be a risky gamble.
• Oldsmobile will return.
• Pontiac will live with fewer models.
• This new GM will cover every segment of the market and this GM will reach different types of buyers with fewer models.

This GM will have:

• A beginning entry level mainstream” American” brand: Chevrolet
• A performance brand with an emphasis on affordable performance: Pontiac
• An “American” styled brand with an emphasis on technology and “American” styled luxury” Oldsmobile
• A entry to mid-level import fighter luxury brand: Buick
• A full on ultra luxury brand: Cadillac
• A luxury/ commercial truck brand: GMC

The dealerships will be interchangeable. There will be no stand alone Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac or GMC dealers. They will be housed at a Chevrolet dealer or next to a Cadillac showroom or together. No dealerships will be added. The metro areas will have fewer dealerships. Some will be consolidated. The rural dealerships will have the brands housed in the same dealer. This automatically cuts down on the number of dealers.
The platforms will be:

• Epsilon (fwd)
• Alpha/Zeta (rwd)
• trucks
• Lambda (fwd and awd)
• Theta
• Delta

Each platform can be lengthened, stretched, shortened or modified to ride according to market segment tastes. Each division will be marketed as they were in the past as a company owned by GM until the GM name can be rebuilt from its tarnished image. The Saturn approach will be used here. The dealership agreements will not be set up like Saturn. In order to get or maintain a GM franchise, certain criteria must be met.

A division roundup

Chevrolet: Mainstream and affordable entry level cars. The sports cars lead into Pontiac. Some of Saturn’s models will end up at Chevrolet. The Chevrolet dealers and everyone involved will be re-educated to a higher standard. No more thinking we are bottom feeders and sell cheap cars. The dealerships must be given the same respect as a Buick dealer, with less on the inside. Models include:

• Malibu (fwd sedan)
• Impala (fwd) (large sedan) ( no bench seat)
• Cruze
• Equinox
• Volt
• Beat/Spark
• Aveo(total overall make over)
• Silverado
• Tahoe
• Suburban
• Zafira
• Corvette
• Camaro
• Traverse

Pontiac: No bench seats or cheap interiors. The beginning of the use of higher materials. Think of it as a cheap BMW, like Bob Lutz said. If you cannot afford a performance Cadillac, this is the way to go.

• Bonneville: rwd upper/premium midsized (will fill all the mission of all the old B and H bodies)
• Firebird/Trans Am: More features and options than Camaro, with different styling.
• Grand Prix: rwd midsized coupe. Think BMW 6 Series and the old Grand Prix from the 1960’s and 1970’s. A GTO trim level can be spun off Grand Prix.

Oldsmobile: This brand will be the only GM brand with bench seats and the use of the next level of higher grade materials and features. This division is GM’s test bed for new technologies. It will be the one with the “traditional” American things like digital gauges and bench seats and velour fabrics. They will soak up the Lincoln Town Car buyers and Grand Marquis buyers, as Ford is leaving the segment. They will also take Chrysler 300 and Toyota Avalon buyers as well. Toronado and 98 will share instrumentation panels like they did in the 1970’s. I will not make the assumption Buick and hard line traditional Cadillac buyers will flock to Oldsmobile.

• 98: rwd or fwd. Will fill the mission of all the old C Bodies (98, DeVille, Park Avenue) with a contemporary twist. GM’s only traditional full-sized luxury sedan.
• Toronado: full-sized personal luxury coupe. Exactly what it was in 1966 and 1992.
• Cutlass/Ciera: The front wheel drive coupe. The only GM convertible other than sports cars will be here.

Toronado and Cutlass will offer bucket seats as an option. If you make Cutlass rwd, it would be GM’s only midsized rear drive mainstream sedan. If you make it fwd or rwd, it would be GM’s only midsized coupe. A Custom Cruiser wagon is a possibility as well, derived from GM’s Holden unit in Australia.

Buick: Entry to mid-level import fighter. Returning to its roots as the upscale professional’s car. Buick China will influence, not dictate, the American Buick. No Buicks will have bench seats, be over a 197 inches, have less content, or come in multiple trim levels. They will come loaded with options that can be added. The tag line: Isn’t it time you consider Buick. Model lineup includes:

• Insignia/Regal: Lexus ES fighter/Acura TL
• LaCrosse: As big as a Buick will get at a 197 inches. Acura RL Infiniti G35 clientele
• Saturn VUE/Opel Antara: Becomes Buick Rendevous. Loaded. Lead in to Enclave
• Holden Calais: A loaded rwd Buick aimed at the Lexus GS and Infiniti M Class.
• Astra: Entry level Buick for the budget conscious luxury buyer.

Cadillac: Ultra Luxury Brand. No excuses, no cuts, all out standard of the world luxury

• FTS: Rolls Royce Bentley Fighter at a cheaper price
• DTS: BMW 7 Series and Mercedes S Class and Audi A8 fighter
• CTS: BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E Class fighter. The CTS will have variations including coupe, sedan, and wagon.
• STS/ETC: Two and four-door ultra-luxury cars. Low volume. Think the big coupe at Mercedes and the four passenger Chinese SLS.
• BTS: BMW 3 Series fighter
• SRX: Cadillacs crossover.
• Escalade: Range Rover and other upper crust SUV’s.
• Converj: The luxury Volt

GMC: Luxury truck brand and commercial trucks. They will have to be brought up to a notch below Buick in terms of luxury and way ahead Chevrolet. Can be sold any any dealer except Chevrolet.

The new GM will have fewer cars. Chevrolet leads into Oldsmobile. Pontiac leads into Cadillac and both mean performance. Buick is aimed directly at the heart of the luxury car market and connects with GMC. You now have every segment covered by a fewer cars. Brand images include:

• Oldsmobile and Chevrolet will play up the “American” brand angle.
• Pontiac will play up the ” stylish affordable” performance.
• The Buick emblem will float with a black background. It will compare itself to the imports and leave many asking: “Was that a Buick?”
• Cadillac will go back to Cadillac Style that it used before, but emphasis will be on the new definition of luxury.

GM will look like a supermarket aisle, where you see Kellogg’s cereal brands. You know each Kellogg’s cereal caters to a certain segment, all variations on that brand. You know General Mills also has different cereal brands, too. They compete against Kellogg’s. The brands inside the company complement each other.

We like to think we had something to do with it, but there were larger forces at play, including those executive jets that flew to Congress when GM asked for a bailout. Has it really come to this? Yes it has; read Robert Farago’s hilarious post on eliminating trashcans at Warren Tech on the website TheTruthAboutCars.

Models are the real “Celebs” at Buick

You are reading something here that you aren’t reading ANYWHERE else. Let us tell you what the real “stars” are at Buick. The “Star” is the Buick brand itself. And not the Buick brand alone, but the ensemble of Park Avenue, LeSabre, Century and Skylark. These auto nameplates are the real stars at Buick. Here, a logo of a restored Skylark. People don’t care about Tiger. They care about the cars. They love the cars. And when Buick doesn’t give them the cars, people don’t buy them.

We gave a number of reasons to end the sponsorship, but we didn’t actually do the math on it earlier this month. As we see it, the yearly cost of Woods as a spokesman added $35 to the price of each car (we got this by dividing $7 million and Buick volume, which is now a paltry 200,000 units a year). Did Woods actually add that much value? Of course not. But here’s telling figure. If you are selling 800,000 cars a year, the cost per car goes way down, and Tiger might actually be a help. But the problem was, every year that Tiger was spokesman, sales volume went down. Of course that is true with CEO Fact Rick Wagoner, who has increased his power and salary at GM even as he as ruined one of America’s greatest companies.

A digression here: We are not blaming Tiger for the sales slide at GM. He was just doing what they asked, and who could blame him? But we do think he is symptomatic of the larger problem of this CEO-as-royalty culture. Because Tiger could have recast the image of Buick without this big deal contract, with a one-off promotion. The real reason GM kept Tiger on was that execs and Buick dealers liked hanging around with him. Well, we’d like to hang around with him too, but we learned in primary school that the worst thing you could accuse a rich kid of is buying his friends.

Legacy costs a straw man

GM now is on a legacy costs complaint binge. It has unfairly said that it is burdened with over $2,000 in legacy costs for each auto it sells, with extra pension costs, health care costs and the like. But this is so blame the union, and it is wrong. Why? Because if GM’s bloated fatcats were producing cars that people liked, it might actually have some sales volume, and those costs would be fewer. If you double the sales volume, those costs go way down. The reality is that GM has enormous advantages from being a legacy brand, like a strong dealer network and beloved brands like Buick.

This is the same issue as the elimination of Oldsmobile and the over-investment in crap like Hummer and Saturn. GM is about sales volume, and badge engineering a few platforms into a whole lineup of different looking cars. That is why the discussion now of selling Buick, or eliminating Pontiac, eliminating GMC or any number of other discussions misses the point. The point is that GM needs lots of volume to keep the machine going. It needs all the nameplates. And if you take away any more volume from GM, even the paltry number of Pontiacs sold each year, you make GM less viable.

Like the Tiger Woods sponsorship, the the discussion over the keeping of General Motors’s legacy brands involves so much crazy talk. Buick will obviously survive the mess at General Motors, as the brand is still selling in China. But there is no earthly reason any of the legacy brands of General Motors should disappear. Even still, writers from Conde Nast’s Portfolio and even Barron’s have suggested that GM’s nameplates should disappear. This is proof that the discussion of General Motors is WAY off the mark.

What should disappear is not Pontiac or Buick or GMC. What should disappear is the bloated executive salaries and the featherbedding. Until that disappears, GM will have no hope.

More Prescient Insight from BrandlandUSA

Read our other post on GM’s wacky leadership at Nameplates Like Hummer, and Saab. And read our discussion of the Future of the Oldsmobile Brand for some thoughts on why keeping these legacy brands is the only hope that GM has. We detailed that idea in July, in our prescient post GM Stock Drop Mirrors Olds Elimination.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that General Motors has a large number of slow selling cars, including the Pontiac G5, Pontiac G8, Saab 9-7, Saab 9-5 and Saturn Astra. Apparently, they are pretty good cars, and get decent mileage. But GM can’t sell them.

But the Chevrolet Silverado and the Chevrolet Impala are doing well. Hmmm. Let’s see. One group has a bunch of unknown nameplaces, namely G5, G8 and Astra. And the other has names that are well known to consumers. Names like Impala and Malibu. Get it?

Duh. Consumers get it. For decades, GM sold a limited number of nameplates, and rarely switched around model names, and only dropped a model name when there was an extremely negative connotation (i.e. Chevette). The Olds Cutlass, Chevrolet Caprice and Buick Century were staples. And then GM started switching around all its models. It would be as if NBC switched around its programming all the time. Consumers wouldn’t know what to do. So they go with the familiar. Or go elsewhere.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. GM has done it with Cadillac, where it rebranded the company by eliminating Sedan DeVille, Eldorado and Fleetwood. But that is expensive, time consuming, requires incredible skill and sometimes doesn’t work. It helped to kill off Oldsmobile. Who wants to drive an Alero when you want an Eighty Eight?

So you can’t do it all the time.

This dropping of nameplates is ostensibly done to attract younger car buyers. A noble goal, but not a goal for the desperate car company. Furthermore, many of the folks who buy these future clunkers from General Motors are older. And more familiar with familiar names.

So they go into a showroom, expecting a LeMans. And they get a Pontiac Vibe. Now, a Pontiac Vibe is a great car, and I think is actually a Toyota Matrix. But it doesn’t sell like one. How about calling it something folks already know. Like a Pontiac LeMans.

News flash to GM. People live til they are 80 these days, and so you need to market to people over 50. People over 50 don’t want to drive a Vibe. But they do have disposable income, and might even want a Trans Am or Bonneville.

What are the top missing General Motors nameplates that might be known to an over 50 crowd? They are the cars sold during the late 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Bub, some of these nameplates had 30 years on them, minimum. Below are the most obvious.

Pontiac

• Pontiac Bonneville
• Pontiac Trans Am
• Pontiac LeMans

Oldsmobile

• Oldsmobile Ninety Eight
• Oldsmobile Cutlass
• Oldsmobile Eighty Eight

Buick

• Buick LeSabre
• Buick Park Avenue
• Buick Century

The petitions to bring back Oldsmobile are growing. It has been one of the top searches on BrandlandUSA. We wanted to bring to our readers’ attention a few of the sites that are beginning to catch on to the value of Oldsmobile to General Motors. They are listed below.

In fact, looking back on the decision, General Motors shareholders should be really ticked off about how much the company has done to destroy generations of consumer goodwill and stockholder value. It’s time General Motors got back to being General Motors again. The company needs Cadillac. Buick. Pontiac. Chevrolet. Oldsmobile. Maybe Saturn. Certainly GMC. Not Hummer.

A few mentions on the message boards.

• Popular Hotrodding’s message board has a section on it.
• There are only TWO petitions on the PetitionSpot.com petition, but please add more. That’s very lame, so it’s not helping my case any but at least someone took the time to make a petition.
• Petition Online has Bring Back Oldsmobile. There are 1100 signatures there, and many of the writers make VERY good points.
• Autoblog, Bring Back Studebaker.

Read our posts on the issue.

• GM Stock Drop Mirrors Olds Elimination
• Hummer, Good Riddance Sort of
• LaSalle, General Motors and the Aristede case
• Down the Road for Chrysler Plymouth Dealers