Keeping an old brand viable is sometimes no more difficult than packaging. Here, a specialized Willys Jeep Wrangler, which according to a Chrysler LLC release dates from 2004. Basically, it’s a Wrangler, but it comes specially packaged, with a Willys decal, and Army paint colors and tires.

The Willys package was about paint, styling and accessories, and nothing else. In fact, the Willys legacy is alive and well; the Kaiser Willys Auto Supply LLC keeps the brand rolling with parts that cater to the classic Jeep market. Chrysler might do well to purchase the family owned specialty parts company, and use their market knowledge as a laboratory for ideas for their prized Jeep brand.

Looking at this model makes me think of a fun mental exercise to think of what discontinued badges might have a market in a limited run or as concept cars. Selling them as a specialty item at existing dealers, might be a way to drum up interest in GM’s design legacy. Purists might find this as heresy, but so what. GM has been badge engineering for generations, essentially selling one car and then dressing it up differently for different markets. GM has done a bad, uninspired job of it, but that does not make it wrong to mess about with these brands.

I listened this morning on NPR as a factory worker discussed bad manufacturing practices of two decades ago, where Buick Regals and Chevy Monte Carlos were merged on the assembly lines to create bastard cars that were both Chevy and Buick. These were production errors that were ultimately fixed after the assembly line, but it pointed up how cars today are merely but facades of molded plastic and different labeling.

Pontiac might be the most obvious choice for this sort of stunt; how about a limited edition Camaro, rebadged as a Trans Am? Oldsmobile and Plymouth have been gone a long time, but there are specific models that have cult appeal, like the Mini did.

Chrysler’s Dodge brand has a youth swagger, which has no appeal to families. Why not a Plymouth version of a minivan? The Mitsubishi Eclipse could perhaps be re-badged as Plymouth Duster, which is revered as  a hipster car. Could a V8 Buick Lucerne be transformed into a special limited edition, high powered Olds Ninety Eight? Perhaps the Buick Enclave could be rebadged sold as the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.

GM is apparently doing something like this in 2011, by bringing back the Chevrolet Caprice as the brand name for a police car. It will be rear-wheel drive, and a monster.

A BrandlandUSA reader laments the missed opportunity in Pontiac:

It may be that Pontiac is gone and erased from the accounting books of GM, and it may be that the heritage of Pontiac lives in the memoirs of Americana – but the fact of the matter remains that Pontiac outsold Lincoln, Mercury, Dodge, Chrysler, and the majority of imports, save Honda and Toyota.

They say that past history as a crystal ball to the future boils down to black-and-white numbers; these numbers say that Pontiac was a success for many years for GM. The truth of the matter is that Pontiac was placed between the premium GM brands and the standard GM brands – much like Saab, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, and so many other “middle brands” that have been eliminated over the years.

The fact of the matter is that the consumers in this country see two types of cars and trucks available from domestic manufacturers: premium brands and standard brands. Nevertheless, neither premium brands nor standard brands can service that one small part of the buying market that demands median branding that offers distinct style: Cadillac could never do this (remember the Cimmaron?), and Chevrolet could never do this. Too bad.

Pontiac was a great brand with great heritage that was just getting grounded in that middle market. It seems that there is no market between the big siblings, which leaves the consumers in this market with no choice but to settle for inferior branding, pay for premium branding, or switch to a foreign manufacturer.

Maybe this is why the Germans, the Japanese, and the Pacific Rim entrants are growing at unprecedented rates. In the end, all the elimination of these middle brands does is limit choice, force marginal consumers to weigh patriotism against reality, and reduce the ability to individualize one’s choice of ride.

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - I recently attended the NHRA Winter Nationals and noticed that the most popular body for those outrageous funny cars seemed to be Pontiac. So when I asked another spectator why, he simply said “they have the best aero-dynamics.” My horse sense told me this was likely to be true. Wow! I thought to myself.

GM phased out Pontiac last year and someone is going to transform it into an awesome performance brand unencumbered by the bureaucracy, labor issues and debt burden that GM imposed for all these years.  Just take a look at what BMW has done with the Mini. Or what Audi has done with the Bentley. Of course, for a brand to be worthy of a revival it must have cachet and a history. The brand needs to stand for something. People need to care about what it stands for. It needs to have a market. What does Pontiac have now that GM has dumped it?Although I have never owned a Pontiac, my dad owned several Pontiac convertibles and always told me he could afford a Cadillac, but he preferred the “sporty” image of a Pontiac. So now that the sun has set on Pontiac I ask myself what is its DNA? What is its history? What assets does Pontiac posses that would make it worthy of a brand revival? Could the brand be relevant again?

Well, its history dates back to 1893, when Edward M. Murphy established the Pontiac Buggy Company in Pontiac, Michigan. A city named for a famous Indian Chief of the Ottawa tribe. The company produced horse-drawn carriages. As it became clear that motor car sales were going to eclipse carriages, Murphy wisely started the Oakland Motor Car Company, an offshoot of the buggy company, in 1907. Two years later, General Motors acquired half of Oakland in an exchange of stock. But it wasn’t until 1926 when GM introduced the Pontiac brand at the New York auto show.

Dubbed the “Chief of the Sixes,” the car was powered by a six-cylinder engine. In 1941 Pontiac was the first auto company to offer the option of engine upgrades at which time its sales were a spectacular 330,000 vehicles. And although the Bonneville was a hit in the 1950s, Pontiac made its biggest impact on the auto world with the creation of the GTO option for the Tempest. By equipping the compact car with the powerful 389-cubic-inch V8 from the full-size car line, Pontiac created the first “muscle car.” The car became a cult classic when Ronny & the Daytonas topped the music charts with their tune “Little GTO.”

So a quick review of Pontiac’s legacy confirms a very sporty brand with high-performance DNA and a legendary list of model names like Streamliner, Catalina, Bonneville, Lemans, GTO, Gran Prix, Grand Am, Firebird, Trans Am, Fiero, SunBird and Solstice that each take on a personality all of their own.

So now what? GM has “shut it down.” Dealer stores stand empty. So it’s over, right?

No, I don’t think so. Why? Because the Pontiac brand lives in the minds and hearts of so many Americans that it will simply take the right team of entrepreneurs and auto enthusiasts to bring the Pontiac brand back into our lives. Roger Penske was considering the purchase of Saturn, but backed out. That’s good thing, because if he thinks about it, which I am hoping he will as a result of this article, Pontiac has way more potential to become America’s sporty performance brand and the new symbol of American “Engine-unity” and economic strength.

I would just love to see Art Center’s auto design students create Pontiac concept cars of the future. Of course the brand needs to incorporate new technology to comply with the ecological and economic realities of tomorrow. But this is true of any auto maker today.

Unlike a clean sheet of paper, Pontiac is a brand that is rich in heritage and deeply interwoven into American culture. It is a brand that has the potential of becoming the beacon of the 21^st Century American industry revival as a global technology leader and a symbol of “Happy Days.”

About the Author: Bart Young is a professional marketer and strategist and has guided a number of significant clients in attaining category leadership. His agency Young Company has been recognized as one of the top 25 business-to-business agencies in the United States. As the agency’s executive creative director, Bart has led his staff in winning over 100 awards of excellence in advertising, public relations and internet marketing. Major clients have included a number of Fortune 500 brands, including ARAMARK, Fluor Corporation, HP, Hughes, IBM, Northrop Grumman, TDK and Texas Instruments, as well as a number of major software, semiconductor and internet companies. www.youngcompany.com

Find out more

• We Love Pontiacs http://www.welovepontiacs.com/history.html
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Pontiac
• Autoweek http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1026582

Looking ahead, GM has a couple big issues. For starters, Pontiac sold 30,000 odd cars last month, which leaves them with only about 15,000 left in new car inventory total before they slip quietly into automotive history. In fact, the ‘dead brands’ made up about 1 in of every 6 sales for GM last month. GM is so concerned about the orphaned customers of these brands, or ‘free agents’ if you will, they have recently set up a special task force to try and rustle those costumers back into the fold.

Even before the loss of the ‘dead brands’ themselves are felt on the monthly sales, GM’s market share has plunged from 24.7% to 19.5% in the last 12 months.

Seems to me that there is one way to keep the brands in the fold. Namely, keep making some cars with the badge Pontiac.

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

DETROIT - Not that I really like Pontiacs these days. They’ve not been interesting for a long time. But now, there are serious discussions that GM will announce that Pontiac will be shut down as a brand.

Frankly, it doesn’t make sense. If Pontiac sales stink, then so do Buick. And for that matter all of GM. The whole thing is ruined, and so if the government is going to spend the billions to save it, it needs to sell millions of cars to subsidize it. The killing off of Oldsmobile was a giant blow to General Motors, one that they never recovered from. While there are ways to preserve some of the brand goodwill of Saturn, Hummer and Saab, killing those brands off does not hurt GM. But killing off Pontiac will be an even more severe blow to GM than Pontiac.

It signals to consumers, who are confused, that their brand might be next. It signals that all of GM is going bye-bye.

These are the sales figures for so far in 2009, from that oh-so-brilliant website TheTruthAboutCars. I fail to see how killing off GMC and Pontiac will do anything but make GM into a company like Chrysler, with three brands, but with a ton more debt and legacy costs. Look at the figures. Does it make sense to kill off Pontiac? Or is it better to turn Pontiac into a sister brand of Buick and GMC?

                 2009 to date           2008

1. Chevrolet     94,704          164,564
2. Cadillac            8,209           17,453
3. GMC             19,086          38,422 
4. Pontiac      17,583           25,417
5. Buick               7,369           12,317
6. Saturn          7,333          18,146
7. Saab              1,265            2,962
   
8. Hummer         831            3,451

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.

And then we found this great response in the alternative weekly The Hook in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a response to Courtney Stuart’s article on the future of the Saab, Hummer and Saturn brands in the Charlottesville, Virginia area. It’s from a reader named Rapunzel. Amazing that a chick named Rapunzel can sum up the problems with General Motors in just a few words:

I currently own a 1991 SAAB 9000 turbo with nee 350,000 miles and am more than willing to drive it anywhere without worries of problems and it remains a daily driver ….

What GM did to SAAB was short of criminal, they de-contented these cars to a HUGE degree and turned SAAB into marketing name with no substance. I got this message from the SAAB 95, which was based on a German Opel(GM) chassis with less content.

A friends owns a GM_Opel based 900 with the GM V6, the engine had to be replaced due to a timing belt failure at the dealer and this GM engine continues to be a problem to this day while the rest of the 900 has been fine. Then we had the SAAB 92, which was nothing more than a SAAB nameplate on a Subaru. When GM took over SAAB, they fired most of their highly experienced engineers and designers and installed GM ideology. This turned SAAB into a GM marketing shell of a company with no substance. You could not GIVE ME a GM based SAAB for free, these are horrid cars today. It is the same reason why GM is in such economic problems, they did to SAAB what they did to themselves which put them to the brink of going belly up.

We could add a few more things:

• The advertising for the cars looked at the aviation heritage of the brand. The reality was that the car brand had been divorced from the aviation brand; the advertising was simply a trick, and no one bought it.
• Some cars were no longer made in Sweden; they were essentially badge engineering. Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with badge engineering between a Buick and Pontiac. That is the tradition of GM. But Saab cars were so different, you couldn’t create a Saab just through styling.
• There was something unseemly about GM buying Saab in the first place. Frankly, the reason why they bought Saab was because they were embarrassed that upper middle class buyers took a skunner to General Motors cars. It was embarrassing, and Saab was the antidote to the wounded pride. Then, after it bought an admittedly ailing Saab, General Motors could destroy what Saab was. This would, in effect, prove to General Motors management that the Saab approach was wrong. Their incompetence and arrogance got in the way, and both companies were destroyed.
• The Saab key on center console was a unique aspect of owning the car. It is nice that they continued odd placement of the key, but it is not what makes a Saab a Saab. Doing things merely for appearance’s sake is a risky thing for a brand, especially when your brand is all about authenticity. It was all a trick. Cars don’t need tricks.
• We are fans of Bob Lutz, but he has been wrong on many things, including the fact that Saabs do not need to be made in Sweden.
• The Saab brand was about approach; what sort of car does a family need, and how do you make it durable, practical and solid? That was totally forgotten; they started marketing Saabs as fashion accessories and luxury items. The Saab was an anti-luxury car for people who hated conspicuous consumption.

What to do?

We haven’t a clue right now; perhaps the Saab can go the way of the Studebaker Avanti, and become a hyper-niche car brand kept alive as a trophy. Or maybe the Swedish government needs to step in.

We hope someone will at least pick up the pieces of the company and re-craft a new Saab in the spirit of the old.

A brief bit of the item is posted here; go to their site to read the whole thing as it,  and the comments, are an important read.

Earle said that he’d seen a lot of articles and remarks about discontinuing Buick and selling off Saab. The challenge for GM shouldn’t be having an “attic sale,” but rather how to manage the company’s intellectual property, specifically its brand names and trademarks. He thinks the current crisis is “an innovative development opportunity” and that GM’s brands “could be great platforms for learning labs for new concepts.”

Instead of thinking about which brands to keep, which to sell and which to kill, GM should be thinking about what opportunities there are to repurpose those brands down the road. GM needs to identify which are its core brands and which are non-core brands and then use the non-core brands as “springboards to new ideas.”

GM still has a treasure trove of IP in terms of brand marks, designs and technology. GM can leverage that IP with partnerships inside and outside the auto industry.”

We should also add that the GM legacy doesn’t just mean its main auto brands, including Buick and Olds, but its former auto plate names, like the above mentioned Skylark.

We took this similar position with Macy’s, which has not utilized, indeed wasted, its former store brands.

Saturn Rings Up Zero

As an owner of two Saturn wagons, I liked them both, and especially the original 1994 Saturn SW series wagon. The SW1 (I think that was the exact model) was sensible, good looking and just right, and it is amazing that Saturn dealers have coasted so long on the legacy of this first product series. In coming decades, case study after case study will be written on the failure of Saturn by General Motors after such a strong start, and loyal customers.

First, what was great about Saturn as it was originally? The cars were inexpensive, but not the cheapest. Things like changing a tire and the like were TOTALLY simplified to make it easy. Owner’s manuals were in concise English. Their dealer sales tactics were beyond reproach, or at least at my dealer, Haywood-Clarke in Richmond. It truly was a new method of building and selling cars, and the idea that a car came from a wooden floor in Spring Hill, Tennessee was a revolution. The idea that you didn’t have to dicker with some oily salesman for the price was inspiration.

Our second Saturn was a wagon, from the LW series. It was actually an Opel, according to a good friend who worked at GM. It was solid, though a bit odd looking as the front looked a bit too squeezed. It was sort of un-handsome rather than ugly, but definitely sensible. And comfortable, even in a 12-hour trip on I-95.

I grew up with a green Opel Kadett, sold at Perry Buick (or was it Brud Buick) in Norfolk, Virginia. It was a great car, very spiffy, and it frustrated me to no end that Buick did not stick with the idea of offering Opel cars at its Buick dealers. When I learned that my Saturn was more an Opel, I wondered about our Saturn and why GM doesn’t just sell the Saturn as an Opel?

To me, Saturns had to be made in Tennessee and Opels had to be made in Germany; the geography of a brand’s manufacture is critical to its meaning in the eyes of customers. Bob Lutz lost total credibility when he remarked that Saabs didn’t need to be made in Germany. (See related story in Branding Blog of Dave Young.)

Options To Sell Saturn

In fact, if GM has to keep Saturn for the next few years, GM might well offer dealers an Opel sign to hang in the window of the showroom, and re-badge a few Saturns as Opels and allow dealers to sell GM’s European cars there. There are about five million European-born Americans, and those are the market for Opel. Heck, GM has little to lose; why not sell a Vauxhall here as there is a large Brit expat community here? Or there is another option for General Motors to sell its European operations and Saturn; while it would totally decimate GM’s car sales, it is a far more sale-able package than just Saturn by itself.

Saturn dealer Carl Galeana of Michigan was quoted in the Feb. 19 Wall Street Journal saying that he still had hope for Saturn. It would be a fantastic entry point for one of the Chinese car manufacturers. Indeed if GM threw in the rights to the Oldsmobile brand along with it, it might actually make the Saturn dealer system more viable. (Read our story on the future of Oldsmobile.)

Pontiac, a GM Sub-brand

What has happened to Pontiac is pitiful, above the fact of many of the cars are plastic crap. Separate from this, Pontiac has not been broad enough with its marketing. It is one thing to ask people to buy cars with racing heritage. That is good. But what GM has done with Pontiac is to turn the whole brand into a souped up set of redneck racers, and that doesn’t work for the mass market. First, racing folk don’t take Pontiac seriously, and the “Excitement” theme doesn’t inspire the oldsters who buy Pontiac. It’s fine to offer a race-styled car model, but that sort of approach should not go for the entire brand.

Actually, GM could have gotten away with this racing approach if the cars were reliable, but since they were ugly junk, it made it worse.

That being said, GM has a problem, and the past is past. What to do now?

They need to keep offering the Pontiac, even as a sub-brand sold alongside other GM brands (we have some opinions on Buick’s screw-ups here). That should have been the avenue for Oldsmobile; if the brand is not selling, then ratchet down the marketing and turn it into a smaller brand, where you can revamp it on the platform of a few really good models.

So-called analysts have said that GM needs to kill Pontiac to go back to profit; we disagree. We are encouraged that Pontiac marketing will be scaled back, and the brand will only be a few select models.

Tomorrow: What to do about Saab

The folks at General Motors are apparently giving Pontiac short attention during press events this week. Bad omen for a great American brand, says Byron Hurd on the site SpeedSportLife.com. Writes Hurd:

In fact, due to Pontiac’s location near the loading area, their floor space was practically eliminated during GM’s press conference so they could parade the likes of the Opel Insignia and Chevrolet Cruze down the red carpet. Nothing will give your brand team confidence like pulling the rug out from under them (pun intended) so you can showcase a collection of production concepts that may not even see U.S. soil in this decade, if at all.

Read Hurd’s great post on the show at www.speedsportlife.com. And a note to auto execs. Cut out the production concepts. We want to see products you are going to make. Anyone can do “production concepts.” GM needs to sell product.

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