Where have you gone, John DeLorean? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you...*



General Motors has announced that it is going to phase the Pontiac division out of existence.



Pontiac came into being in 1926 as part of General Motors' "companion brand" experiment to try to fill perceived gaps in its product line. The Great Depression put a quick end to the parent/companion experiment (except for Cadillac's companion, LaSalle), but, while Buick and Oldsmobile dropped their companion brands, Oakland's companion brand, Pontiac, was so much more in demand than Oakland itself that the companion brand was kept and the parent brand, Oakland, was dropped.



Pontiac soldiered on in step with the other North American GM brands, one step above Chevrolet, one step below Oldsmobile. They were quiet, solid cars, with base six-cylinder engines and optional straight-eight engines - the least expensive straight-eights in the US at the time.



By the mid 'Fifties, Pontiac began to slip in popularity. In 1956, the new General Manager of Pontiac, Semon E. "Bunkie" Knudsen, was given the task of turning sales around. He, chief engineer E.M. "Pete" Estes, who would become the Chairman of General Motors, and Estes's assistant John Z. DeLorean looked at the lines of Chieftains



and Star Chiefs,



and the distinctive "silver streak" on the hoods of their cars,








...and decided that the silver streaks had to go.

Part of the work of improving the image of Pontiac had already been done for them: by 1953 the old, budget-design flathead straight-eight



had been replaced by the Pontiac V-8,



a large, reliable engine that could be, and was, adapted to high performance. Adapted it was, with the Super Duty engines attacking NASCAR tracks through Wide-Track chassis in the late 1950s

At the beginning of the 1960s, General Motors phased in their new line of compact cars. All were innovative; even the least innovative Buick Special could boast of an all-new aluminium V-8. The most innovative, and the first to arrive, was the phenomenal but tragically flawed Chevrolet Corvair, with its rear-mounted, air-cooled engine, swing-axle independent rear suspension, and unit body.

It can be argued that the most legendary Pontiacs ever made were developed from the compacts and intermediates, starting with the 1961 Pontiac Tempest.



The 1961 Tempest was the second most innovative of GM's first line of compacts. Like the Corvair, and unlike the more conservative Oldsmobile F-85 and Buick Special, it had a unit body, a rear transaxle, and swing-axle independent rear suspension. It was available with the Oldsmobile version of the aluminium-block V-8, but the base engine was Pontiac's first four-cylinder engine. It was basically a half of Pontiac's 389 V-8 from its full-size models. In 1963, the Tempest, and an upscale compact model called the Le Mans, were given a more sophisticated independent rear suspension and the option of a reduced-capacity version of the Pontiac V-8. The engine was called a 326, although (for that year only, before the top management found out) it actually had a capacity of 336 cu. in.

Like the companion branding that gave rise to the Pontiac brand, GM's innovative compacts were mostly a short-lived experiment and, in 1964, all but the Corvair had been enlarged to intermediates with iron engines, separate frames, and solid rear axles. They were all supposed to have a limited displacement, but Tempest designer DeLorean proved as General Manager of Pontiac that he was as creative with the rules as he was with engineering and design. He put together an option package that, incidentally, included the engine that powered the full-sized Pontiacs. He and Pontiac's marketing chief Jim Wangers stole the name of one of Ferrari's most iconic models, and the rest is a big part of muscle car history:



NO! Not *that* GTO! *This* GTO!







Also in 1964, Pontiac developed a concept car called the Banshee. It was a two-seat sports car with the four-wheel independent suspension and rear transaxle from the '63 Tempest and Le Mans and an engine designed for the entry level Tempest. It was a straight-6 developed from the Chevy six used in the Chevy II Nova and the base version of the Chevelle, but with one major design change: a belt-driven overhead camshaft valvetrain. There was a performance version of the six, which was unusual in the V-8 centred Detroit scene. Ironically called the Sprint (the GTO was a much better sprinter than the Tempest Sprint was) the twin-carb OHC engine was rated at 215 bhp SAE gross.

The Banshee was developed to be a sophisticated little brother to the Corvette, ruling road courses with handling the way the Corvette ruled drag strips with power. The Corvette guys were not amused by this, especially since Corvette engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov had done much to make the Corvette a decent-handling car. The Banshee was banished and Pontiac was forced to make do with a variant of Chevrolet's upcoming Camaro pony car. This was done so late in the car's development that Pontiac couldn't even change the shape of the fenders. Even so, this was the beginning of another legendary Pontiac.








The first generation Pontiac Firebird may have been a Camaro in drag, but it had Pontiac drivetrains, interiors, suspension settings, front and rear styling, and trim to set it apart. The Firebird Sprint was a decent compromise of performance and handling, but it was subtle in an era of outrageousness and, as such, it disappeared from view.

In 1969, however, when the first generation F-car got a facelift, the Firebird not only differentiated itself more from the Camaro, it also introduced a new sub-model to be immortalized. Pontiac entered an agreement with the Sports Car Club of America to use the name of its premier sedan racing series on its top-line Firebird for a licence fee on every car sold. Thus was born the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am.







While it was a cool name and a sales success, the Trans-Am was a bit of a faux-pas: in a world of Mustang Boss 302 and Camaro Z/28 SCCA Trans-Am homologation specials, the Firebird Trans-Am, with its 400 cu. in. (6.6 litre) engine, was not eligible for Trans-Am racing, where engines were limited to a maximum of five litres. A special homologation engine and a racing effort was made, not with any hope of winning the Trans-Am championship, but just to placate the purists who believed the Trans-Am should compete in the Trans-Am.

The second generation Firebird of 1970 1/2 gained the 455 CID engine (but not the Ram Air IV of the GTO) but lost the OHC six, which was discontinued and replaced by the Chevy six. The switch to regular fuel for all GM cars crushed the output of their performance engine, but by the 1973 model year Pontiac had developed the regular-friendly 455SD engine, which was to have been used in the Le Mans, Grand Am, and Trans-Am, but was eventually only used in the Trans-Am in '73 and '74.

General Motors' 1977 downsizing marked the end of all their car engines above 400 cid, yet Pontiac still made the best of what they were allowed. The T/A 6.6 was the closest thing to a muscle car engine Detroit had in 1977, and it was available on the Trans-Am, as was the WS6 handling package.

While songs were sung about the GTO in the '60s, Pontiac entered the public consciousness in an unprecedented way in 1977. While some remember James Garner's Firebird in the TV show The Rockford Files, and fewer might remember John Wayne's Firebird in the movie McQ, neither car would have the impact of the black Trans-Am featured in 1977's second-biggest motion picture**: Smokey and the Bandit.



Probably the only Pontiac as well known as the Bandit car is KITT, the futuristic Firebird from the '80s TV show Knight Rider.



The Pontiac V-8's last hurrah was the T/A 6.6 from '77-'79; its last gasp was the 301 Turbo from 1980. A well-meaning but poorly-developed concept, the 301 Turbo was both weak and unreliable. Engine design was centralized and the Chevrolet small-block V-8 became the standard GM rear-drive V-8 car engine across the board, consigning the Pontiac V-8 to history.

Pontiac was not done with excitement yet, though. If big power was no longer available, Pontiac would create excitement in small doses. In 1984 it copied the Fiat X-1/9's concept and put an economy front-wheel-drive drivetrain in the back of a small sports car, creating the Pontiac Fiero.




Of course, some liked the Fiero not so much for what they were as for what they could become...



...but the Fiero's humble origins and lack of power eventually led to its demise, in 1988.

The Firebird and Trans-Am followed the Fiero in the dustbin of history in 2002.

Pontiac tried to bring the excitement back in 2004 with the Holden Monaro-based GTO...



...which ended production in 2006.

Pontiac returned to the small sports car with the Solstice in 2006...




...and to rear-drive V-8 power with the G8 in 2008...



...both, apparently, to no avail. Pontiac is intended to be fully phased out by the end of 2010, leaving behind a trail of memories...









...and broken dreams.









*Paraphrased from the song Mrs. Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel
**The biggest motion picture of 1977 was, of course, Star Wars.