-eat your cereal

Toyota has proven their quality unlike D3

What a total crock of shyte.

At the very least… give Chrysler some legs so they can intertwine themselves with Renault/Nissan and give them a foothold to grow from. I don’t think anyone wants to see another U.S. Automaker face the perils even if they probably deserve to. Right now, after the last 30 years of crap they’ve pedaled… they probably all deserve to go the way of the Do-Do. Yet, there is progress being made at GM and Ford on the product level (Saturn, Cadillac, Chevrolet, some of the forthcoming Fords that are in the pipeline, Lincoln looks to be revitalizing into something of a contender). Chrysler had the toughest position to be in and I think they could come out of it with the right alliances and leadership. If Press and Nardelli had been there throughout the Daimler years, I’m pretty confident Chrysler would’ve never ended up in the shape they’re in now. If we want to blame anyone… blame Dr. Z.

I feel a certain confidence that if they can weather the storm the next few years… all 3 could be ready for a major resurgence assuming they don’t fall back to their mediocre ways. The only thing I fear is GM pulling the plug on Saturn vs. Pontiac. Pontiac needs to goooooooooo… as bad or worse than people think Buick or Mercury need to go. Buick has China to spur it’s future. Saturn has ties to Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden worldwide which holds benefit for it. Pontiac has nothing outside of the Vibe and G8 of any unique value, and most everything else is the most absolute blatant attempts at badge engineering GM has had since the 1980′s. Moral of the story, with all of that and the stigma of Pontiac being the redneck brand of “ribbed for your pleasure” cars from the 80′s… Pontiac isn’t the hallmark of 60′s performance/sophistication it once was and the gap between it and Chevrolet has turned in Chevy’s favor.

With more modern kit on lots at most every other marque in GM’s lineup… killing off Pontiac, replacing it with Saturn (consolidating the Saturn brand into existing Pontiac/Buick/GMC dealers where no Saturn dealer exists for miles… and maybe even shutting down a few Saturn dealers or converting them to Saturn/Buick/GMC dealers longterm), and opening Saturn up from no-dicker to open pricing would be the biggest and best thing GM could do. It’d cost way too much to do anything else, GM would have to retool everything Saturn has to slot into Pontiac dealers at considerable cost to them, and for what? To have people reluctant to walk into the dealer knowing full-well what Pontiac stands for to them?

Move the G8 and Vibe to Chevrolet… the Torrent is already becoming a GMC next go-round and the Vue = better than it anyhow, Pontiac has no Lambda to concern themselves with, the Sky is as good or better than the Solstice as-is and we don’t need both anyhow, the G5 is a tweaked Cobalt (and a poor attempt at that), and the Aura is miles better than the G6. Give Saturn an Insignia coupe/sedan to replace the Aura/G6 coupe, maybe even a convertible next go round, and Pontiac’s relevancy would be parked for good.

Face it people… the GTO didn’t work for Pontiac, it didn’t sell… the Firebird isn’t coming back with the Camaro. What more does Pontiac offer other than a bunch of crappy product with stigmas dating back to 80′s garbage cars? The Grand Prix hasn’t been updated in yeeeeeears and is the odd product out of the “G-series” mix Pontiac has moved to anyhow (what do you call it… G7? It’s bigger than the G6 but smaller than the G8). The Grand Am was such a rolling piece of trash that only the devoted rednecks that owned them would be apt to look for them again. To say that the lack of “horrid models” like the Grand Am is hurting Pontiac is moronic at best… those models, while being classic names, had long-since been trashed and disgraced to the point there’s not much of merit left.. Life will go on once they have an actual Saturn dealer in their backyard that’s priced competitively and be stocked with superior product. Any other decision… is absolutely moronic.

…When will this happen?

But through all arrogance and impatience, I almost appreciate Chrysler for taking out a few ads to show they appreciate it. More than for the hundreds of billions of dollars blown in foolish and stupid wall-street investors and lending companies.

Well, I for one can’t wait for the ad thanking Americans for paying for an expensive national ad.