So much effort to revive Pontiac...

"mkbruin, Atlas VP" (mkbruin) 10/29/2013 at 14:26 • Filed to: None

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And nobody lamenting the loss of Mercury.

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 14:31

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Well, at least K.C. Douglas did immortalize it...

xxstich666xx > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 14:31

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Aside from the Marauder, which only had a 2 year run, Mercury hadn't built anything interesting in 20 years. Pontiac actually had the potential to have a good line of fun and interesting cars.

MooseKnuckles > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 14:33

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Mercury had half the future potential that Lincoln does now, and Lincoln's future is the plot next to where they laid Mercury to rest.

Casper > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 14:33

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Meh. I don't understand why people want to revive either one. In the last years (decades?) Pontiacs were so bad I lumped them in as a more expensive version of Saturn. They had lost their way long ago and there was nothing left to lose when they died.

DoktorZombie > xxstich666xx 10/29/2013 at 14:34

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This, though I'd suggest that they hadn't built anything interesting in 30 years .

Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura > Casper 10/29/2013 at 14:37

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The last of the Pontiacs were actually brilliant, if I do say so myself. The GTO/Monaro might be a bit of an oddity, but hey - it wasn't retro like the Mustang, Camaro and Challenger.

Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis > Casper 10/29/2013 at 14:39

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Hai

Redd, the RX-7 that could > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 14:42

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I DD a Mercury, that brand deserved to die.

DoktorZombie > MooseKnuckles 10/29/2013 at 14:42

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C'mon, Ford... RWD V8-powered hot rod Lincoln.... do it! Do it NOW! Cadillac is drinking all the milkshakes!

Casper > Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura 10/29/2013 at 14:51

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Really? You are going to forget about the fact the Grand Ams and Grand Prixs were constantly having electrical and computer problems, the Aztec was one of their "forward thinking" designs, and eventually they just gave up and were basically copying Holden designs to try to stay a float.

If you can point at an actually decent modern Pontiac, you have a Holden knockoff. Everything else was like it was a prototype Chevy.

Casper > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 10/29/2013 at 14:53

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Oh god, don't remind me about that stupid Solstice. The Yute concept could have been interesting... if it were just a Holden imported.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Casper 10/29/2013 at 15:12

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I'd say either was a test case waiting to happen for reviving a moribund brand with a giant historical cult following. Pontiac came closer to an actual attempt to do so before it got suddenly cut. Mercury - significantly less so, outside the Marauder... maybe. Axing Pontiac as Alternate Universe Chevy and axing Mercury as Alternate Universe Ford - that's a financial appeal that's easy to make, but sometimes just being that extra 2% better or just different can make all the difference. Hence, cult following untapped.

The issue is not that the brands weren't dead marques walking (rolling?), but that they had historical images to evoke or reinvent. Sometimes if recent memory of blandness can be shoved aside, revitalizing with a look backward can be huge. Writ large, this is the Cadillac recovery, writ small, this is the Mustang since the SN95. A car doesn't have to be retro in image, though it helps, but it needs to be evocative of a brand spirit that is familiar.

Lost their way long ago - sure. But, that means there is a way to return to. Nothing left to lose when they died - maybe true in an absolute sense, but a lot to gain, and the potential thrown away is what we grieve.

lone_liberal > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 15:12

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I drive a Mercury every day and I don't see the need to bring it back. Having a different grill is not a reason to exist.

Casper > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 10/29/2013 at 15:15

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The problem is that the historic models tied to the brands aren't money makers. If you could bring back Pontiac and only product new versions of the greatest hits, it would be a very short list.

It's only human emotion that ties the "potential" to a specific brand name. Any one of the historic cars could be revived as any other make.

offroadkarter > DoktorZombie 10/29/2013 at 15:16

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what about the cougar (not the 99MY) or the capri?

offroadkarter > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 15:18

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DD'ing a defunct brand makes my car all the more unique. The last interesting thing Mercury built was the marauder, which is sad, because as much as I love mine, they had early 90's straight line performance with early 00's price tag. Whole thing was a clusterfuck between the marauder team, elena ford, and the finance department.

cbell04 > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 15:21

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I consider myself somewhat a"car guy" and yet I completely forgot Mercury had died. But since I'm only 30ish guess that's likely because they never had a pulse to begin with in my lifetime.. Sure there's one or two that stirred someone's soul in that time frame but if people really still want one buy some Mercury badges from eBay and stick them on a ford.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Casper 10/29/2013 at 15:56

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Which is why you don't just produce greatest hits. As long as they don't have a friend with a shitty Pontiac, the mental image of an awesome Pontiac has the potential to sell a lot of mediocre Pontiacs. It may even be the case that a cool Pontiac will bring them into the dealership that will sell them a bland Chevy. In other words, the "did the halo model pay its own way?" analysis misses a lot of details. Lord knows it wasn't just on the retro styling that Chrysler sold the PT - it was also on the ability to sell a half-remembered "Hey, you've heard your Granddad say something about his cool old car that might have been a Plymouth mumble mumble" leveraged through the retro styling. That's the only reason Plymouth lasted as long as it did, really, until the PT developed a niche of its own that wasn't necessarily "Plymouth" based.

If Pontiac isn't breadwinning with a GTO, but can breadwin with a hasty "Tempest" badge job, then it's done its job. The human emotion tying that "potential" to a brand is not a material characteristic, true, but it remains one of the most powerful forces in marketing. Much greater success can be had with mediocre cars into which are mixed a few great ones to keep the dream alive - rather than a clean mix of good cars with glaring bad apples. If you bring back the GTO as a Chevy, so to speak, you may have exceeded technically in every respect, but the human meaning people ascribe to it may never be there. Fair? Not really, but cars aren't rational things.

cesariojpn > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 15:57

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List of notable Pontiacs:

GTO

Firebird

Solstice

List of notable Mercury's:

....

Casper > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 10/29/2013 at 16:02

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Yes, but the problem is that GM has no incentive to have a competitor for Chevy anymore.

DoktorZombie > offroadkarter 10/29/2013 at 16:21

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I was never that impressed by any Cougar after 1970, but I'll allow it because COUPE. I totally intended to include the bubble-back Capri in my declaration, however my "30 year" range might have been a tad overzealous.

AMC/Renauledge > mkbruin, Atlas VP 10/29/2013 at 16:21

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These are the only two Mercurys I'd put the "significant" label on.

In fact, Mercury was doing so poorly in the early 1960s that Lee Iaccoca said the brand was on the chopping block even then. Yacco decided to do an upscale version of the Mustang, called it the Cougar, and that car singlehandedly proved the worth of the division again.

By the 1970s, Mercury was offering Euro Capris, which were kind of interesting, though obscure now. They took over for the sporty side of the brand once the Cougar moved into the "personal luxury car" segment for 1974.

And beyond that, pretty much everything else up until the 1999-02 Cougar was badge-engineered. As in grille, taillights, and badges were all that separated their cars from their platform mates. That's not enough to build a cult following out to resurrect the brand.

Hell, Eagle probably has as much of a right to survive today as Mercury does.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Casper 10/29/2013 at 16:29

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Not financially, maybe, with a fixed-size-of-pie sort of thing going on. However, as someone who was always more likely to buy something out of the BOP side of GM's house (round more than square, more dressy if in a Wal-Mart suit kind of way, generally more enthusiast in pretension, more old-mannish) it saddens me that they thought the best approach was to try to cater to all markets with limited brands, thus limiting the ability to cater to taste. Yes, there are plenty of GM products that on paper I would want. Do I actually want or even really like any of them? Fuck no.

They didn't grow the pie. They don't seemingly want me as a customer - and while that doesn't matter so much, they killed a friend of mine and theirs to send the message, so to speak.

Casper > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 10/29/2013 at 17:15

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I'm in the same boat. I don't like any GM products. I like that they finally made the Corvette good again, but I don't like the overall package. If it were packaged with a different body, I would probably buy it... but that isn't cost effective. They can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars to tool up and make cars that only appeal to niche markets.

The best thing they could have done would have been to make Pontiac more of a boutique brand. Ditch the crap cars and make a few specific and good cars true to historic names. Cut all the overhead and reduce the company size by 80%... but that was impossible given the unions and stock holder demands.