G8 Lives?

Why the death of Pontiac shouldn’t include the death of the G8. 

While I’m sad to see the demise of the Pontiac brand I can’t say it’s not a good decision for GM.  Pontiac has always been the middle child for GM with it being too expensive to compete with the cheaper Chevrolet lineup but not luxurious and refined enough to compete with the likes of Cadillac and Buick. This is not to say that Pontiac didn’t have its bright spots, the Firebird, Grand Am, Grand Prix, and the new G8 were very popular and good money makers for Pontiac. However with the end of the Firebird and the Grand Am and Prix getting passed up for cheaper more refined import models the new G8 was the only real contender at Pontiac. GM knew this and in its restructuring plan had hoped to save Pontiac by designating it as a specialty performance brand with cars like the Solstice, G6 GXP, and G8 GXP. However the continuing economic slump forced GM to scrap the brand completely in order to survive and prevent falling into bankruptcy. So what does this all mean for the lonely G8? Well if GM has any sense they will continue the production of the car as a rebadged Chevrolet and there are several ways in which GM could do this. The first would be to directly insert the car into the Chevy lineup with nothing more than a  name change, this seem unlikely thought due to the fact that the car would come in direct competition with the Impala and upcoming Camaro. The other option for Chevy would be to swap the G8 for the Impala. The two vehicles have nearly identical dimension both inside and out and are in roughly the same price range. This option would also give Chevy another car utilizing GM’s rear dive Zeta platform which is currently being used on the Chevy Camaro. If Chevy were to do this there would be some minor tweaks that the G8 would have to undergo such as detuning of the V8 engine which currently produces only 15 less horsepower than the high performance Camaro. Either way GM cannot afford to close the book on this car it has been a solid producer at Pontiac and with a little less horse power and sticker price it could have the potential to do even better under the Chevy brand. If GM does indeed want to become a contender once again the G8 must live. (Image From Motortrend.com)