Lutz: Feds Asked GM To Drop Pontiac

Our friends at Jalopbik covered this the other day, but it’s worth a repeat.

The Feds basically wanted to get GM down to Cadillac and Chevrolet. They said, “you don’t need all these brands. You need one prestige brand, and one mass-market brand.” And we said “well we can’t get rid of Buick because Buick is important in China, and if Buick becomes an orphan in the United States then the Chinese are no longer gonna be interested in it.” And the Feds said “Fair enough, but everything else goes.”

…[T]he Feds said “yeah, let’s just, how much money have you made on pontiac in the last 10 years?” and the answer was “nothing.” So, it goes. And, when the guy who is handing you the check for 53 billion dollars says I don’t want pontiac, drop pontiac or you don’t get the money, it doesn’t take you very long to make up your mind.

The entire discussion can be seen in the video starting at the two hour and fourteen-minute mark. So there you have it: the government might not have killed the 100-MPG carburetor or the flying car, but they certainly killed Pontiac. That is, if you have total faith in Mr. Lutz’s recollection of events.

Another interesting tidbit from the TL;DW video: the sole purpose of the CTS-V wagon was to raise the car’s profile in Europe. “Wagons radically outsell four-door sedans in Europe,” Lutz notes, “you rarely see a four-door sedan any more.” (According to various reports, wagons make up between 20 and 25 percent of most model mixes in Europe, with lower-cost brands like Skoda seeing as much as 25 percent penetration.) It doesn’t really matter if Bob’s Impressions Of Europe are correct: the CTS-V wagon made its bones in the United States just fine.