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<\/div>\nSave America’s first mass-produced front-drive car, the Toronado…<\/p>\n
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…Oldsmobile really never had a raison d’etre – never really produced an icon like Buick’s Riviera, Chevy’s Camaro and Corvette, Cadillac’s various De Villes or Pontiac’s Bonneville.<\/p>\n
That’s not to say there wasn’t some semblance of logic for the existence of the different divisions. Loosely, Chevrolet was the “bread and butter” division, Pontiac the “sporty”; Buick “near luxury”, Cadillac “luxury” and GMC the “professional truck” division – oh and Oldsmobile – “your father’s car?”<\/p>\n
Rumor has it Pontiac will also go burbling into the night as early as next week and this time people will<\/em> take note. There are a lot of Pontiacs out there and Pontiac has shown us some real (relative) talent of late: The G8 and the Solstice are a couple examples…but alas, GM, true to form, is late to the party and all the best girls are already on the dance floor.<\/p>\n GM has fallen victim to the unions GM execs enabled\u00a0for decades\u00a0but also to their own invention – brand engineering – where platforms are modified superficially and then force-fed to the various divisions. Many Chevrolet’s, Buick’s, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs and even Cadillac models were almost indistinguishable from each other in the 70’s and 80’s as arrogant GM execs thought Americans would buy whatever their factories pooped out the door.<\/p>\n Only now are they realizing the error of design redundancy and being forced by market conditions and economic forces to thin the ranks. Pontiac will reportedly be the next casualty; then maybe GMC, along with possible sales of Saab, Opel and Hummer.<\/p>\n American industrial dominance and ingenuity have seen better days.<\/p>\n So at the risk of having a funeral before the body arrives, here are some of my favorite Pontiacs, a couple of\u00a0them icons of American Muscle,\u00a0for your enjoyment: The Bonneville, Firebird, GTO, Solstice, Trans Am and G8.<\/p>\n When General Motors euthanized Oldsmobile the public’s reaction was a non-reaction. Nobody cared – well, except some dealerships. The last Oldsmobile rolled off the line in 2004, ending a 107-year history. Save America’s first mass-produced front-drive car, the Toronado… …Oldsmobile really never had a raison d’etre – never really produced an icon like Buick’s Riviera, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3658\/3471542379_698f241df3.jpg?v=0\")
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