Sixteen years ago, General Motors decided to discontinue the Pontiac brand. However, very recently, Car and Driver had a full sized ad on the back cover of the magazine that sought to bamboozle people, which heralded the return of Pontiac. Even though the fine print at the bottom of the advertisement stated, “Do you need to be told that this advertisement is fake and not to be taken seriously? Our lawyers think you do.” Some may have gotten their hopes up with the spoof, but General Motors has confirmed that it had nothing to do with the advertisement.
Is Pontiac Coming Back? No.
At a glance, the advertisement seems legitimate; the iconic firebird logo takes its presence, drawing attention to it, accompanied by large text stating, “Make some noise, Pontiac Is Back.” Unfortunately, if you read the smaller print, it quickly becomes clear that the entire thing is a joke. Poking fun at Dodge Challenger drivers and their inability to remove the splitter guards from their cars, so what’s the next best thing? Offering a car where the “entire front end is a splitter guard.” But things get more interesting when the advertisement states that the car will be a hybrid that “uses a battery and an electric motor to start a 667-hp supercharged 6.1L V8 engine.”
First of all, no. Second of all, no. Not happening. And when we at MC&T report that something isn’t happening (or, is happening), people listen.
The ad very clearly tugged at the heartstrings of many, where a number of legendary cars, such as the GTO, Firebirds, and Trans Ams, were regularly found on the roads. Unfortunately, when we think of Pontiac, those are the main things we think of, not the disappointing bits such as the 2000s reboot to GTO, the hideous Aztec, and absurd SUVs that were, well, not very easy on the eyes. We’d prefer to remember the good rather than the bad for Pontiac, and unfortunately, there was a lot of bad leading up to the brand’s eventual demise.
But if, for some reason, you still hope Pontiac returns and have already put on your tinfoil hat and lined your wall with papers, pins, and red strings to try and connect the dots and uncover the secrets, we ask that you refer back to the final sentence of the first paragraph of this story.
With that said, there are a few ways to keep your Pontiac passion burning, so long as you can afford it. Trans Am Worldwide is probably the best example, which takes sixth-generation Camaros, and soups them up to 1,000 hp monsters that look like the next-gen Firebird that never happened.
