02/09/2024
The worst day in Pontiac history came on April 27th, 2009, the day General Motors announced Pontiac Motor Division would be eliminated. Just over a month later, on May 30th, 2009, this photo was taken of a Pontiac salesman having a bad day. Then things went from bad to worse. Just a couple days later, on June 1st, 2009, General Motors filed for bankruptcy, leaving millions of GM shareholders out in the cold and throwing dealership owners into a panic.
Pontiac Motor Division began in 1926. Their sales remained steady for decades and Pontiac remained mid-pack in sales most of the time. Then in 1956 Pontiac was re-energized when Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen took over the division. In 1962 Pontiac moved into 3rd place in sales behind just Chevrolet and Ford. They remained 3rd to 5th in sales for the next several decades. In 1996, the unthinkable happened when Pontiac moved into 2nd place, surpassing Chevrolet, and became GM's best selling division for one year (they repeated this feat again in 2000). Sales remained steady until 2007, then a rather steep decline occurred across all divisions as GM struggled for market share. Right up until 2009, Pontiac had outsold Buick around 2-to-1, but when the decision to eliminate a division occurred, GM chose to shut down Pontiac. This seemed like a strange decision considering Buick had just 3 models in their 2009 lineup (Enclave, LaCrosse, Lucerne) and Buick sales totaled just 102,306 vehicles. But the decision to cancel Pontiac instead of Buick was based on the fact that Buicks were selling well in China (they had been producing Buicks there since 1999) while Pontiac had zero sales to China. The Pontiac brand was virtually unknown there. - MCN
