Pontiac Dies

Last week, we all had to say goodbye to Pontiac. The General Motors brand had been suffering for the past few years with sluggish sales and little innovation for new design. The fact that GM had filed for bankruptcy hasn't helped either.

The NYT said, "For most of the 1960s, Pontiac ranked third in sales behind Chevy and Ford — a position now held by Toyota. But in the decades since, Pontiac’s edge and high-powered image wore off. Repeated efforts in the 1990s and 2000s to revive the brand failed. Drivers too young to remember the GTO came to associate Pontiac with models like the DustBuster-shaped Trans Sport minivan or the Aztek, a bloated-looking crossover widely regarded as one of the ugliest vehicles of all time. By early 2009, Pontiac had fallen to 12th place in the United States market, and its top-selling model was the G6, a sedan commonly found on car-rental lots."

Despite the success of the GTO in the muscle car era, Pontiac has struggled to maintain the edge and the high-powered image. It's interesting to look at a brand like this whose products were focused on image. It makes me wonder how long companies like Apple will be able to maintain success.