@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:im not sure about trans ams.
People like sports cars. And if there is one thing that Pontiac knew how to make, it was sports cars.
Pontiac actually invented the muscle car. The 1964 GTO option was the world's first muscle car. All other muscle cars were merely GTO imitations.
And Pontiac kept improving the power of the GTO all through the muscle car era. The 69-70 GTO Judge with a Ram Air IV engine was one of the most powerful cars ever made. It would even be able to hold its own against a modern sports car today.
After tightening fuel and emissions standards greatly reduced engine performance in the early 1970s, all the other automakers gave up building muscle cars. Post-71 cars from the other automakers just had weaker and weaker versions of their formerly powerful engines. But not Pontiac. When all the other brands gave up, Pontiac went back to the drawing board and developed a brand new muscle car engine (the Super Duty) for the 73 and 74 Trans Am.
After even tighter fuel and emissions standards doomed the Super Duty engine, Pontiac went back to the drawing board yet again, and in 1977 they came out with the 400 T/A 6.6 engine (the Smokey and the Bandit era engine). Camaro and Corvette engines by this time were pretty pathetic, and Pontiac's production of a real sports car embarrassed Chevy into boosting engine performance in their sports cars.
So in short, Pontiac invented the muscle car. They produced one of the most powerful muscle cars. And they kept the high performance torch burning all through the dark days of the 1970s when all the other automakers gave up on real performance.
If GM wanted Pontiac to sell cars, all they needed to do was remove the bureaucratic shackles and let Pontiac engineers do what they did best.
