Anyone else miss Pontiac???

Those riffled, thick sideskirts of Pontiac cars are my fetish.

Actually kinda unique if I think about it.

Veeky Forums, should I?
minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/ctd/5941554507.html

No

/thread

I really want a Pontiac G8 GXP. Those fucking cars hold their worth so well. I see ones with over 100k going for twenty thousand dollars sometimes.

yeah, but get it down some

Yes.

I hate GM because they make trash that isn't worth owning without a comprehensive warranty. But at least with Pontiac, you could buy something kinda cool and fun and get a warranty on it.

It's the same thing as Chrysler. Nobody is gonna buy their shitboxes because they are trash, but at least they are selling cool shit now like Challengers so people still buy them.

Pontiac made beautiful cars.

They look great when they are dead in your driveway.

Exactly!

What good did a broken down Malibu ever do for anybody?

Pontiac was cool back in the days of chrome bumpers, but the last few years of the company they were just Chevys with added fins, spoilers, and gauges.

Considering that I see old Sunfires and Grand Ams everyday, and all the normies I know have nothing but good things to say about the brand, I'm inclined to say yes.

Pontiacs from the 80s up into the 2000s were cheap shitboxes, but they were fun, cool looking shitboxes. I can easily see GM reviving Pontiac at some point as a cheaper, sportier sub-brand of Chevrolet.

At least they were kinda trying to make some cool shit while most other American cars aside from trucks were generic crap.

First muscle car, can't argue against that

Mid-60s was objectively the best time for car design.

No, I could never tell them different from Cadillac.

I think 1963-1964 was good but I prefer 1969-1973 era.
But I'm not one to ask for taste and design, I love the pure trash designs from the 70's and 80's.
American cars just really appeal to me.
I even love the trash in the pic related and have a wagon fetish, nothing is as cool as a huge old muscle car wagon.

Nigger detection.

fuck yes

Pure ws6 sex.

69-73 was def a little heavier on the muscle cars trying to compete with eachother but they made everything look really aggressive. They look good but I'm a fan of how clean the cars from a few years earlier looked. Almost like a sleeper look. Reminds me of 90s german sports cars like the M3 where it was just a real subtle body kid but tons of goodies under the hood.

Athough I did bitch about cars looking too aggressive, I will always love the WS6. When I was like 14, dude I knew had a black one and it was so mean. Did like a 5min long burnout in a shopping center parking lot and tore holes in the asphalt.

Gone but not forgotten

i owned an 88 gt fast back in high school
everyone thought it was a Ferrari.

I dream to own a ws6 trans am one day

maybe the ugliest production car ever is a Pontiac

I'd take a Firebird over a Camaro of the same era any day.

>ugly

Literally every second car (crossover) looks like it was inspired by it.

That car was just waaaaaaayyyyyy ahead of its time.

Yup.

>tfw the American compact car that had an aluminium engine, transaxle and independent rear suspension before the Corvette was a commercial flop and got turned into a generic midsize, solid rear axle, leaf spring barge after three model years

they really do.
I think in general, Pontiac was the soul of GM. they regret having to close it because it was where they put all their interesting ideas.

...

Poor
Old
Nigger
Thinks
It's
A
Cadillac

personally i was never fond of the way the ram air scoop looked on the 98+ Trans Am. I prefer the sleeker look of the early Fourth gen without the scoops.

although personally, I think the third gen trans am was peak firebird

I fucking love the turd gen. The side profile does it for me every time. I'll be picking one up in the spring hopefully

are ws6s easy to find in canada?
i might be moving there soon and importing one here would be impossible

it's aggressive in a good way,not what todays definition of angry grille is

god bless america

Are we done circlejerking over Camaro rebadges yet?

Not yet

I want one so bad

>fiero
>firebird / trans am ws6
>G8 GXP
>solstice GXP

Not a day goes by I don't miss Pontiac, GM shoulda axed Buick instead but didn't because Chinese market.

Now?

I wonder if Pontiac would've gotten this as the G6 if GM hadn't axed them. With base features but the OPC engine and 4WD it would've been a great fit for Pontiacs performance image. Much better than the lethargic, horrid, crappy actual G6 anyway.

Instead they gave it to Buick without the OPC engine option, and called it the Regal.

Yea, because of their position in GM to be a bit more than the Chevy gave them a little bit more breathing room to outdance the bean counters. Like the first GTO package wasn't a factory installed option, you checked the box on your order form and the guy in the parts department would go get the manifold and Tri-power and put it in the trunk, you were expected to put it on yourself.

Plus you have things like pic related, a cosworth sourced DOHC head for the Iron Duke Superduty (AKA half a Pontiac V8). While it looks like sex, they actually did worse than the 2 valve pushrod set up.

Who didn't love the old GTO, but on the other hand

>same 90 cars as the rest of GM lineup
>the ones that weren't SUVs were FWD and had the same boat anchor engine and crappy parts
>the two cars of note from last decade were foreign by design

Your 90 HP Fireturd doesn't count, you fucking autists

Exactly.

...

GRAND AMINO

EL JUDGE

...

>tfw you will never hide a GNX engine in a G-Body Grand Am or Grand Prix

What

it was until nissan made the juke

good luck user.

...

>First muscle car
By what standards?

...

...

...

>anyone else miss Pontiac???
Pontiac? Sure.
Chevyac? Not so much.

I drove my mom's Pontiac Torrent once.

It was faster than I expected.

It had a Chinese engine and died just after 100K miles though.

Piece of shit.

I thought the shoebox was the first muscle car engine package

Something must be very wrong if you can't afford a Fiero

anyone /solstice gxp/ here?
I could get a 41k mile mint 08 from work for $8600. Automatic but who cares, the manual is from a pickup truck and I only keep cars 6mos. I want to Go Fast

It threatened the Corvette.
GM murders anything that does that.

It was truly ahead of its time.

I remember in 5th grade I thought the Solstice and the Saturn Sky were like the coolest cars ever.

>not having a 98-02 ls1 firebird formula t/a non ws6 like mine

It doenst have nostrils but it has side skirts and a wing a trans am badge

>tfw 4th gen fbody and 4th gen civic

>worst pone
>on worst pontiac

pottery

I love mine, after the engine dies ill just replace it. At 120k now, hoping I have a while left.

>That car was just waaaaaaayyyyyy ahead of its time.
Not unusual for Pontiac desu. Some of the best ideas and innovations were born from the the Pontiac division but GM was too caught up in their pecking order bullshit and hubris to fully capitalize on it.

Pontiac and Oldsmobile, fuck yeah. I'd sacrifice Chevy in a heartbeat of america to get them back.

I-i don't think so bud

I once heard that the 81 Turbo Trans am had no power difference compared to the base model, was that true?

at least it's not applejack on a Sunfire

>second worse pone
>on pure shit tier car

not really

by time they died they hadnt done anything worthwhile for decades

Their days under the cocaine fueled gaze of John Z. were their best but damn if they didn't try to go out swinging their whole lifecycle.

>the stamped steel rocker arm was the product of a Pontiac engineer
>'63 Tempest and all the technologies that tried to bring to the table
>First contemporary muscle car in the '64 GTO, developed in secret by a gang of freewheeling loons, marketing team called it the GTO just to piss off the Italians
>OHC Pontiac Sprint six, domestic, high-winding "REFINED" inline six that put even some of the best Yurop had to offer to shame
>patented fiberglass-reinforced belt that drove the cam has basically been outright copied for OHC engines since
>The Pontiac Banshee and everything about it
>Pontiac produced basically the last great V8 of the muscle car era in the SD455
>right before the smog era Pontiac was about to implement a lot wild shit like the Ram Air V, an OHC V8 (a running example still out in the wild under the hood of Ian McKellar's Grand Prix), a DOHC V8 and hemi headed V8 (ten or so pairs of those hemi heads going to Mickey Thompson)
>bringing out domestic mid-engine car for the everyman with the Fiero and the associated SD4
>making GM shit their pants when the 2000s refresh of the Grand Prix was supposed to be an AWD monster with an LS heart
>still had the consumer in mind even when they basically weren't allowed to build their own cars and offered neat shit like the G8 with tons of available options

Based Pontiac.

>Pontiac hat
I know that's an ancient image from the filename, but if anything Pontiac and Oldsmobile guys are probably the two groups most likely to tell you how fucking awful GM is.

>tfw you will never, ever live in the timeline where Pontiac and Olds rolled out their respective DOHC V8s in '71, simultaneously giving the finger to the bean counters, the gen-2 Fiero whipped the Corvette sideways with its V6 and the Oldsmobile inline-4 version forever brought together the General's redheaded stepchild divisions until the present day where Buick got a mercy killing in the 2000's, the rebadging nonsense of the 90's, the cut-and-paste sedans of the 80's, and the "GM putting Chevy engines into other divisions and not telling anyone until they were bought on the dealer's lot" shit of the 70's never happened, and the Charger and Challenger Hellcat duo cowers in fear of a modern Tempest/GTO and Cutlass/442 combo while the Corvette team jacks off to LeMans times in the corner now that they can't steal tech from the other divisions as easily

Why are we still here?

Just to suffer.

Those poor pontiac and olds boys probably had the baddest cars on the road in '69, sold them for peanuts and then suffered with 20 years of w-bodies and ended up posting on an Aurora forum.

To be fair, Auroras are neat just for how weird they are. Let's make a big luxury sedan with all sorts of neat luxury stuff as standard equipment- but let's also make it front wheel drive, unibody (so strong it broke the testing press and GM had to use one meant for trucks to crush it), and powered by a slightly shrunk, transverse-mounted Cadillac Northstar V8. Oh, and then let's take it circuit racing and see how many races we can win with it, too.

Olds must have had some obsession with taking FWD luxury barges and making them do things they weren't supposed to, considering thirty years earlier they took the fucking Toronado and set a new Pikes Peak hillclimb time with it.

The public loved the Aurora, too, they sold like fucking hotcakes and the Intrigue and other 2000's Olds cars directly copied its styling because of it- yet despite the huge sales of the Aurora and its various A-named brethren as well as the laughably-"utility"-but-people-still-bought-it Bravada, the end was already in sight for the century-plus company.

>and powered by a slightly shrunk, transverse-mounted Cadillac Northstar V8. Oh, and then let's take it circuit racing and see how many races we can win with it, too.
Should have worded that a bit better, it was the engine used in racing, not the car- a period or two would have helped there. People who followed that type of thing still knew about it, though, which might have contributed to sales as well.

So wait, they used the 4.0 DOHC V8 from the Aurora to race? How many bolts were on the mains?

Googling tells me the Northstar has 4-bolt mains so I'm gonna assume the Aurora engine does as well.

Hang on, is this fucking thing a split case with a girdle to retain the crank?

Surprise!

Never looked into the Northstars much, goddamn. Thing is pretty serious business for a luxury car engine if it's packing that kind of bottom end.

Desperately so. The world just isn't right without the Trans Am. The molded Camaros from TADepot don't count.

It's not a Northstar per se, it's derived from it tho

It's a luxury car engine that's still a twin-cam 4.6L V8 pushing close to 300hp. There was also a 4.4L supercharged version putting out well over 400.

Northstars have a number of known problems- namely, they blow headgaskets like a pop star blows lines, they love burning and leaking coolant, and they can overheat hot enough to warp and/or crack the block but NOT get hot enough to trigger the engine's limp mode- but goddamn are they smooth as glass when they're running properly.

Although we were discussing the actual Northstar, the Aurora 4.0 is essentially just a Northstar de-bored to half a liter smaller and with some external parts regarding oil and cooling changed, keeping the same internals.

The V6 'Shortstar' is different, though, being engineered from scratch (so contrary to popular belief, it isn't just an Aurora engine with two cylinders lopped off the end).

Ahhh the Shortstar, literally the most underrated engine to come from GM during the malaise era

I always remember hearing about the cooling problems. Was the head gasket issue a quality control issue in casting/machining? Or like a problem with the gaskets themselves?