After 84 years of existence and about 40 million vehicles sold, on Saturday, October 31, Pontiac was officially pronounced dead. Marketed as GM’s performance division and living some glorious years in the past, Pontiac had an awful fate in the last decade, forcing GM to officially announce the company’s funeral.
Pontiac’s best years were the ’60s and the ’70s, especially after the GTO, the car that started the muscle car movement, was launched in 1964 and peaking with 1973, when 920,000 Pontiacs were sold, making it the third most sold brand in the United States. Since then, the company started going down and even though efforts were made in the ’90s and ’00s to revive it, 2009 was the year GM announced what everyone was expecting, that Pontiac will disappear by the end of 2010. And they kept their word. R.I.P. Pontiac!
