Bye Bye Pontiac

It's sad. No more Pontiac GTO's. We had a Pontiac once. Big black '59 wagon with the 389 V8. It was big enough for a family of five with skis, gear, luggage and the family cat. The cat hated it. Once it jumped out the drivers window into a toll basket trying to escape from the car. The driver (father) was quick enough to grab the cat out of the basket, heave it into the back seat, roll up the window and drag race out of the toll booth like nothing ever happened. And before the cat made a second try for freedom.
That wagon had the worst transmission known to man. Three on the tree. First gear was too high, you had to slip the clutch to get the car rolling on the flat. Starting up hill was bad. Lots of burning clutch smell, and without a master's touch on the pedal, bucking, surging and engine stalling. Plus an unreliable shift linkage. It would occasionally get stuck in reverse, and you had to pop the hood and fiddle with the linkage to get unstuck. It acted up on the old man on Boston's central artery, during rush hour, in a driving rainstorm. He was plenty wet (and mad) before he got the car to run forward again.
Lot of talk on some car enthusiast blogs about "the channel" and the need (or lack of need) for two or three or four GM "channels". Those guys were probably car dealers worrying about loosing their franchise. GM doesn't need "channels". It does need product, cars that people will buy. Pontiac doesn't make GTO's any more, and the last interesting Pontiac was the Firebird. Except Firebird wasn't a real car model, it was a Chevy Camaro with a Pontiac nameplate. Everyone knew that, the styling was distinctive, and anyone with two brain cells firing instantly recognized the simularity of Firebird/Camaro. GM would have saved money and raised sales by marketing the Camaro under just one name. Consumers are saturated with advertising, in fact most of us consumers automatically ignore commercials. It takes a LOT of advertising to cut thru the mental filters TV watchers have evolved. Better to spend the money on one car brand than split it between two brand names attached to the same car. Guys (pony cars are a guy thing) who would buy a Firebird are equally likely to buy a Camaro. Why dilute the advertising by selling the same car under two different names?