What is wrong with the G6.

[pauljs75]

It seems funny that they keep mentioning it when GM talks about going negative in the earnings forcast...

So here's my take on what went wrong with the Pontiac G6.

Car-wise, its not a bad car. Pretty nice actually. They finally bothered to have a decent engine option in a somewhat nice car with some neat features. Also it's not terrible aesthetics wise, but it's nothing remarkable either.

So WTF happened?

1. It replaced the wrong car. Yep. The Grand Am was the top seller in the Pontiac line and they had to go and f' with it. They would have been better off doing something with the Aztec or Sunfire, or perhaps the Gran Prix even. But then again what do I know.

2. Bland styling. The car it replaced at least was recognizable. The last generation Grand Am had a look to it. Whether you loved it or hated it, at least it was distinctive. It had a face, it was organic, something evocative of a reptile or raptor. The G6 doesn't have that. It's hard to tell apart from an Accord at a distance.

3. It's sized wrong. Bigger is nice. But it's also more expensive. And if people want bigger, then why not get a Gran Prix? So now they're competing in house which is stupid. The Grand Am knew it's niche between the Sunfire and Gran Prix in the family. The G6 is trying too hard to be its bigger sibling.

4. Performance is improved. But with gas prices these days, does it hold up on economy as well? Unfortunately the costs created by the oil industry tends to counter driving just for the fun of it.

5. Oprah... What? Yeah, Oprah. No, nothing's wrong with her. She's cool and successful in her own regard. Some may have considered the car givaway a brilliant marketing ploy, but I think they dropped the ball with this one. Why? She didn't sell any of those cars. She gave them away. The show didn't really do much to sell the car itself, it was more about people needing reliable transportation in their lives. The G6 may be reliable to some extent, but any new car is. These people would be happy with anything new, even if it was a Kia. The G6 is nicer, but the show didn't really do much as a selling point. (Although I guess it did a lot to make other TV show hosts envious of Oprah. lol)

6. The name. I mean what exactly does G6 evoke? Does it really seem to mean anything? Or was it some half hearted attempt to write 66? 66 would at least seem to hearken to RT-66. Perhaps they were afraid that some slick people would add another 6 or something. Heh... Also how does it fit in with Bonneville (land speed record salt flats), Grand Prix (a well known race), and other cars in the family that had names. Grand Am also fit into the racing heritage, and was doing well. LeMans, well I dunno how GM f'd that up, but they did. lol... Or they could have went with a Solar theme even... Aztek, a fugly car, but it evoked "The people of the sun". SunFire (was SunBird)... It has the name sun right there. Solistice... You can't get much more solar than that. There was even Phoenix (crappy Citation sibling) and FireBird (A relatively cheap and powerful car, which is why it had a bad rap. Many irresponsible people made the car look accident prone.)... I guess the name just doesn't mesh into what is Pontiac. A letter and a number... Big whoop. Everyone else does that, so why follow?

I think I could find more... But I'll wrap it up for now. What do you think?

[NYRngrs24]

hey man... do go knocking kias.. lol..they are the fastest growing car company right under BMW and they are scaring toyota and honda since Kia and Hyundai are creating amaazing cars for the money. Hyundai sonato got rated MOST realiable car out of all the cars by AL the companys..BMw, MB, Honda, etc ..

anyway..i agree with ur topic.. i wanted the rgand am..the one with the ribs on teh side.

[pauljs75]

I didn't say they were bad. Just your basic reliable transportation. (If they were bad, I wouldn't have considered them on the reliability point.) It may not be as big, have the features or performance, but it would do the job...

My argument was that any car would have worked for Oprah...

Now why bring up such a topic? I like GM for the most part. I just have trouble figuring out what's involved in some of their decisions. So I guess that's part of it. They could have done a lot better by re-doing the SunFire instead and having it ready to share the platform when the Cobalt came out for Chevy.

I have a last gen. Grand Am and was hoping for... Get this... A better Grand Am. Not something completely different. Just giving it a more performance orientated powertrain, and a higher quality of fit & finish through refinement of production would have made me happy. It was the right size and I liked the look. (It has a predatory "face" on the front, I just wish it had more of an engine to back it up. I guess they intended to reach a decent balance between economy and what performance - which it does. It manages to get a bit over 30MPG and has 175HP.)

I suppose they threw out their baby with the bathwater and replaced it with a second Grand Prix. (Looks, size wise and in price.)

[Vette Boss]

You really want to know what's wrong with the Pontiac G6? It's American. People are beginning to think less of American cars, now that Japan is making powerful and reliable cars, people want to buy them. In the past, people that wanted exciting cars would buy domestic ones and make the trade-off on reliability.

That, added to the decaying image of Pontiac as a performance brand, takes away from the appeal of them. Now people are buying Nissan's and Mitsubishi's instead of Chevrolet and Pontiac for performance. Shame, because I'm sure the G6 is a pretty decent overall car.

[NYRngrs24]

from whatr ive heard.. CHINA is started too make better cars and gonna start coming to america

[multimediaman]

Originally Posted by pauljs75

1. It replaced the wrong car. Yep. The Grand Am ...

2. Bland styling. The car it replaced at least was recognizable. The last generation Grand Am had a look to it...

3. It's sized wrong. Bigger is nice. But it's also more expensive. And if people want bigger, then why not get a Gran Prix? ...

4. Performance is improved. But with gas prices these days, does it hold up on economy as well? ...

5. Oprah... What? Yeah, Oprah. No, nothing's wrong with her. She's cool and successful in her own regard. Some may have considered the car givaway a brilliant marketing ploy, but I think they dropped the ball with this one. Why? She didn't sell any of those cars. She gave them away...

6. The name. I mean what exactly does G6 evoke? ...

Here's my rebuttal in Pontiac's defense, and of my personal opinion:


Re: 1. and 2. ) The grand am had always been fairly close to eachother in looks and styling... in fact, you had to really know the car to be able to tell them apart when you weren't looking at the front end. IMO, the grand am was just getting too close to the grand prix towards the end.

You seem to have the impression that the G6 is this oversized overpowered gas guzzling freak of nature.. when in actuality, its base price is fairly close to what a Grand am was, with a base MSRP of $17,060-$17,825... and the base price for the 2004 Grand Am SE Sedan was $17,070. In 2005 they botched the grand am up, according to Carpoint's data collection, because they didn't offer anything starting under MSRP of $22,500, as they only offered coupes. That was probably a huge mistake for that year.

Also, in rebuttal to your #1 point, they had the G6 in 2005, at MSRP starting at $20,675. That tells me they weren't really replacing the grand am, they probably found it would be too hard to recover from their Coupe-only Grand AM screw-up that year, so they decided to kill it off perhaps... Also, in 2006, it became apparent they were trying to recover from the grand-am screwup of 2005, with all the huge amounts of lower-end models available for the G6 now. They came out with a model even retailing at $16,365!

As long as we're looking at specs... I'll respond to #4 and #3 respectively:

2004 Pontiac Grand Am specs (SE Sedan - 2.2L 140 hp I4)
Fuel Economy : 24mpg city / 34mpg hwy
Length : 186.30in / Width : 70.40in / Height : 55.10in / Weight : 3066lbs.


2005 Pontiac Grand Am specs (coupe only - 3.4L 175 hp V6)
Fuel Economy : 20mpg city / 29mpg hwy
Length : 186.30in / Width : 70.40in / Height : 55.10in / Weight : 3091lbs.


2007 Pontiac G6 specs (1SV Sedan - 2.4L 169 hp I4)
Fuel Economy : 23 mpg city / 33 mpg hwy
Length : 189.00in / Width : 70.60in / Height : 57.10in / Weight : 3305lbs.


I hardly think that 1 mpg less, 240 pounds, and 3 inches longer, 2 inches taller would make a car a complete failiure.



When you get into a G6 and drive, it feels distinctly better and sporty than any old family sedan, yet has the quiet ride and space on the interior that kept people liking the grand am... It could still make for a decent family sedan, while not being something boring either.

I tend to think that you keep hearing about the G6 whenever you hear talk of GM's profit margin decreases, because everyone is expecting the G6 to help pull them out of the rut some. If they could improve every vehicle they make to the G6 quality, I think they'd be going somewhere.



RE: #5.) -Oprah- ... As far as I know, Oprah had some sort of arrangement to buy the vehicles from pontiac first... No one gets a vehicle for free, someone's paying for it somewhere along the lines... whether it be the readers of O! magazine, the viewers of her show, or the television station she gave the boosts in ratings to by airing her episodes... even from her own personal fund perhaps, who knows.

RE: #6.) Pontiac is redoing their whole line up. GM IMO has been plagued with a problem of rebradging vehicles and charging high prices for practically nothing in the past, and that's practically one of the reasons that killed Oldsmobile, and gave GM such a poor profit margin... Take the Oldsmobile Cutlass in 1998 or so... it was a chevy malibu, with brake light covers. Who's gonna buy that? i've only seen about 5 on the road since oldsmobile went kaput. Alero was a nice car, but you can't keep a brand going just from one car. Then you got your Camaro and Trans Am rebadge... GMC and Chevrolet Trucks didn't have satisfactory differences for my tastes to be considered worth buying one over the other, I mean... it's all over the place. Even in the 80's... you had stuff like the buick lesabre, the chevy caprice, the cadillac something or other, the oldsmobile cutlass, Pontiac bonneville... ALL of which, I believe, were based off the similar body style of an 85 or so caprice was... That kinda junk shouldn't be done, IMO. No single car is the reason why GM is in a slump... Poor quality, poor decisions, and lack of vehicular hardware innovation are the reasons I stay away from GM. They're getting better though, at least. Perhaps if I noticed higher quality stuff like the G6 produced more often by them, I would consider adding a GM product to my garage.