The Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky were released at the same time in 2005 to many raving responses. The Solstice was the greased lightening for Pontiac right out of the box as the waiting list for the new roadster stretched out for many many months. Now two years later and the Sky is the steady date and the Solstice is sitting along the side of the gym waiting for someone to ask her to dance.
The New York Times tackled this subject and focused the microscope on the reputations of the two GM brands. What they found is that no matter what Pontiac builds their cars will eventual suffer from the brands poor reputation; no matter what the initial response is when the car is unveiled. The Transformers movie could not even Jazz-up the status of the Solstice to the car buyers eye (making the fact that Jazz, the Solstice in the movie, was killed off even more foreshadowing for the car and brand).
The 400 Saturn dealerships across the U.S. are cranking out on average one Sky per month (with a lower production total than the Solstice). With 2,700 Pontiac dealerships selling the Solstice they are achieving an average of 1 car every 2 months. Thus Pontiac is on pace to sell approximately 18,000 of the 20,000 Solstices scheduled to be built in 2007.
When the Vice Chairman of your parent company, Bob Lutz, is referring to your brand as “damaged goods” and your own marketing dollars tend to favor the youngster of the brands over the tainted older sibling a rough road is surely ahead. GM will need to reassign some creative resources in engineering, design and marketing on the Pontiac brand if they hope to revive the one time powerhouse. So far there are no indications that GM is inclined to make that effort.
Source[NewYorkTimes]
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