Every day, we get letters from readers asking us to write stories about things that, frankly, we don’t know anything about. Recently, citing the well-known return of its longtime platform-mate, the Chevrolet Camaro, some of you have been screaming like chickens about another storied muscle car from our past, the good ol’ Pontiac Firebird. After all, it would be easy—graft a beak onto the Camaro and ship it to Pontiac showrooms. And so we made some calls.
Our first fact: GM public relations people aren’t quick to return phone calls when one leaves a voice-mail saying things like, “Could you call us back with everything you know about a future Firebird?” Crickets. Tumbleweeds. And here we thought we were friends.
But later rather than sooner, our pal Jim Hopson from Pontiac communications called and promptly made up for lost time by shedding some real light on what is looking more like a choice between raising goats or chickens, rather than goats and chickens, on Pontiac’s muscle-car farm.
Pontiac Muscle Car Must Be Distinct
Although it’s still unconfirmed at this point, Pontiac is pretty much guaranteed to get at least one muscle car from the prolific rear-drive Zeta platform (officially, Global Rear Wheel Drive Architecture) by 2010.
The first fruit of Zeta loins for Pontiac is the 2008 G8 sedan, which will replace both the long-departed Bonneville and the current Grand Prix early next year. The G8 will be exported from Australia, where the Aussies engineered the RWD family.
As for a second Zeta for Pontiac, Hopson confirmed the brand has been kicking around “heritage” names, including Firebird and GTO, for a future muscle car. Although either “can be done” relatively easily, we don’t expect Pontiac to do both. Furthermore, although a Firebird would seemingly be less expensive to produce if it shared—as it always did—its body stampings and many interior components with the Camaro, we suspect Pontiac is leaning toward the GTO.
Thank (or blame) Bob Lutz, GM’s deified product guru, for that. He has asserted that the days of product sharing and badge engineering are more or less over and has stated emphatically that no carbon copy of the Camaro will make it into any other GM-brand showroom. The challenge, Hopson said, becomes making a new muscle car unique enough to appease Lutz and the market at large without being too unique for those Bud-guzzlin’, mullet-draped traditionalists who see it as their mission in life to ensure any future screaming chicken returns as “Pontiac’s Camaro.”
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