HoodaThunk?

GM is set to announce that it will terminate the Pontiac brand as part of its plan to hold off bankruptcy, reports are saying.

Two people briefed on GM’s plan confirmed that it includes the demise of Trans Am sports car brand Pontiac, 83 years after the first Pontiac car was introduced. Within three years, half a million Pontiacs were sold, and the brand quickly grew in popularity, from early models like the Chief and the Master Six Coupe, to the Bonneville convertible, to the GTO — one of America’s first muscle cars and so popular it inspired Ronny and the Daytonas to immortalize it in song.

But efforts in the last few years to market Pontiac as performance-oriented brand failed. The company had said it wanted to keep Pontiac as a niche brand with one or two models, but is buckling under tremendous government pressure to consolidate its eight brands, several of which lose money.

Kinda sad. But only kinda. The fact of the matter is that this kind of move was long overdue. I’ve owned several Pontiacs in the last 15 years and, while they were generally reliable, the 6-cylinder engines in a couple of them had a pretty bad design flaw that resulted in a warped manifold that required a $2100 repair to correct. They were serviceable cars and decent transportation, but they weren’t anything to write home about. We had excellent luck with the 1 Montana minivan but even she had her moments.

This is the kind of business decision that should have been made long ago – well before GM’s holding out a tin cup for taxpayer money – and it shouldn’t be the last such, either.

Update: Here’s the official story on the announcement. Obama-selected GM Chairman Fritz Henderson announces that production of the Pontiac line will cease and 21,000 jobs will be cut.