Pontiac Automobile

The decision by General Motors Corp. to eliminate the Pontiac brand disappointed many people, but it didn't surprise anyone. For fans, dealers and experts, the division has been fading for decades. "It's been a long time coming. For the last 20 years, Pontiac has just had the same car with lots of different badges on it," said Karl Brauer, editor-in-chief of car buying guide Edmunds.com in Santa Monica.

The government is investigating complaints that the front power windows on the driver and passenger sides of some Pontiac Vibes shattered as they were being raised or lowered. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had received 15 complaints about windows shattering on 2003 and 2004 Vibes. Three consumers who complained said they were injured while cleaning the glass debris out of the front seats. NHTSA said the issue could affect more than 120,000 vehicles.

General Motors Corp. will stop making the Pontiac Bonneville this summer, saying declining sales and changing customer tastes make the nearly half-century-old sedan no longer worthwhile. No jobs will be lost because the Detroit-Hamtramck factory where the Bonneville is made will continue to produce other large cars, including the new Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS, GM officials told the Detroit News.

General Motors Corp., which issued a shocking profit warning last week and has been losing market share, may phase out one of its weaker car brands if sales fail to meet projections, company Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said Wednesday. GM's Buick and Pontiac are both "damaged brands" because of lack of investment over the years, and GM is working to correct that with an array of new vehicles coming to market, Lutz said at an investment conference in New York.

AT the moment the news broke, I had written two words of a review of the Pontiac G6: "Dump Lutz." On Monday morning, the news came that General Motors North America Chairman Robert Lutz and Group Vice President Gary Cowger were "relinquishing" their duties with GM North America to assume unspecified roles in GM's global product development and manufacturing efforts -- compared with the high-profile role Lutz has occupied, this is like "extraordinary rendition" to Pakistan.

In the history of four wheels and an engine, few automobiles have landed with such a sopping wet, suicide-on-the-sidewalk report as the Pontiac Aztek. From the moment the curtain drew back at the 2000 auto show in Detroit, people hated it with a dark, unappeasable glee. One wag said the Aztek looked like Montezuma's Revenge feels. So much for nuance. After four years and slightly more than 100,000 copies, GM quietly sacked the Aztek (2005 is its last model year).

It was a journey into the New American Wasteland: a place of superhighways, tract housing developments and shopping malls. It was a disappointment. There was nothing to see. I turned the 2006 Pontiac Torrent around and headed home, wondering if I was the agent of my own undoing. I love driving. I can think of no greater celebration of freedom than getting behind the wheel of an automobile and setting out for points unknown.

T\o7HE\f7 Pontiac Solstice is a real car, with tires and a horn and windshield and some modicum of an engine, and not merely a figment of GM executives' imagination. I was beginning to wonder. Not that the car took unusually long to reach market -- 31 months from the concept car's boffo unveiling in Detroit in 2002 to the first deliveries in August -- it's only that the promotional zeppelin went up months earlier. The Solstice had its red-carpet moment on "The Apprentice" in April.

I once visited friends in a Virginia neighborhood where "diversity" referred to the texture of lawns, or maybe the size of cooking galleys in kitchens large enough to serve as cafeterias. I decided to be naughty. I showed up in a black-on-black Chevrolet Impala SS with polished chrome wheels and exhaust tips, something radical enough to stand out among the Volvos, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes parked in the hosts' driveway and cul-de-sac. I got the desired reaction.

A colleague spotted the Pontiac Grand Prix in the lot and noted: "It looks mean." Pontiac considers that a compliment. The 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix that goes on sale this month, along with the '04 Pontiac GTO and '04 Chevrolet Malibu that go on sale this fall, are members of the mid-size sedan family at General Motors Corp. designated to lure buyers away from sport utility vehicles and back to cars.