(first posted 5/22/2013) Around the turn of the century, the popularity of truck-based SUVs as family cars hit its zenith, and automakers looked for new teats to milk on their seemingly infinite cash cow. CUVs, the apparent next hot thing, were just taking off. Enter General Motors with a brilliant new idea how to jump on the bandwagon.
Toyota had brought the concept of a “Crossover Utility Vehicle” to the market a few years earlier, first with the compact RAV4, and later with the Lexus RX 300 (CC here). Both of these cute-utes were based on car platforms and raised up to near-SUV ride height. Their advantages included improved fuel economy (vs. SUVs), “command of the road” visibility, and perhaps most importantly–at least in the minds of consumers–the image of an active lifestyle.
So let’s take a moment and try to get into the minds of GM product planners and relive how today’s subject car came to be:
“Our research shows that younger people are flocking to SUVs. Our findings also discovered that people buying SUVs rarely take them off-road. We need to find a good compromise. What do we have in the corporate parts bin?”
“Well, how about the U-Van?”
“That’s it! We’ll jack one up, give it some flashy styling and they won’t know what hit ’em! The profit margins will be huge!”
“Great! Now which division gets it?”
“Um, give it to Pontiac; they can handle it. After all, they are The Excitement Division.”
“Okay, but we need to spread out the costs, so we need another version.”
“Well, that Lexus RX thingy looks promising, so let’s go upscale. How about, oh, I don’t know, give one to Buick!”
“Perfect!”
A concept version of the Aztek was shown in 1999, and was quite well received. Then again, it’s known that car show enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily translate to sales success.
Sadly, something was lost in translation on the way to production, and we ended up with the “rolling dumpster” you see here. Once you got past its…um, styling, and rather unrefined 3.4-liter V6, the Aztek actually had a lot going for it. The minivan chassis it sat on allowed for rather spacious passenger and cargo room.
Innovative features included a center console that doubled as a pull-out cooler. There was also an optional, up-level stereo system that included rear-cargo area controls for tailgating parties. There was also the optional Versatrak all-wheel-drive-system.
An interesting available feature was the available tent that fit over the Aztek’s back, turning it into an instant camper.
GM had high hopes for the Aztek, and had projected sales of around 75,000 per year; well, let’s just say that didn’t happen. In its best year, 2002, Aztek sales topped out at 27,793, many of which were to fleets.
So what was the problem? Well, for one, there was the styling. If GM had taken a bit more time to sweat out the visual details and work on the proportioning, the Aztek probably would have done better in the marketplace. The second problem was the pricing: The Gen-X target market Pontiac wanted to attract simply found it too expensive.
By 2002, GM realized it had the makings of a flop on its hands and started making changes. First, they dropped the pricey GT model; next was changing most of the grey plastic cladding to body color. Although that helped things visually, the damage had been done.
Model year 2002 also saw the introduction of the Buick Rendezvous, a slightly longer version of the Aztek with arguably better styling and a nicer interior that featured an optional third row. Though the two did not share any sheet metal, their tall and ungainly proportions made it all too obvious that they were related.
The Rendezvous went on to achieve modest success for Buick, and it would survive until the Enclave came along to replace it in 2007. The poor Aztek, meanwhile, quietly faded from the scene after 2005; its swan song was a Rally Edition that came along around 2003 and basically offered a more-monotone exterior and some minor trim upgrades.
Despite its rejection in the marketplace, the Aztek has since built up quite a cult following, with various owner clubs around the U.S. Sometimes, people just like to be different.
Today’s feature Aztek was a great find for your humble author. I found both it and the Rendezvous at my local Ford dealer, just down the street (and on the same day) from where I shot the Plymouth Acclaim. I have been wanting to do a CC on the Aztek for some time, but I wanted to find the right one.
I can identify this one as a 2001 model by its first-year-only Citrus Green exterior. It’s so ugly that I love it! In fact, IF I was to have an Aztek, this one is equipped exactly the way I’d want one, with the leather interior and even in the right color. I guess if you’re going to go ugly, you should go all the way!
GM had used the nostrils in the hood idea in their early 60s Chevy pickups.
I purchased a black Aztek rally edition year model 2005 purely by accident. Came back after few years of working overseas and needed an inexpensive set of wheels right away. The seller was being deployed overseas and he needed to sell right away. I paid him the asking price, he gave me back few hundred dollars. Didn’t even bargain.
I didn’t care much for the look but I was in no position to be picky while settling in. 3 years into owning this car. I can say it has grown on me. My kids call it “Black Thunder”. It has +150k miles on it. I drive LA to Sacramento almost every week and it is very comfortable for long rides. I had two kids, 3 bikes, boogie boards plus all our luggage for a two week trip inside with some room left.
The bad so far, power steering pump and instrument cluster. I replaced the first and use my phone as GPS/speedometer.
Still looking for something as comfortable to ride (sitting up upright with your legs in comfortable position). So far a Tacoma and a jeep were not close. I also need something with that much cargo space.
Pontiac was producing some pretty awful looking plastic junk in the ’80s and ’90s. The Fiero and Aztek serve as poster children as to what really went wrong to the once proud division. GM in general was riding on a set of rails that were so grossly misaligned that it reflected it in everything they built back in those nasty old days of plastic cladded crap. The G8 was a minor bright spot for Pontiac, but it was too late for the scarred division to stand out with a sense of pride. The Aztek will forever remain as Pontiac’s greatest design disaster ever.
My uncle gave me his ’03 Aztek since he got a stroke and couldn’t drive no more. It had like 40,000 miles when I got it but the air conditioner didn’t work and power steering leaked from the rack. I also had to replace the water pump but didn’t fix the ac or the ps leak would cost big bucks to fix. My plans were to make my Aztek into a kick ass entertanement center. I built a 35,000 watt sound system with a 23 inch sub woofer that costed me twice what the Aztek was worth! The cheeap plastic crap GM uses rattles so badly even the crap sheet medal buckled when I played my music. Aztek was a tin can junk. I sold the crap aztek to a salvage yard for 500 bucks the timing belt broke and no powersteering all that with less than 100 K! JUNK! I ended up taken out my sound system and got a Scion Xb that is nice to put it in. Scion is high quality and dosent rattle when I turn up the bass.
So that was YOU next to me at the light last night?
Ive still yet to see an Aztec in the metal nobody yet seems to have imported one, but like other ugly cars it will become cool one day.
As someone who is habitually a car nerd, I fortunately never knew of the existence of this abomination until I discovered Walter White.
In hindsight, the Aztek is actually pretty tasteful and restrained by modern standards…
The Aztek and Rendevous were attempts by GM to recoup their mini van investment. The dustbusters flopped and GM spent a Billion on it. GM spent the next decade trying to recoup that loss.
The Aztek looks like crap because GM put it on the dustbuster body after showing the Aztek as a show car that WASN’T on the dustbuster body.
GM needed for a return on that Billion.
As for the Element (and the Nissan Cube), old people like Hondas. The only buyers attracted to these cars were oldsters.
I lived in Michigan when GM shamelessly released these mini-garbage-truck-lookin’ turds. They quickly resorted to all but forcing GM employees to drive them, in a pathetic effort to create the illusion of market acceptance.
I guess they have something of a cult following now; why, veritable tens of people think it’s cool to have the kind of car that was used in “Breaking Bad”.
Right, here we go again: will someone please fish the longer of my two comments out of the trash?
Better looking everyday now compared to the horrors shown at the Kia and Toyota dealers. Beginning to look almost elegant and classy.
I have a friend who bought a Rendezvous, and one day we were going someplace in it and he saw an Aztek and said, “Jeezus, who would buy something like that?”. I said, “Apparently, you!”. He argued and argued it wasn’t anything like the Aztek, and it was a Buick. I said, “Like the Pontiac T-1000 you had years ago wasn’t a Chevette?” He had made fun of some girl driving a Chevette years ago, and I looked at him like he was insane. He just was floored when I pointed out his T1000 was almost exactly the same car. At least he never had a Cadillac Cimmaron. My neighbor bought one, totally clueless as to what it was, a Cavalier with a fancy interior. He seems to be “platform blind” on cars. He had no idea that a Dodge Charger and Challenger, and Chrysler 300 are basically the same car. We were in my ’10 Challenger soon after I bought it, and he said, “I like this car a lot more than your Charger!”. I said, “Yeah, it looks a lot better anyway, but it’s still the same car mechanically”. I had to show him the video of the assembly line to convince him I was correct on that. Pretty much the same interior and drivetrain should have been a clue, but he doesn’t seem to be able to see it. He’s kind of faceblind too, seeing people and claiming they look like some celebrity and as someone who never forgets a face, it amused me greatly when he claimed some girl on a commercial looked like Marissa Tomei. “You must be on drugs if you think that!”. It kind of goes along with his “platform blindness” I guess. He comes up with “looks just like…” every so often and I have to wonder if something is wrong with his vision. And then there are the countless times people have walked up to him who obviously know him and me and he has no idea who they are. We had his daughter with him and were in Costco and this woman, who I recognized instantly, ran up to him and said, “Hi Bill!” and hugged him and said, “This must be your daughter!” to him. He had no clue who she was. He played along and then after she left, his daughter says to me, “So who was she?”. I looked at Bill and said, “She was almost your mom!” Bill says, “WTF are you talking about?” I said, “That was Laynie, Bill, you know, you went out with her for a whole year about 30 years ago?”. He vehemently denied it was her, and then said something that made me and the daughter crack up. “How did she know she was my kid and not yours?”. Me and his daughter looked at each other and cracked up. We couldn’t believe he was serious. His kids look and even the daughter talks just like him, so much they are called “clones”. He said he didn’t think they looked like him at all, which is crazy. When we got back to his house, I asked him if he had his high school yearbooks and we looked up Laynie. The daughter says, “Yeah, she still looks the same!”. He looked at her picture for a few minutes and insisted she looks totally different now. Older, sure, but no much different at all. His wife came in and the daughter says, “Dad’s ex girlfriend showed up at Costco and he didn’t know who she was!”. She looked at the pic and said, “Oh, that’s Laynie, one of the ones before me!”. Then she rattled off the names of all of them, in order, she knew 3 of them, she went to school with them. Bill insists to this day that it wasn’t Laynie at Costco and the whole thing is some sort of practical joke his wife, daughter, and I cooked up to screw with his head. His 35th high school reunion is next month, and I told his wife to take video of him talking to Laynie when they go to watch the wheels spin in his head when he sees her name tag. He probably won’t recognize 90% of the people there.
That was a funny story. I bet most of us have had a friend like that.
Hey, TheMann, where’s my $3.12? X^)
You can’t re-write history , this thing was a monumental flop. Breaking Bad , made it some what “hip”, but it’s so ugly from every angle that it instantly became Pontiac’s Edsel. The concept front looks a whole lot better and probably would have done better.
Is this the reason that Pontiac had to go? Sad ending to a brand that broke all the rules in the 1960’s and gave us so many historic , now classic cars.