(first posted here on 11/8/2016) Yes, when it comes to GM, there were definitely more than seven deadly sins. Actually, there were tens of millions of them. And while this is perhaps one of the less conspicuous and pernicious ones (I didn’t label it as such until I put up the first picture and had to rewrite the title), it is one nevertheless. And what is the sin this innocuous sedan embodies? Thou shalt not take thy godly names in vain.
Undoubtedly, there are worse sins GM has committed. But no one destroyed names better and faster than the General. Nevertheless, slapping on the name of what once was a one of GM’s most exulted cars that embodied the golden decade of Pontiac in the sixties on this crappy little mid-sized corporate sedan typified GM’s death spiral of the eighties. It perfectly encapsulates the loss of direction Pontiac experienced during the mothership’s worst decade ever.
How fast the mighty fall, given how twenty years earlier the ’63 Bonneville was the style leader of the whole industry.
Chalk it all up to the price of oil, both high and low, the fickle American consumer, and a loss of direction and styling inspiration. When GM successfully downsized its full-sized cars in 1977, the new Pontiacs utterly failed to ignite the buyers unlike its corporate siblings. Perhaps the restrained and more formal look of the boxier ’77s just didn’t work with Pontiac’s exuberant image, but the new Pontiacs really were rather lackluster. Anyway, big coupes were out, and the sedans were barely indistinguishable from its corporate siblings. The days when Pontiac could break away from the pack with a bold front end were over, and so was Pontiac.
With the new B-bodies lagging, and a nasty second energy crisis spiking gas to breathtaking heights, Pontiac made a crap-shoot move: kill the big cars entirely. Reminiscent of Chrysler’s disastrous 1962 great shrinkage, Pontiac’s move was at least based on the price of gas rather than a rumor. But it turned out almost as bad anyway, since oil prices are about an equally unreliable planning tool. At least in the eighties, as oil quickly began the most dramatic drop ever.
So for 1982, Pontiac slapped the Bonneville name, plus the enigmatic Model G surname, on its LeMans mid-sized sedan. Well, that didn’t turn out so well, and Pontiac probably saw it coming before it even played itself out, because by 1983 the Canadian-sourced full-sized Parisienne was back in the showrooms. The one-year gap to find a replacement for the old Bonnie was just a bit longer than it took Dodge to cobble together the full-size 880 in 1962.
This version of the downsized B-bodies came along a couple of years after the disastrous Aero-back sedans that Buick and Olds was inflicted with. Pontiac was spared that sin, and the ’78 LeMans shared a slightly modified “normal” sedan body with the Chevy Malibu. But the quickly revised traditional four doors for Buick and Olds, which heavily aped the 1975 Seville, found its way across the board.
It certainly was innocuous enough; too much so, with the identity same problem as GM’s FWD clone-mobiles of the era. It takes a practiced eye to tell this car apart from its Buick, Olds and Malibu stablemates. Who cared anymore anyway? They were all the same.
Given that the bigger GM B-bodies of the times were quite successful with redeeming qualities, it’s disappointing that the downsized A-bodies were decidedly more modest in their ambitions. Some faulted me for giving the 1979 Malibu Coupe a rather glowing CC retrospective. I admit that my feelings were more about the potential of these cars than the real thing. They were sized right, without the excessive overhangs and obesity of their predecessors, and had the potential benefit of GM’s engine and suspension prowess. Unfortunately, that potential was rarely fulfilled.
Most of them came with the enfeebled 231 CID (3.8 L) Buick V6, which was choked to 110 hp. The Chevy 305 packing 150 hp gave the closest approximation of performance, given the fairly light weight. We’ll just avoid any mention of the Olds diesel V8. The Buick V6 and the Chevy V8 were fundamentally solid lumps, but quality issues were so rampant at GM during the eighties that even engines made for decades were suddenly suspect. The downsized THMD 200 automatics that backed them were well beyond suspect.
The general feel of the cars, especially by the mid eighties, was just deadly. As in deadly boring, or deadly unreliable, or at best, mortally modest. The fact that GM could screw up such a fundamentally simple car, with fairly clean lines, helps explain its plummeting market share during their production years. Taking the Bonneville name along for the ride into the muck of mediocrity was the final straw. Pontiac was finished, except for its protracted death march in the years to come as the Walmart BMW.
These new CCs brought over from TTAC really give a sense of the mentality over at TTAC at the time. Paul and his son were trending all over with their GM death watch. The death watch series that was delighting in the failure of the great institution that is GM. Never mind all the people that worked there or all the people that drove and even bought GM products. Paul being older and smarter could give more historical perspective, but with the same bias and venom.
That GM is still one of the top car manufacturers in the world is such a thorn in the side of TTAC. The comeback happened while TTAC imploded and was itself sold off to foreign corporatists. A bailout. Ha.
Meanwhile we have this Bonneville. Looks like it did a pretty good job giving a big car experience in a smaller, more efficient package. A hot part of the market in the early 80s. You can see of course how the bean counters went to town on that upholstery. Sure it lasted 25+ yers, but any day now it will tear and show how half ass it was.
Yes, I know, the buyer could have had an Accord. But if this Bonneville buyer had bought the Accord, he wouldn’t have liked it and Paul definitely wouldn’t have liked to see him in one. See the cool people bought the Accord and the stupid losers bought the Bonneville. Or is it the reverse. I can never remember…
The Accord buyers got a reliable well constructed vehicle and never came back. Had the X bodies been any good, they’d have captured that market. GM was a flurry of missed opportunity in this time span.
Not really. It wasn’t until the early ’90s when Accord had been made in Ohio for a while, those cars can stay in one piece for a while in winter with road salt. First few waves of Honda buyers probably went back to GM or Ford, and realized their rust resistance was only somehow less worse ( early Chevy Celebrity, Ford Fairmont such ) and the best bet they had was Chrysler K-car with undercoating done right.
Well-constructed & reliable doesn’t mean rustproof; that’s a different issue. At any rate, rust resistance is irrelevant for most Sunbelt buyers. I only recently learned about Honda rust from Midwesterners & Easterners online!
Over here where road salt is unknown Hondas still rust.
Hondas are well-built, dare I say better built than Toyotas. Where Honda falls short of Toyota is material quality. The rubber used in the bushings do not last as long as Toyotas and the quality of the steel/rust proofing fall short of Toyota and even GM.
As far as rust proofing Mazda is probably the worst.
Yes they is true with the early 90’s Honda mine didn’t make 7 years in NJ. My Accord was great in all other regards.
John, your comments are a little misconstrued.
Nowhere in this article nor any other GM Deadly Sin published here ever criticized the people who built them or the people who bought them. These articles are meant to give insight into the poor corporate decisions of the world’s largest automaker at the time, and shed light on why its market share declined so significantly.
All automakers and all companies in general make poor decisions, have their issues, and lack of quality in one area or another. GM just happens to have had a lot of them over the years.
In your first and fourth paragraphs, you’re saying that Paul and other writers are openly deriding GM owners and employees, when that is what you in fact are doing yourself to Paul, the other writers, and GM/Honda owners.
Amen; the purpose of the GM DS series has always been available here on the site.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/on-the-purpose-and-nature-of-gms-deadly-sins/
Read all the claims by people over the years accusing Paul of “GM Bashing”, which is simply nonsense since he has explained his position on the matter many times.
One cannot tell the story of GM’s decline without explaining how they got there.
I have to say Paul’s view isn’t exactly quite neutral on many cars of those. However it’s very hard to pick up a good point of view anyway.
Another factor is time. 6 Years ago, those cars are really crappy, just as crappy as a 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera now. But even those crappy cars would appear better, if the time goes far enough. Even Dodge Diplomat is pretty nowadays, more than ever.
John, your comment has some major deadly sins in it. 🙂
First, my GM Deadly Sins series didn’t start until the bailout was completed. It was intended as a chronicle of the decline of GM.
Second, I was always pro-bailout. My son and I don’t always (rarely?) see eye-to-eye. And I was hopeful and optimistic that the new GM would be able to leave the past behind and prosper, having learned from its lessons. That’s been a somewhat mixed picture, the ignition key fiasco/scandal being a serious black eye and a sign that it’s not always so easy to change. I am glad to see GM is doing well now.
Third, GM’s success is hardly a thorn in TTAC’s side, inasmuch as the two main proponents of the Death Watch/anti-Bailout moved on a number of years ago.
Fourth, TTAC never imploded nor needed a bailout. I don’t know what gave you that idea. Robert Farago, TTAC’s founder, sold TTAC to Name Media back in 2005 or early 2006, before he started the Death Watch. And it was precisely that series that made TTAC really big. That’s how I found it. Name Media was not in the business of owning web sites like TTAC, so they sold it to Vertical Scope sometime along the way (2009,I think), which does own hundreds of sites. The site has presumably been successful all along.
Your last paragraph is as confused and lacking in insight as the previous ones. I’m sorry you have a hard time keeping facts and history straight, and lack a perspective on them, but I don’t think there’s anything further that I could say to help you with that. So I won’t.
“…the great institution that is GM.”
You mean the one that shed it’s 50% market share and went bankrupt?
I don’t believe Paul, or for that fact most readers of this site, were delighting in the failure of GM. This series just highlights the cars that bought upon that failure.
GM? a long gone brand here they ran asway when rebadged Daewoos failed to get much traction though Opel is coming back according to adverts Ive seen but thats a rebadged Peugeot now.
I thought so then and I still think so now: the shrunken GM intermediates’ styling looked lumpy, ungainly and ill-proportioned. It was as though GM went too far the other way from the bloated Colonnades. The downsized 1977 B-bodies maintained…even reinstated…grace in big-car styling that had not been a hallmark of the 1971-1976 models. But GM couldn’t pull it off a second time.
What I remember most about the downsized A bodies was that the rear window did not function. Seemed very stupid at the time.
You have to remember, these are the days when the Corporate Accountants called the shots.
Non-active rear windows meant lower costs.
Guess the corporate accountants didn’t own these, or carry rear seat passengers.
Somehow I get the feeling corporate accountants don’t own cars, live in 500 sq ft micro condos, ride the bus and light rail and whose sole existence is to try to make others lives as miserable as theirs. At least it seems that way.
That was my thought too; even the cheaper, lighter, skinflint Fairmont had roll-down rear windows. Otherwise I was inclined to like these A-bodies.
Ford saved money other ways on the Fairmont with dime thick door glass, a stalk substituting for the horn, little to no sound insulation and old low powered gutless carryover engines.
Of course the Fairmont was cheap; it was for the budget compact market instead of intermediates like A-bodies. Yet the stalk horn was not for cost but airbag compatibility (premature as it turned out), & was later used even on their top-line models. The thin glass & insulation were more likely for weight reduction, as were aluminum bumpers & the fragile Bordeaux automatic. This was why it was several hundred lbs. lighter than GM’s A-bodies, despite its size, & could use the Pinto engine for CAFE compliance.
The carryover engines I grant, but that was part of the larger, chronic issue of low powertrain investment. Not until the Modular did Ford get serious about this.
I’ve always wondered how modern cars with all their wheel-mounted controls cope when the airbag deploys. Flying switchgear?
IIRC, this was done to provide has much rear seat width as possible. Without the window assembly, the doors could be thinner.
Actually, the lack of a window assembly allowed the designers to use that area for arm rests recessed into that space, which allowed for a little more useable hip-room.
“Little more” is the key in that plan. The actual seat itself was shortened as well. Gave “more” space between front/back seats.
Not comfortable for adults for any “time/distance” rides.
Right? “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Talk about a stupid, clumsy, out-of-touch, braindead, tonedeaf, cheapskate decision!
On an A/C-equipped car, it wasn’t such a big deal.
There were rumors in the early 1980’s that GM was going to do a two stage downsizing process of the B-body. Initially, the FWD A-body was supposed to replace the RWD A/G-body. While the 1982 Caprice was supposed to be basically a rebadged Malibu (like the Bonneville) as a temporary solution until the new FWD B-bodies were released. Of course this didn’t happen do to constant delays and GM’s supposed lack of money due to low sales. Along with the decrease in gas prices and the relaxing of CAFE, eventually the plans changed.
I do recall reading that the Pontiac Bonneville was downsized/rebadged because it was selling poorly as a B-body. That said, GM of Canada didn’t like this plan and badge engineered a Caprice into the Parisienne for 1982. This was brought to the US market in 1983. A 1981 Parisienne was essentially the same as a US 1981 Bonneville, but with Chevy engines.
Were the 85 C and H bodies supposed to be the new FWD B bodies? It would be interesting to see what a FWD Chevy Caprice H body would look like.
I think the W body was originally to replace the RWD B body. When the Bs continued, they were recast as bigger mid size.
As I understand it, the B-body’s FWD replacement was not to include a Chevrolet or Pontiac version (which is why there wasn’t any Chevrolet or Pontiac version when the H-bodies first debuted). With the price of gas skyrocketing to $5 a gallon, customers in their price classes were presumed to be uninterested in any vehicle that large.
Meanwhile, the N-body was originally supposed to replace the RWD A-/G-body personal luxury coupes, and was to have versions from all three B-O-P brands, but not Chevrolet. This is why the first-year 1985 N-bodies came only as coupes, and why there was no Chevrolet version. (I assume the similar L-body Corsica and Beretta were developed later, after the N-body was repurposed as a replacement for the X-body, and there would now need to be some kind of Chevrolet equivalent.)
I’m not sure how the W-body fits in to this. Given that the W-body was initially rolled out as a replacement for the G-body personal luxury coupes, it may not have existed yet at the time of the original plan, only being created later, after the N-body had been diverted from its original purpose. On the other hand, I’ve seen suggestions that the Lumina sedan began as a proposal for Chevrolet to have an FWD sedan larger than the A-body which would serve as a replacement for the Caprice, but would be smaller and more downscale than the H-body.
I’m feeling dizzy from all those letters flying around!
Yes, H-Body was supposed to be B-Body, and the derived C-Body replaced the old C-Body. And future was projected so bad that Chevy buyers can no longer afford a Caprice.
Keep in mind, this was all based on the Auto rumours of the day, but yes I believe that GM’s original intention was to make a new FWD B-body including one for Chevrolet. This ultimately became the 1986 H-body. If you look back now, GM’s second downsize and switch to FWD plan kind of made sense, but as typical for GM of this era it was botched badly. Based on the old rumors, I believe the RWD A-body was supposed to be replaced by the 1982 FWD A-body. The next wave was supposed to be the B-bodies being replaced with a FWD “downsized” platform in around 1983 or 1984. If they did this and dropped the old RWD platforms it kind of made sense. It was similar to Chrysler dropping the RWD cars and switch all to FWD platforms, albeit GM would have been on a larger scale.
Instead things went wrong, and programs got majorly delayed. GM blamed lack of cash as a big problem. Things changed quickly as gas prices dropped, the economy picked up and all of a sudden the big Chevy was selling again. I am not sure why GM ultimately didn’t make a H-body Caprice, but I would suspect that a big reason was the car was an easy profit (much like the G-bodies that hung on). GM had the capital, the know how and the engineering to bring out a new wave of FWD fullsize cars in the early 1980’s, but they really messed it up big time. I guess the only benefit was that the Caprice stuck around much longer than it should have. I don’t believe the GM10 program was much on the radar in the early 80’s, but again GM, especially Chevrolet, botched those cars BIG time.
Here is an old Dunne Report from 1980 I found that talks about next wave of downsizing (see “Once more, with Feeling”). It also mentions that Pontiac getting out of the full size car business.
Notice in the same article mention that an electronic automatic transmission would be installed in 1983 or 1984 V8 Chevrolet Caprices – a possible indicator that Chevy would be keeping its big car in production while Pontiac would drop out and other divisions would go through the downsize wringer. I don’t think a downsized 83-84 front-drive Impala/Caprice would have offered a V8 engine even as an option – certainly not side-mounted and GM most certainly didn’t have an automatic transmission for front-drive/transverse engine applications in the 1980s that was compatible with the SBC 305 or 350, and certainly the higher-powered turbo 3.8 Buick V6 offered in later Regal Grand Nationals.
Do any drawings exist of a proposed fwd H-body Caprice?? I’d very much like to see them if so! That would make a very interesting article for anyone who knows about this aborted program to write about.
Bill
I’m always very very confused as to how advance and radical new design the 1987 Pontiac Bonneville was from the outgoing model above, which lasted until 1986.
Place a 1987 Bonneville next to a 1986 model side by side and the all new Bonneville, based off the then Park Avenue platform. Has not one tiny bit of resemblance to the outgoing model. It makes you wonder if GM had introduced the Bonneville in say 1985 instead of 1987. then I think it would have beat out the 1986 Ford Taurus as far as an innovative design for the decade.
Who knows what was going on inside GM during these years, but it was anything but good. GM should have had a replacement for the A-body FWD cars at the Taurus’ release or at the very least the next year. Instead it took them until 1990 to release the Lumina which still wasn’t as good as the 1986 Taurus. In my opinion the Celebrity was GM’s deadly sin, not the ’76 Malibu he listed yesterday. It was this car that handed over the lucrative midsize market to Ford.
As for the H-body Bonneville, I agree that it should have been to market much early. GM planned to have these cars in 1983 or 1984 but bungled the release big time. I don’t know if it would have ben a direct competitor with the Taurus as Bonneville is a larger size class, but that car would have done very well if released on time.
I suspect that GM Canada kept the Parisienne for ’82 simply because Pontiac, which had historically been more downscale in Canada than in the U.S., had a long tradition of offering a lineup that matched Chevrolet’s model-for-model, with very few exceptions. Since Chevrolet dealers would still have a B-body, Pontiac dealers wanted to have one, too.
It’s interesting to think that, if gas prices had continued to climb for another year, we could’ve seen a G-body Caprice, Delta 88 and LeSabre, in addition to the G-body Bonneville. Note that Chrysler essentially did the same thing, repurposing its M-body sedans into the full-size slot in its lineup.
MCT hit on why this baby Bonne was not a success, gas prices. The experts were predicting that we’d be paying European prices for gas by the early to mid eighties. It didn’t happen. Had it happened, Pontiac would have been lauded for their foresight. Instead we are discussing how bad they goofed.
I think you are correct MCT. Full-size Pontiacs were always considered a “low price” car in Canada and traditionally sold very well. While downsize Pontiac didn’t do well in the US, it was still a strong seller in Canada. I suspect when GM of Canada got the news that they were stopping a B-body Pontiac, the 1982 Parisienne was the solution.
I took a tour of Oshawa Assembly back then and every Chev B body on the line was a cop car or taxi but there was the occasional Pontiac in the mix. They were also assembling FWD A bodies and were very proud they could assemble both drivetrain styles on one line. Dealers in Canada were always Chev-Olds-Cad & Pontiac-Buick-Cad so you can see the PBC dealers wanted a full size car to compete with the Caprice.
The GM dealer network setup in Canada was also very different than in the U.S. at the time. Instead of all 5 divisions (plus GMC Truck and Coach) having their own dealer networks, GM Canada had just two: 1. Chevrolet-Oldsmobile-Chevy Trucks (and Cadillac in a few Chevy-Olds stores in larger cities). 2. Pontiac-Buick-GMC Trucks. Both dealer bodies had low and medium-priced cars/brands plus near-luxury cars (i.e. Ninety-Eight and Toronado; and Electra and Riviera), and trucks. For the full-sized buyers, Chevrolet had the low end starting with the Bel Air and Impala, and then the Caprice Classic while the same dealership also had the Olds Delta 88 (base, Royale, Royale Brougham) and the C-body Ninety-Eight (LS, Regency, Brougham). At the Pontiac-Buick dealer, there were the low end Pontiac Laurentian and Catalina – equivalents of the Bel Air and Impala; the Parisienne and the Parisienne Brougham (the most luxurious GM B-body as was the Bonneville Brougham in the U.S.); and then Buick had the LeSabre (base, Custom, Limited) and the Electra (Limited and Park Avenue) – so both dealer bodies had similarly-priced lineups of larger cars. Engines in the Chevy, Olds and Buick models were much the same as the U.S. with 229 V6 for Chevy, 231 and 252 V6 for Buick and Olds, 305 V8 for Chevy, and 307 V8 for Olds and Buick. Pontiacs, however used Chevrolet’s engine lineup in all models including the 229 V6 and 305 V8. Only engine used across the board by all 4 divisions in full-sized cars was the Olds 350 Diesel. And going to the small end of the market, the Chevy-Olds house had Chevettes and Citations, and Omegas, while Pontiac-Buick stores had the Chevette-clone Pontiac Acadian (renamed T-1000 for the U.S. market) along with the X-body Phoenix and Skylark.
They should’ve handled the RWD-to-FWD transition the way Toyota did with the Corolla, have a transitional generation of FWD sedans and 5-door hatchbacks/wagons alongside (fully up-to-date-looking) RWD coupes.
The worst part of this car is the fact that the windows for the back doors wont roll down.
I find one real problem with this being Pontiac’s “Luxury” car. The front end looks identical to the front end of the X-body Phoenix. I get that they had to keep a corporate look and it may have saved on some of the tooling costs but the fiberglass grill / headlight surround and the front fenders look like they are interchangeable. Not exactly something to aspire too.
The front end of the 1982 G-body Bonneville was supposed to give it more of the look of the former B-body car. The 1981 Lemans had a totally different looking front end and it looked cheaper. The change IMO was appropriate for this car’s mission and did make it look more upscale. Pontiac was not a luxury brand but due to it’s lack of focus ended up appealing more to the luxury crowd than the sporty crowd during this time.
I personally think the ’81 LeMans front end was more graceful-looking. The ’82-’86 nose treatment did look more upscale, but it also looked slightly lumpy, or perhaps melty is more accurate. Curved lines that looked like they should have been straight.
Also the ’82 Bonneville (Grand LeMans in Canada) front and grillework was designed to give the G-body sedan a look resembling the Grand Prix coupe (which sold far better than the LeMans/Bonneville G sedans and Safari wagons). Also worth noting was that Pontiac also carried over the LeMans/Grand LeMans Safari wagons to the Bonneville G/Brougham for 1982 and 1983 – the wagons were dropped for 1984 with the introduction of the 6000 Safari wagon. With Chevrolet discontinuing the Malibu lineup entirely after 1983 to concentrate on the Celebrity as its mid-sized car offering and BOP also dropping the G-body wagons; the Bonneville, Buick Regal and Olds Cutlass Supreme were the last 4-door G-body cars offered – and one-by-one, they too would disappear: the Regal expired after 1984, the Bonneville lasted through 1986 and then the name went to the H-body full-sized sedan in 1987, leaving the Olds Cutlass Supreme sole surviving 4-door G-car for 1987 – after which year, it too, disappeared.
My friend Randy’s grandmother had the Buick version of this with the V6. I believe it was the 83 model as well. It replaced a orange 79 Bobcat that has replaced a 76 4dr Comet which had been destroyed by the 79 tornado. I remember it as a pretty nice ride although the back seat was torture during Texas summers because of the fixed rear windows. During short trips in town the AC never seemed to make it back there. I don’t remember it being all that slow, but of course that was in comparison to all the other contemporary rides at the time. Being new it was ok. I don’t remember how long she kept it nor what she replaced it with.
Clearly the passage of time can mellow one’s view of things, but renaming the Lemans to push it upscale was a ill advised move at best. Did GM really think people were that blind? We had four Pontiacs in the family at the time (a 73 Grand Am, a 77 Grand Prix, a 79 Lemans and a 1982 Lemans) and I recall thinking at the time how weird the whole situation was.The only remedy here would have been to reintroduce the full size car sourced from Canada with a heavy face lift and call it Bonneville. Nah, some Parisienne badges and changes to the light bezels sound good. Other than a new 1986 6000 S/E (Dad loved it) to replace the GA, these were the last Pontiacs we purchased for 25 years!
So the first two cars I owned were a 1982 Chevy Celebrity (A-body) and a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (A body become G-body.)
One major demerit for the G-body was the lack of rear seat legroom compared to the A-body FWD. If you forced me into the backseat of one for a coast to coast trip, I’d pick the FWD A-body every dang time. TBI also meant that the A-body was easier to live with on a day to day basis.
To drive give me the G-body (although mine had the 307 V8 and four speed auto with posi) – I was fortunate that although mine was a Brougham it did not have the vinyl top.
Hi Principaldan
My first car was a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera LS (got it in 1993). Loved that car! You are correct in you’re breakdown of the A bodies.
The Pontiac 6000/STE, Celebrity Eurosport/VR6, Buick Century T-Type etc where true competitive trim level mid sized cars. All four models were great road trip cars with a usable back seat space I recall. I always thought if only GM had used a little more high quality interior material, throw in some fancy cup holders, ditch the 2.5 problematic (Iron Duke) as the base engine-and just keep the 2.8 V6 as standard with the 3.8 as optional.
Had GM done these few things, I believe that the A bodies could have easily been the best mid sized sedans in their class against the imports like the Nissan Maxima, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord etc.
John –
You are right about detecting a tinge of anger in the Death Watch, but that anger comes from frustration, not glee. A lot of us of a certain
agegeneration share that frustration. I am struggling a bit to find a suitable analogy….but let’s say in 1966 you had an aunt whom you always admired as you were growing up. Beautiful, smart, athletic, and always just a little ahead of everybody else. Oh, and sexy, and in a wholesome way… none of those odd quirks of those sophisticated European girls. You keep pictures of her on your bedroom wall. You want her. By 1967, she’s not just beautiful, she’s Playboy model beautiful. She goes Hollywood, and it’s Eldorado Time.Then around 1970, something goes wrong. She blows all her money on some star maker long shot company (call it, say, ‘Vega Productions’) because taste in movies is changing. Her image is tarnished by her involvement, and the government regulators start watching her like a hawk – in fact they pass a couple of new laws that, uhm, ‘really cramp her style’. Sexiness is out, drab prudence is in… and in the midst of all this her doctor insists she needs braces on her teeth. BIG ugly braces. Oh, and because of some breathing problems, she doesn’t run very well any more (she used to be the fastest) and is becoming generally unreliable.
By mid 80’s, she’s hawking magic dog food on late night tv. Sure, she’s had a few decent movies off and on, but generally, she has slid downhill…. a lot. Suddenly she gets a great idea. She gets a really cheap and sloppy movie company together and starts releasing new short but not so good movies using the old titles of her great movies of the 60’s. Sadly, some people fall for it, and are happy till they get home, and open the package. After a few years, the word is out, and no matter how good her later work, everybody always remembers you can’t trust her.
She’s your aunt. She was great. Do you think you’d be a little frustrated and angry with her?
^^^There it is, in a nutshell. Perfect!
Thanks for this. But I would put it this way. GM is spectacular in the sixties and the government is after them. Anti trust and allowing in Toyota with their unlicenced copies of Chevrolet drivetrains. The seventies come, a slowing economy and a need for smaller cars. The Gremlin showed how bare bones a Vega design could be but Chevy went ahead with a lighter more expensive more innovative engine, and again fantastic styling. Japan was paying it’s workers 20% of the UAW but GM still gave it a go. And got nothing but shit and emission standards in return. The eighties are coming and with a gas crisis so major changes are engineered. FWD and massively smaller bodies, time is taken to retain an American driving feel. Not an easy task with such small cars. This time the shit comes even thicker. Honda had gradually been evolving their single platform into a fuller line at the small end and caught on with the young hip well off crowd. This demo had very different politics that no longer had loyalty to American institutions.
Advise keeps coming. Give up following your own ideas. Benchmark. Build an Accord, build a Civic build a BMW 5 series, spend the farm to do it but you don’t have a choice. GM did by borrowing and as then always happens, bankruptcy follows by the next downturn.
As an alternative scenario, look at GM’s trucks. No serious foreign competition and sound gradual development with ever more profitable products. The cars could have been this way as well.
That is a unique version of historical events! I think that we can all agree that if GM had not faced competition, fuel price increases, the need to downsize cars, emissions control standards and changing consumer expectations of automotive performance/durability then they probably would not have gone bankrupt.
There is no doubt that the big three all struggled mightily during the 70’s and 80’s with all of these factors and they all came very close to bankruptcy. The thing is that Ford somehow figured out how to recover its mojo during the mid 1980’s and GM continued to NOT adapt, which lead to the GM bailout.
Wow, this is just incredible. So incredible it might just be total hogwash. Let me just reach for my sarcasm. There we go.
– The government was after GM? I’d love to see some evidence for that. Poor ginormous corporation full of money and lobbyists gets pushed around like that… So sad. And Ford, AMC and Mopar laughing all the way to the bank…
– Toyota drivetrains were copies of Chevrolets? I missed that memo. How come the “copies” did better than the original? Crafty foreigners!
– Toyota were “allowed in”? Yes, there were absolutely no import duties or quotas back then, it was a totally level playing field. Now that’s what I call free trade! Why do we need the TPP? And of course, Toyota et. al. just waltzed in without any effort and captured an increasing slice of the market just like that, magically. Aided and abetted by the nefarious US government, of course…
– Vega engines were “innovative”? I wanted to build an innovative engine made of plywood and bakelite that ran on beer farts, but after testing, it was deemed a bit too innovative. The world wasn’t ready yet. And it turns out they didn’t work so well.
– Japanese labour costs were cheaper? I blame the unions. It’s well-known that non-unionized workers paid peanuts make way better cars. The Russian car industry is the giant it is today thanks to that very fact. And the heavily-unionized Germans are but a shadow of their former selves these days.
– “Time taken to retain an American driving feel” on smaller cars? Meaning going back to the size they were in the ’50s, when said “driving feel” was so obviously absent? I must be missing the point here.
– “Young hip well-off” people not loyal to “American institutions,” so they buy Hondas? Right, “loyalty” something to be expected, not earned! Especially with those lefty hippies who never did an honest day’s work in their coddled lives. Go live in Canada and get off my lawn!
– “Give up following your own ideas”? Well, I had an idea that painting my legs green, drinking a quart of vodka before breakfast and playing tennis with a live grenade might be fun. Turns out my own ideas are sometimes a bit off. And because I don’t live on my own in a cave, I had to adapt to what was around me. Compromises really suck.
– “Spend the farm” on building copies of Japanese cars? Since those were copies of GM cars from the very beginning, that must’ve cost a bundle! And it’s not like GM spent fortunes buying other useless stuff, like data processing companies or ailing aerospace concerns. They were laser-focused on making “GM Accords.” And that went really well for them, too.
– “Bankruptcy follows by the next downturn.” Yes, in that global downturn that affected absolutely everyone, nearly all car companies were bailed out. Oh, wait, I seem to remember that only GM and Chrysler needed bailouts, but not Ford or anyone else. Could it possibly be because of incompetent management? Just spitballing here…
– GM trucks: “no serious foreign competition”. Outside the US, GM trucks are about as popular as root canals. And guess what happens when GM goes all-isolationist and rests on its laurels due to a lack of competition? They eventually get caught with their trousers down. See: GM cars.
Sorry John, but you need to get your head out of your muffler. Blaming everyone else but GM for GM’s downfall is a tad disingenuous. It’s paranoid thinking of the first order and it is intellectually dishonest.
Everybody has some love for GM. They were Number One in the world! They made some of the world’s best cars and, thanks to US taxpayers such as yourself, they may carry on making cars for a long time yet. But GM made so many mistakes along the way that it’s impossible not to call them out on them.
Tatra, thanks for reading my thing. Two people can look at a fact set and come away with different take always.
I’ll return my head to my muffler and not comment further. I don’t want to upset people who have looked at things only one way too long.
Amen, Lokki. PERFECT analogy.
Beautiful analogy.
I disliked the 4 door version of these intensely. Dad almost bought the Olds version, a 4 door.
To his great credit he brought me to the dealer lot and showed me the car he planned to buy. I BEGGED him, please Dad, not that. It’s all…. rectangles Dad, I can’t take all the rectangles.
Again, to his great credit he relented and bought a 2 door Regal instead. As it turned out it wasn’t a very good car, but at least it looked pretty good…
My brother drove a 4-door Cutlass Supreme for years. While a box on wheels, it was a very good driving car. His had the F41 suspension package, and was a base model without vinyl tops or velour seats. It was also a Canadian car so it got the much zippier LG4 305 Chev engine. These cars were surprisingly agile when setup properly, especially compared to the bigger B-bodies. His car proved to be pretty solid overall and is still on the road today. Coincidentally, I met it on the road the other night.
I have to disagree. I don’t consider the downsized Pontiac Bonneville a “Deadly Sin”. I’m sure it had its faults, but then I can think of some other vehicles that deserve the honour, (or dishonour), of the name “Deadly Sin”.
I can think of better candidates. If the Bonneville was a DS to GM then I would also include the 1981 Granada/Cougar and the 1983 LTD/Marquis for Ford to the list in all there downsized cheap Fox body greatness.
Pontiac was supposed to be sporty, so when muscle sporty cars lost their edge to personal luxury cars, Pontiac was in a bad spot. Their Grand Prix became their benchmark. They dropped full sized cars when it seemed that there wasn’t a market anymore. All understandable.
So they brought out the broughams. This was it. It wasn’t well done. It was a poor move. Deadly sin, indeed.
Other companys did the same, but they weren’t sold for 20 years as the Excitement division of GM. Pontiac was. So, unlike Chrysler, Ford or other GM brands, Pontiac couldn’t make it work.
A reminder of how depressing the early 80s was to those of us who liked the large, traditional American car. It’s not like Pontiac was all alone. There were LTDs and Marquis on the Fox body, and Diplomats and Furies and Fifth Avenues made out of Volares. It looked like Pontiac was just doing what the entire industry was doing in 1983-84. These were just so – average. And perhaps that is why these are a deadly sin?
I never thought that these were terrible. But Pontiac seemed to have lost the plot, zeroing in on Broughamish luxury rather than the excitement and performance that had been its stock in trade since the 50s. But Buick and Oldsmobile did Broughamish luxury better, or at least more successfully.
Name Bastardization? I don’t think these were any worse than the 4 cylinder New Yorkers over at Chrysler or the Fairmont sized Marquis. Yes, depressing.
I’ve taken to writing my comments in Word as the WordPress platform can be a bit unstable.
Then I bring them over here, and you’ve normally beaten me to it 🙂
Well, for a spin on your opening paragraph……..
Deadly Sin? Yes, but the reasons listed are the typical issues of the big three in this time period. Ford’s Fox Granada and Chrysler’s M-Body (Heck, even AMC’s Concord) weren’t much different in terms of what you got, and what you got was peak Malaise.
The real sin was GM had a brand-new replacement for this car in the form of the A bodies. The Pontiac 6000 was modern, space efficient, and not one of GM’s worst product launches by a longshot.
But, GM had lost its confidence, and instead launched the confusing and confounding platform proliferation of the ‘80s. What the heck was this overstuffed vehicle that appeared to escape from a 1977 Buick showroom doing in a Pontiac showroom?
The planners should have just cancelled the RWD LeMans and the Catalina B body, retained the B Bonneville, toned down the “brougham” in the Bonneville, and have replaced it promptly with the H body Bonneville when the time came.
This Bonneville Brougham Model G should have never seen the light of day.
So true Dave. Once again the penny pinching at GM sees the light of day in the Bonneville Model G. No different than the original Cimmaron (ironically introduced the same year as the Model G Bonnie). GM – a company that tried to rest on their laurels in the 80’s – only to get blown out of the water by their competition, something they weren’t used to in the past. Blatant mistakes, stupid moves and poor quality vehicles turned the 80’s into a decade of mediocrity and embarrassment for the General.
The 6000STE should’ve been a Bonnevile and the 6000 LE/SE a Catalina.
There is something to this. GM desperately needed to re-think what it meant to have multiple car brands and how to differentiate them. While the Pontiac dealers may have wanted the B body back, and heaven forbid, maybe the Bonneville Model G, Buick and Oldsmobile were enough sales channels for such cars. The STE represented something new, good, and different – and perhaps a worthy flagship of a brand selling a more modern type of car.
While a critical success to a degree, the STE was probably overpriced and too weak in quality. But, being buried in Broughams in the showroom and suffering Pontiac’s very mixed marketing messages, it never really had a chance to shine.
In one single year the A/G body Lemans went from one focus to another overnight. Note that the LeMans could have a genuine Pontiac V8 engine, a sport suspension with rear sway bar and bucket seats with floor shifter, even on sedans and wagons. The Bonneville in contrast dropped the V8, dropped the suspension handling packages and instead offered one minor spring upgrade, dropped the bucket seats and floor shifters and instead focused on luxury appointments and Brougham seating. Even the edgier frontal styling was dropped in favor of the traditional Bonneville lux chrome grille. But then this was a general shift in the auto industry during the 80’s.
When did Pontiac build their last V8? I know Buick built their last one in April 1980.
My parents and grandparents had the Buick Century version of this car in the early 80s. (My parents’ was even the same color as this example, powder blue with dark blue vinyl top.) I think I may have posted this before, but my grandpa’s Century had a Century nameplate on one rear fender and a Regal badge on the other rear fender. Plus, we found out way later that our “new” Century had somehow been in a collision before it was bought. Mark of excellence!
I’m surprised my parents ever bought another Buick after that, but there were 3 more LeSabres and a Riviera to come, which were actually pretty darn good cars.
I remember getting a ride to school by a friend’s mom back in the early 1980’s in there Buick Century wagon which I believe was a 1980 model with a sport package complete with blackout side pilars, Buick chrome wheels and get this- bucket seats and a column shifter. It had the 4.3 liter V8 identified on the front fenders and ran so quietly at idle I used to think it stalled. It was noticeably quicker than dad’s 79 Fairmont which would eventually get handed down to me and was quite unique.
Somehow this very same wagon got traded in to a little old lady that used to shop at the store I worked at during the 1990’s and I used to always ask her if I could buy it when she was done with it. She said her grandkids would probably inherit it. Sadly I saw it years later in a wrecking yard smashed to oblivion and obviously not taken any care of but that little 4.3 was listed as still being good along with the 350 THM transmission. To this day I have never seen another ordered like it.
My parents had very nearly this car–a Bonneville Brougham in these colors, with imitation wire wheel covers, from 1983 to 1989. It had the Chevy 305, and I think it was about $13k before haggling. It was one of the first cars I drove on the road with a learner’s permit.
They bought it out of the dealer’s inventory, and It must have had the “base” suspension. It plowed the nose furiously on braking, and reared up like a funny car on acceleration (only slight exaggeration). Somehow, it also felt like it was gradually losing contact with the road at speeds above, say, 70, though it never actually hovered.
The back window situation was not as bad as you’d think, due to the extreme capabilities of GM air conditioning. My recollection was that the back doors had arm-rests flush with the b-pillar, instead of poking inward toward the seats, and a hollowed out top, perhaps to increase “elbow” room. The back seat had strangely shaped cushions both bottom and back, but I can’t really think of what the rationale for those would have been.
I suppose taking the name “Bonneville” from a fuel-injected monster car and putting it on this thing was a pretty bad sin. Making this car was maybe a venial sin. The deadly sin was making this car and no cars better than this car. The next year would bring the 6000 STE, whose virtues I read plenty about in the magazines of 1983-4. My parents moved on to a 1989 Mercury Sable, a better car in every way than the 1983 Bonneville, and (to my recollection) every single car other than a Corvette that GM made in 1989.
Did Pontiac really have a reason to exist after this point?
True, they started offering a FEW more distinct looks and packages…but come on, GM could’ve easily tweaked the Bonneville into a pretty nice Impala, and then with Caprice, all the bases could be covered, as Chevrolet is able to do.
But they spent more than a few decades back in their original 1926-1956 place on GM’s ladder: as a fancy Chevy. That was fine before the Tri-Fives – Chevies that were fancier in an of themselves – came to market.
But the redundancy Chevrolet created could only be solved one of two ways:
1) shut Pontiac down – which was both DeSoto’s and Edsel’s fate; or
2) repurpose the brand, which Bunkie Knudsen and John DeLorean successfully pulled off.
Anything saying “Bonneville” on it needed to be dynamic. In contrast, the above car was a facelifted Malibu. Name debasement Deadly Sin, folks.
Over at TTAC, Farago and another author or two may have been looking to dance on GM’s grave, but Paul was NEVER in that camp.
The Deadly Sins are stories of regret, frustration, sadness and anger over the decades-long pirouette into bankruptcy of what was once the mightiest industrial corporation the world had ever seen. These must be documented and discussed for posterity by those who were alive when it went down. Too many teachable moments; too easily is history revised to do otherwise. And if this all sounds ridiculous and sentimental, the history is online to prove what a source of American pride GM once was.
Paul, I know there was a great TTAC piece about the General’s power play with its dealers back around 1955-56, that resulted in all the state franchising laws, that in turn made it harder to kill redundant brands. Any thought of adapting that as a Deadly Sin?
I think it merits retelling over here.
From across the Pacific the whole Pontiac thing doesn’t make a lot of sense after the early 1970s.
Admittedly, we never did the whole Sloane Ladder of aspiration here, but Pontiac never really seemed necessary as a seperate division- did GM really need three divisions to cover the middle range? Pontiac always seemed to be unable to develope a coherent long term marketing image except during the 1960s, and when it did the other divisions seemed to be able to move into that same territory.
Maybe Pontiac should have been quietly killed off in the mid 1950s or early 1970s and its resources passed on to Olds or Chevrolet. GM’s DeSoto or Nash…
Australia got the Sloane ladder before the war, but after the war who could afford to buy or run an American car? Sales dropped to the hundreds, and only Chevrolet and Pontiac were on offer from ’48 to ’68, after which even they disappeared, except for the occasional batch of imports.
In the U.S., the B-O-P divisions made sense for quite a while in a purely mercenary way. After the war and into the seventies, those three divisions combined had a market share of something in the realm of 20 percent. Each of the three had its ups and downs, but for several decades, they WERE the mid-price market for all intents and purposes. Other nominal competitors like Dodge, DeSoto, and Mercury were often left scrabbling for the crumbs.
That meant GM was essentially playing against itself, but for a long time, that was quite profitable because it meant GM had three separate divisions competing to see who could extract more money from punters. Was it more profitable to offer a stripped-down model with a prestige name for only a little more money than a well-trimmed Chevrolet? Or was it more lucrative to offer something closer to a Chevrolet in size and base price and run up the transaction price through accessorizing? Did a touch of sportiness move more metal, or Cadillac-rivaling luxury? Why not try all of the above and see what stuck? If they cut each others’ throats in these contests, the corporation wasn’t too concerned because the competition drove profits, like having salesmen competing for hefty bonuses on who could garner the most commissions in a month.
Maybe this gets a DS since it’s sort of like a ‘Cimarron-Lite’ in that it did some significant damage to the Bonneville name, if not the Pontiac division. Slapping a Pontiac grille and storied name on an otherwise mediocre Chevy Malibu may not have been as extreme as creating a Cadillac out of an obvious Cavalier, but it’s in the same vein.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot – the first time I ever saw one of these oddities I couldn’t believe my eyes. Bonneville? On a Lemans body? And what happened to the Lemans? What happened to GM? Are they out of their minds???
I hope people realize the feature 1984
Bonneville in this article is NOT a B-
body.
It was a G-body in GM’s alphabet soup.
Moving the Lemans upscale as the Bonneville seemed to make sense at the time, esp . in light of gas prices and where they were expected to go. Of course we now know gas prices fell, instead of going thru the roof, the benefit of hindsight. If these cars are a deadly sin it’s primarily because of the cheap badge engineering and pushing a car with fixed rear door windows as a luxury model. Consumers saw thru this ruse in an instant, hence the “new” full-size Canadian Parisienne model in 1983.
It would be interesting to compare the doors for similar cars from the era: how thick they were, whether they were slab-sized or very curved, how much they weighed and whether they had roll-down windows. Cars to compare would be the A-bodies and X-bodies from GM, Ford’s Granada/Monarch twins and the Fairmont/Zephr, and the K-cars and perhaps AMC’s Concord. This would make an interesting article. Note that the K-cars had fixed rear door glass for the first model year, and quickly changed that to roll-down glass for ’82 – did they learn a lesson from unhappy GM A-body buyers? We don’t often think of the doors on a vehicle as being a critical design element, but they can make a huge difference for interior space and weight reduction.
Ted Wheeler’s car in Stranger Things. Three seasons in it’s only ever been seen in the driveway but what perfect car-casting! I can only imagine the salesman showing Ted a 6000STE but he was not yet ready to move on from the Brougham Era in 1983. It’s very much a “nice” car in the traditional idiom, but still much more modest than he could afford (it’s mentioned in S3 that he was making a 6-figure salary in 1985). And the nameplate’s history adds a touch of “I-used-to-be-cool” to his character.
The mould and moss gradually taking over that thing seem somehow appropriate. I wonder when it last ran well enough to drive.
GM wasn’t even the worst offender of trying to “downsize” big cars by simply moving them to existing smaller cars. Chrysler was the worst, moving “New Yorker from the big C body to the smaller (but still pretty huge) R body, then to the Volare-based M body, and then again to a slightly stretched (but barely restyled) K body. At least the Plymouth stopped at the Volare size, having been marketed initially as “small” or “compact”, then as “mid-sized”, then as “full sized” even though the interior dimensions (and appearance) barely changed. Over at Ford, the LTD and Marquis nameplates were transferred from land yachts to Panthers to briefly Fox bodies (“not the big LTD, the smaller one, like a Fairmont”). The Continental and Mark series were also double downsized using the same two platforms, but at least they got new and distinct styling each time.
The G-body Bonneville never cut it because Americans already knew this car as a LeMans for four years before they tried to pawn it off as a traditionally larger, more expensive Bonneville (they didn’t even try this in Canada, where the G-body remained the LeMans). One result when the old, full-size cars were retained and sold alongside them at the last minute is that they mostly had long, hoary names to distinguish them from the new smaller versions that were (wrongly) expected to be the better sellers, the assumption being the old, large, RWD, V8 versions wouldn’t stick around for long anyway. Thus we got the LTD Crown Victoria, the Grand Marquis, the Gran Fury, the Parisienne (with a long history in Canada but no history at all in the States), the (Fleetwood) Brougham, and the Bonneville Model G.
Good points, la673. I still like the last version of the LTD Crown Vic and Merc Marq. Also like the 1977 to 1990 Chevy Caprice. Shame they quit building these cars. I think they would still sell well even now.
They could probably do a very good job these days with modern engine and transmission technology. Electric is the future, but it isn’t all happening tomorrow.
The problem has become the number of manufacturers whose economics mandate they have to sell a zillion of something. If Ford canned the entire passenger car line because they couldn’t sell x number of Fusions, Focuses, and Fiestas profitably; what are the odds?
And really, this is the sort of neo-Town Car FoMoCo could BADLY use to ‘go where the competition isn’t.’ Far as I’m concerned, the four-door pickup becoming the de facto “full size sedan” these days flat-out sucks.
This no longer seems like such an egregious example of brand identity annihilation in this day of electric Ford Mustang station wagons.
I thought Ford’s use of the Mustang name on the Mach-E was marketing brilliance. We’re still talking about it 2-3 years later. And as a life-long Mustang lover, I wasn’t offended.
In another timeline, Ford resurrect the Mercury brand and offer a brougham-y version of the Mustang. Padded landau vinyl top; opera lights; standup hood ornament over waterfall grille; wire wheelcovers; whitewalls, crushed velour seats: the Mercury Grand Mach-E.
“Pontiac was finished, except for its protracted death march in the years to come as the Walmart BMW”…never has the long parade of cladded nonsense been described better. Brilliant.
Pontiac got their H body in 1987. Unfortunately the severely sloped and pinched front clip didn’t match up with the rest of the body. Even slapping on an Olds front end with a Pontiac grille would have been an improvement. Not having a Chevrolet H body to go head to head with the Taurus was inexplicable. Chevrolet’s disarray began here. LeSabre, 88, Bonneville. But where is the “real” Chevrolet?
I really miss lower longer wider styling. It’s kind of interesting that the vehicles made today that come closest to it are the big Tesla and the Lucid where everything else is the shorter higher wider idiom practically. I almost see it as a blessing however, as expensive new vehicles don’t even tempt me and I ended up living where there is no rust so my small fleet of Town Cars should last me the rest of my life barring some heavy handed government banning of old cars or gasoline at the behest of the current auto industry.