Pontiac: Future "old guy" litmus test

---by Micheal
Recently, General Motors announced that it would soon drop the Pontiac brand from its line-up. Some took the news hard. Some took it wistfully, like the passing on of an old friend. Muscle-car zealots may disagree with me, but I don't think the news is a signal of the coming apocalypse.

Pontiac was a created brand, unlike, say, Buick or Olds which were named after their founders. General Motors invented the brand in the 1920s as a higher performance line to augment it's modest performance entry-level Chevrolet line and its more stately luxury lines. People of driving age in the mid 1960s to 70s knew of the hot GTO, TransAm and later Firebird. "Ah," they'll say, "those were the days..." while staring wistfully into space.

But, time moves on. Car brands are created and dropped. Rambler, Nash, DeSoto, they've all had their heyday and then moved on into the foggy mists. This steady cycle of creation and demise does provide us something. It gives us a litmus test for whether you're an old man or not.

When I was a youngster, the old men would sit around on the front porch and talk wistfully about their Hudson or their Packard. Those were real cars. The other old men would nod respectfully. At that time, those cars had been out of production for years. As a young would-be driver, I oogled the latest Mustang or Camero, etc. Those were "living" cars to me. Hudsons and Packards, Studebakers and DeSotos, were old dead cars that rusted out back of the barn, and who lived on only in the minds of old men.

With Oldsmobile (five years ago) and now Pontiac's demise, we have some new benchmarks for old-man-hood.

Now we'll have some men sitting around the BBQ grill, talking wistfully of their Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. The young would-be drivers will roll their eyes. Their hearts will be taken with a shiny new Green-E from OneWorld Motors or MegaWorks' RapidCharge 3000, or whatever the new brands will be.

Talk of Pontiacs will instantly tag you as an old man. Rather than fight it, just go with it. Times change. Those young whipper snappers will have their day. Some time down the line, they'll be sitting around their virtual food fabricators, talking wistfully about their old Green-E or their favorite red RapidCharge. Their kids will just roll their eyes and fantasize about CosmoCorp's FluxoPod or whatever. Times keep changing.

So, goodbye Pontiac. It was great to know ya. You've got a new role now. Your red arrow-head logo will become a badge of honor on old men's caps -- a way to set apart those who know real cars from all those young whipper snappers who don't know what a real car is like.