BY KELLY HANNON
Car collector Cody Long remembers when Pontiac was the most exciting name in automotive design.
"When I was a kid, the biggest deal in the world was waiting to see the new Pontiacs before they came out, before they unveiled them. We used to ride around the car lots to see if we could peek over the fences. This was the whole family!" said Long, who until recently ran an antique-car restoration shop in Aylett in King William County.
The magic that inspired such intense interest in Pontiac in the '50s, '60s and '70s seemed to slip away from the domestic automaker over the decades, Long said. "Now I can hardly tell one car from another," he said.
This past week, GM announced that the Pontiac brand would be retired by the end of 2010. As part of the company's government-mandated restructuring, GM will focus on four brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC.
Long is sad to see it go.
"Why Pontiac? That's the first question I asked myself," Long said. "Pontiac to me has always put out a car that people wanted and looked forward to buying."
Virginia Commonwealth University economics professor George Hoffer was also surprised that Pontiac, and not another brand, was the one to go. "Despite everybody wanting to kill Pontiac, which they have, if you take out GMC trucks, which is nothing but a glorified Chevrolet, Pontiac is GM's No. 2 car/truck brand," said Hoffer, who has studied the domestic auto market for decades.
Hoffer thinks Pontiac was on the verge of a resurgence with a unique two-seater roadster, the Pontiac Solstice, and the sporty G8 sedan. Both cars had devoted followings, he said. "There's nothing close to it anywhere else," Hoffer said.
But there may be one economic benefit of the decision to shutter Pontiac. Classic Pontiacs from the brand's golden era will rise in value, said Marty Miller, co-owner of Classic Car Center of Fredericksburg.
"I think the cars become even more collectible because now they're part of a manufacturer that no longer exists," Miller said.
The first Pontiac was sold in 1926. The company offered a coupe and a sedan with a base price of $825. Top speed was 50 mph.
Pontiac was the middle brand between the entry-level Chevrolet and the luxury Cadillac, Hoffer said.
Pontiac chugged along in the mid- to late 1950s, when it started to produce cars that were souped-up versions of Chevrolets. The company took mundane vehicles and put powerful engines under their hoods to "make them rockets," Hoffer said.
In 1964 Pontiac introduced the LeMans GTO, which stands for Gran Turismo Omologato. It was described by Pontiac as a "dragster with sports car handling." It's considered the start of the muscle-car era.
Long rode the muscle-car wave from the beginning. He graduated from Woodbridge's Gar-Field High School in 1964, and soon after bought a 1965 Pontiac GTO Bobcat in royal blue.
Long raced the GTO at tracks in Manassas and Sumerduck.
"We were kids and liked something a lot smaller and a lot faster, and that's why we bought into the GTO," Long said. "It was all about drag racing and cruising."
Miller has sold a number of refurbished GTOs from his center on Lee Hill School Drive in Spotsylvania, where he is visited by a global clientele of car aficionados. He recently sold classic cars to clients in Argentina, Canada and Switzerland.
The Pontiac GTO is a quick, high-performance car with a powerful engine, Miller said. Hence the label "muscle" car.
"Pontiac had a fairly extensive racing history at NASCAR, and [the GTO] was sort of a prestige muscle car to have. Mind you, they were very similar to the models that were offered by Chevrolet and by Oldsmobile and to a lesser extent Buick. But the GTO developed an almost cult-like following, and to this day they remain very desirable cars," Miller said.
Pontiac got additional publicity for another powerful car, the Trans Am, when actor Burt Reynolds drove one in the 1977 movie "Smokey and the Bandit."
But Pontiac, like many brands, could not sustain its popularity forever. Pontiac changed the look of the GTO and Trans Am every few years to keep them fresh, and to encourage drivers to buy the new version.
"Invariably what happened was the cars got bigger, they got more luxurious, they got slower, and they lost the original street-pounding aspects the original muscle-car owners bought the cars for. We see it in almost every make of American car," Miller said.
Miller will continue to sell classic Pontiacs, and he expects to see a market for them among collectors. After all, the Classic Car Center sold a Packard not too long ago. Packard manufactured its last car in 1958.
"I suspect that probably what'll happen is those that lusted after the Pontiacs will continue to do so," Miller said. "There's still a significant body of people that like the cars and will buy them under any circumstance."
Kelly Hannon: 540/374-5436
Email: khannon@freelancestar.com