lambertgoat said:
the hsv gto looks riced out, but the more i think about it, wouldn't putting holden badges and stuff on our GTO's make us no better than the 16 yr. old down the street with the stock civic ex, with the fake type r decal and the grapefruit shooter muffler, yeah it's made by holden, but it's still a pontiac by the vin #
Riced?
Huh?
OK...a Euro-derived car designed by Holden in Austrailia and built at Holden plants, again, in Australia. GM tells them to stick Pontiac thingies on it and
whammo it's a P-P-Pontiac?
While not true in your case, I find it
hilarious the way that on many the GTO forums where I spam for info, the rabid Pontiac-ites (who deny that the new GTO is a "true" GTO) are also the same people who scream "Heretic" to people like me who want to scrape off the Pontiac badges (and there quite a few of us, judging from the reaction I get).
Make up your frikkin' minds, guys!
Personally, I want to distance my vehicle as far as possible from the spectre of the horrible Grand Ams, Grand Prixs and Bonnevilles. Marketing people have tried to foist on the public the image that Pontiac is GM's "excitement" brand for too damned long-- even after cars like those. Any
true auto enthusiast knows that's a now old joke, and the Pontiac rental-car fleet sales guys have been the only ones laughing.
So yes, for the above reasons, it's true--
I wish it wasn't branded as a Pontiac.
Asthetically, I prefer the more aggressive yet understated styling that HSV has bestoweed on their GTO to that of the domestic Goat. Pontiac had been grafting ugly plastic **** on their cars for so long and had finally taken so much heat for it that they turned 180 degrees around the other way and turned the "mean" down just a bit too far. I love my car, but I would like it to look just a skosh more, well, meat-eating.
The '05 may share many of these cues. If so, great. I'll pick up the parts from my friendly neighborhood P-P-Pontiac dealer.
If Buick starts making the next-gen GTO domestically (as is the rumor), fine for GM. Chances are pretty good I won't be buying it, in that case. As much as I am enjoying the sh*t out of my car (and I am-- I cannot tell you how pleased I am with it), I can't see buying just a
name when it's time to replace my GTO. It sounds like the next Goat won't be a rebadged Holden, in any case. If Holden builds another rebadged sport coupe or sedan for GM then, I will
definitely look very closely. I am stunned by the excellent build quality of this car. Who knew Foster's drinkers could build cars so well? Not me. I am a new convert to the General's powertrain, however....so when it's time to put my Yellow Goat out to pasture (once again, off in the dim future) I'm hoping for a Corvette...or a Caddy CTS-V type.
IMHO, I wish that Lutz would have released the car in this country as a slightly hotter left-drive HSV Monaro CV8 (which-- news flash-- it precisely is), kept the name as it was, and supported it through a domestic GM network (Pontiac or Chevy or Caddilac or whatever-- same thing) much as Ford did by selling/supporting the sh*t-hot EuroFord Merkur badge with Lincoln back in the Eighties. That way The foaming-at-the-mouth classic GTO/F-body faithful would never be able to compare a great Euro/Vette-derived sport coupe to
completely unrelated vehicles.