Pontiac

A former car brand that everyone seems to think was ripping off Cadillac. Pontiac was the performance division, while Cadillac is the luxury division. In the '60s Pontiac was embarrassing Mustangs left and right. In the '70s the Firebird/Trans Am entered center stage and stayed there until 2003 when it was killed off. Pontiac made good cars until the 90s, when poor GM leadership began the killing of Pontiac. Forcing the brand to make cars and fill niches it was never meant to do. By the mid 2000s the brand was near death as GM management continued to strangle Pontiac with its piss poor decisions. In 2010 Pontiac finally died when GM was forced to kill off several brands by the US government in order to get a loan to bail themselves out of bankruptcy (also from terrible leadership). It's a shame, in 2008 and 09 Pontiac was getting ready to make a comeback, only to get cut off by GM. A company buys Camaros and rebuilds them as modern Trans Ams, in hopes of keeping at least that car's legacy alive. But extremely poor decisions like the Aztek were the fatal blow to Pontiac, who may have survived had management done better, and maybe Buick would have bit the dust instead.