Pontiac’s demise could spell trouble for GM’s Australian arm

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Although General Motors’ plans to ax Pontiac a few weeks ago didn’t come as much of a shock, rumors of the brand’s demise had been circling through the media for some time. Now, GM’s Australian branch, Holden, is starting to feel the domino effect.

Holden produces its Commodore sedan and ships the cars to North America to be sold as the now defunct Pontiac G8. Despite positive reviews, U.S. sales of the G8 remained relatively lackluster and GM even admitted to dropping the car’s marketing campaign. Still, Holden had plans to export 30,000 G8 sedans to the U.S. annually, a number that adds up to the not-so-insubstantial sum of $1 billion in annual revenue the Aussie brand now must do without. Worse yet, GM spent $77 million to upgrade Commodore production lines in order to produce left-hand drive G8s for the US market.

Holden is trying to persuade GMto re-badge the car as a Chevrolet or Cadillac in order to continue North American sales, but with Detroit executives under pressure to increase fuel economy numbers across the board, we’d advise the Aussies not to get too optimistic about the viability of a 6.0-liter V8-powered sedan.

GM plans to phase out Pontiac by the end of 2010, so the G8 could potentially become a collector’s item, especially if you can get your hands on one of the hardcore GXP models. We can almost hear Barrett-Jackson calling now...

-- Brian Alexander

Brian Alexander is a staff writer for Driverside.com