In fact, from the death of the XP-833 to the dawn of the new millennium, the only independent sportscar program developed by Pontiac—the Fiero—was an abject failure, hobbled by cost cuts, maligned by a series of safety issues and recalls, and stuck with four-cylinder power at its debut in the name of Corvette protectionism. An optional V6 brightened its horizons in the second model year, but that wasn’t enough to keep it around past 1988.
Outside of the performance world, things were even grimmer as platform sharing became the order of the day at General Motors through the ensuing decades.
It’s possible to trace this hi-po inertia all the way back to the Banshee’s demise. No doubt sensing that his opportunities to truly make his mark were limited at Pontiac, John DeLorean made the leap to Chevrolet in 1969 but quickly discovered that with more responsibility came even greater scrutiny, and just a few short years later he was out of the GM hierarchy altogether, forming his own company, prototyping the car that would become the DMC-12, and getting into snowcat manufacturing on the side.
With the loss of a leader as charismatic and risk-tolerant as DeLorean, Pontiac was suddenly adrift. Put in its place by the Corvette’s untouchable status, stripped of the GTO by the EPA’s encroaching emissions regs, and forced to even stop building its own engines, the brand’s inferiority complex became a self-fulfilling prophecy as the 1970s gave way to the ‘80s and ‘90s. By the time Pontiac rediscovered its mojo in the mid-2000s with unique models like the reborn GTO, the genuinely impressive G8, and the under-developed Solstice two-seater, it was far too late to salvage its reputation.