Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Memorials to the GMs fallen divisions.

Jalopnik posted the 10 worst car company websites.  On the list was Oldsmobile, not because of anything about the site but more questioning the point of the site.  Of course this made me go there and even post it on our facebook page.  This then had a friend Andy post the Ponitac site, and me looking up the rest.

While the sites all have a pretty standardized look the writing is different for each giving each their own bit of personality.  The other thing is they seem to have not bothered with Geo.  Not sure if they never had a website, if geo maybe had a weird site name since Geo.com was taken, or if they are trying to act like it never existed.

Well I'll start with Oldsmobile.  The site has a Bravada sitting on a tree covered lane.  Amazingly the Bravada has aged extremely well.  Styling wise in the pic  it could still hold its own with the newer crossovers, and the Alero that is cruising down the street really makes it seem like Oldsmobile lasted longer than it did.  The text takes a bit of a stand for Oldsmobile.  Basically it was, For over 100 years we were the best thing GM had, winning awards and make awesome cars.  GM closed us down for some lame reason, clearly it didn't stop them from going bankrupt, in fact they were doing better with Oldsmobile than without, but anything that doesn't suck on their current cars is based on the stuff we did for them.

This is a sharp contrast to Pontiac.  They have the Solstice where the Bravada was.  While it looks good still, it seems to have been abandoned in some dark empty building.  Maybe the pontiac plant, maybe an old Pontiac dealer who knows.  Pontiac's text also has a distinctly different tone.  Instead of Oldsmobile's bitter defiance, Pontiac depressingly says, if you were one of the few people who bought one of our cars, we hope you thought it was cool, and hopefully people will remember us for some of our cool liking cars, you know like Kitt from Knight Rider, the good Kitt, not the lame remake.

Hummer took a third approach to this.  They seem to still be advertising, maybe they are still hoping someone will buy the name.  They have one Hummer with canoes, and other ones on the buttons showing off the whole line.  Hummer sales pitch is still, Hummers will take you anywhere in the world, all off road and cool like that.  It can take you places that no other vehicle can, well except Jeeps, and Land Rovers, and......, well anyway, it had a line up of very distinct models that are each different, and no they aren't actually really similiar which caused me to have to say that they are distinct and different.

Finally comes Saturn.  They draw people in with a Sky cruising along with the top down on a long winding road.  They have the Vue shown to but smaller cause it really doesn't stand out well enough.  Their farewell actually seems to call back to Saturn's beginnings.  They tell of how they were a unique little car company, doing things their own way.  They cared about their customers, they made cars that were good for their customers.  But don't worry GM may have made us stop making cars but the spirit of Saturn will live on in anyone who ever drove one, or rode in one, or saw one in the street, or talked to someone who saw one, or visited the website, or even ever heard of the Saturn car company.

Well I guess that is it till GM kills some more brands

1 comment:

  1. I lament the loss of Pontiac.

    On the flip side, there's always hope...I heard Nissan is bringing back the Datsun brand. So maybe, someday, just maybe, I'll be able to drive a Pontiac Grand Prix GT again. Or something like that.

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