Pontiac

Cause of death

Killed by cost

Made by

General Motors

GM's bankruptcy restructuring required shedding brands, and Pontiac was one of the four cut.

Pontiac spent forty years as GM's performance division and built the GTO, the Firebird, and a genuine claim to inventing the muscle car. By the 2000s it was selling rebadged versions of other GM products, which is a slow way to lose a reason to exist. When GM restructured through bankruptcy in 2009 it kept four brands and killed four, and Pontiac's franchise agreements ran out at the end of October 2010.