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While many of us still have a gripe about Pontiac going under, recent news from Autoblog has us at least content with the choices many previous Pontiac owners are making in the automotive market. With no new Pontiacs to upgrade to, most of the company’s customers have chosen to buy vehicles from Pontiac’s sister company, Chevrolet. Although this doesn’t come as a big surprise, it is a turn in the right direction for the company with previous Pontiac to General Motors numbers hitting much lower than expected.
When Pontiac was killed back in 2009 and the last dealer franchise expired in October of last year, the company’s vast automotive heritage died along with it. However, not all hope was lost. As a company under General Motors, the hope was that Pontiac owners and fans would shift to another General Motors automaker for future purchases. Unfortunately, General Motors didn’t retain as many Pontiac owners as they had hoped, showing only a 16 percent retention rate of the company’s customers in 2009.
But things are looking up for General Motors, according to a report by Edmund’s Auto Observer. This year, about 40 percent of previous Pontiac owners were found to have stayed with a car from another General Motors’ automaker. This is the largest percentage seen since 2007. It was also found that 28.1 percent of Pontiac owners looking to upgrade made the choice to buy a Chevrolet, partially due to incentives the company offered previous Pontiac customers.
As you can see, not all previous customers of Pontiac have bought a GM vehicle since Pontiac’s death. About 9.4 percent of Pontiac owners actually switched to a Ford while 7.4 percent of them bought vehicles from Toyota and Honda.
Although some Pontiac owners have chosen to go elsewhere, a retention rate of almost 40 percent is very impressive for General Motors. We look forward to seeing the rate climb even higher next year, especially with the release of the 2012 Camaro ZL1.
