Thanks, Jill. GM's policy, though, is that, on a special-order, the customer is given the incentive/rebate/discount that is in effect on the day of actual production, not the day it is ordered. With the current very slow sales of the Lacrosse (and of large American-badged sedans in general), what it will be on the day my car is actually built is anybody's guess.

 

Its not going to be 17% off on 2018s the first day of production when they still have lots full of 2017s to sell.

 

As I'll explain below, except for the bright-orange, flame-decal 1970-71 Judge versions, neither the original or the 21st-century ones were anything bold in the styling department. In that sense, the new one was nostalgic.

Potential buyers also associated the Camaro/Challenger/Charger (and Mustang, of course) as All-American muscle-cars (which course, in truth, they weren't, because of the parts-content breakdown). It was no secret, though, that the 2004-2008 GTO was an Australian Holden design (as was the later Pontiac G8 and Chevy SS), which worked against its general appeal. Not only that, but the bland styling, especially before the twin-hood scoops were added to imitate the original one, caused many potential buyers to consider it a glorified rental car.

Nope. Sorry. I'm going to have to simply disagree with you on that one. The car's styling blew it.....not the dealerships. That's all you heard at the D.C. car show, from people at the Pontiac display....."They have got to be kidding.....this is a rental car".

Now, that doesn't mean that I, myself, agreed with those show-goers, either. I, myself, was fortunate to have grown up with the original GTOs, half a century ago. Considering that those original GTOs were nothing but ordinary Tempest/LeMans coupes with a big engine, hood scoops, and, on late 60s/early 70s models, vinyl/rubber-covered front ends, I didn't see the rental-car styling of the 21st Century ones as a big deal....IMO, it was no different from the fabulously-successful ones in the 60s. But potential buyers thought differently.....and the car simply didn't sell.


Here......this Hemmings article tells it all:

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2014/0...5-pontiac-gto/

Remember the Mopar wing cars? Amazing automobiles, yes. Clever engineering, undoubtedly. But they weren’t hot sellers. In fact, they tanked. Dealers were saddled with those things for years. They wouldn’t move. Thirty-five years on, they’re recognized as icons of an era, but back when they were new, they were expensive and funny-looking. Fast? No doubt. But other mitigating factors seemed to get in the way of whatever was under the hood – like that pointy beak and the Can-Am-refugee wing. Only in retrospect were they given the respect and awe they today come to enjoy, and the reasons that made them poor sellers are forgotten in the hype of their rarity and outrageousness.

We see parallels here with the modern Pontiac GTO. Low production numbers plus stonking performance generally make for some manner of future collectibility – hell, even soft-bumper C3 and Cease-Fire Injected C4s have come around on the secondary market. Which is all well and good 20 or 30 years from now. But for the modern driver living in there here and now, we think the GTO makes a solid case for being America’s best V-8 performance bargain today.

How so, when a Mustang GT clocks in eight grand cheaper on the sticker? Simple. The Mustang is a hot commodity right now. Ford is selling plenty of them. They’re in short supply. By the time you option one up the way you want, and assuming you find a dealer honest enough to sell one for sticker price and no more, you’re looking at $27-$28K before taxes. There’s also the notion that Ford will be rolling these into Hertz outlets soon enough, and that the V-6 models are nearly indistinguishable from the V-8s (wheels, grille, and badging are it) from the outside. Stealthy or snoozy?

Compare this to a GTO, which by all accounts is an underwhelming sales performer for Pontiac (barely half the allotted 18,000 cars made it over for 2004). Our Yellow Jacket 2005, with only the six-speed trans (a $695 option, boo hiss – remember when automatics were an added-cost option?) and a destination charge on the Monroney, comes in at $33,690. But any Pontiac dealer who actually gets sticker price for a GTO should be congratulated; realistically, you’re looking at five grand or more off sticker, and the dealer will say thank you when you take it away, because he’ll have more room for a series of G6 models that will turn over faster. Suddenly, you’re under $29,000, and at that point, there’s not much difference in money over the length of the payment book. Plus, there is no low-level GTO, no base V-6 called Tempest or LeMans to get confused. There is only the premium-level GTO.

There’s also that extra hundred horsepower under the hood, the sheer throw-you-back-in-your-seat acceleration, the extra gear in the manual trans, the cosseting interior made of quality materials… yet because the Mustang looks like what everyone wanted in high school, it’s selling by the truckload; the GTO, meanwhile, looking like nothing terribly special, languishes on dealer lots, with many outside the hardcore car-nut community simply unaware of its existence.



Everything we liked about last year’s GTO remains: the feeling of utter solidity, the quality interior, the comfy seats, the shocking power, the big-block-sized noises coming out of a small-block-sized engine. Some things we liked were improved upon: namely addition of the corporate 6.0L LS2, now rated at an even 400 horsepower, which allows furious acceleration anywhere from 1,500 RPM clear up to the six-grand redline. Think of it as Corvette power at a $15,000 discount. Torque peak is at a surprising 4,000 RPM – because the power is so smooth and starts so low in the power band, you’d think it was at least a grand lower in the revs. We can also report that the six-speed gives the GTO more snap than an automatic LS2-powered Corvette we drove recently – unless you must endure bumper to bumper traffic for the majority of your driving life, the six-speed is absolutely the way to go.

A ton of items that the purists screamed about last year have been fixed. The hood now has twin non-operational nostrils, resembling Firebird Formula scoops from the mid-1970s (or the similarly non-op 1964 scoops, if you squint a little). You can see both pipes end at the back of the car now. And a Pontiac nameplate now graces the trunklid, opposite a quiet 6.0 badge. No one has ever had a beef with the power, beyond the notion that a “real” Pontiac engine (extinct since 1981) isn’t under the hood.
Is it perfect? Of course not. The shifter on the T56 6-speed is a touch on the rubbery side, the pedals aren’t set for heel-and-toe action, and the yellow gauges on our test car are a bit much, particularly with white numbers; we remain suspicious of pessimistic markings also. We would also plump for the color-coded Alcantara interior trim, though yellow probably wouldn’t be the color we choose.

And there’s the overall style, which has come in for wide bouts of criticism; reams of paper have been used to ream GM on the issue. Suffice it to say that we think it plain, but not ill-proportioned (though from some angles the rear quarters do look a bit thick). It comes off like 1997’s best guess of what 2005 would look like – just a shade behind the times. Not shown here is a mostly awful Sport Appearance Package body kit – we qualify it, because while the air dam and ground effects add visual weight it doesn’t need, the replacement grille nostrils give the nose depth and should be made standard.

We worry for the future of the GTO. Despite all this cool mechanical kit, they’re still not selling. With GM’s recent notice that it’s canceling all rear-wheel-drive Zeta-architecture chassis for North America, and with it a number of potentially intriguing 2007 models, GTO’s future is in doubt – though it could continue on as a Sigma-chassised superstar (same platform as the mind-bending CTS-V). It’s all in the air right now.

Total GTO production over three seasons will be lucky to clock in a quarter of the 2005 Mustang’s first-year sales. Four hundred horsepower, just a few years in production, and a bespoke platform and bodystyle not shared by other divisions in this hemisphere? The Pontiac GTO we have now could be a long-term proposition for a future-thinking driver-enthusiast-collector. Despite the moribund styling (or, indeed, perhaps because of it), the current GTO could well be tomorrow’s Superbird – an underappreciated performer while new that could take on a second life years down the line. And even if it doesn’t, you’ll have the most V-8 bang for your buck available in a showroom today.

 

Disagree all you like, but you're still wrong. The Hemming's article you posted was well into the refresh that brought a larger engine. Unfortunately by then, the carbuying public all knew the car was a failure due to the massive volume of inventory, combined with the fact that they'd never seen one on the street. And as is the case in many things, perception is reality. The car was a failure due to being overpriced, even when it was no longer overpriced. Here's how that happened:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cult...ealers-attack/

And as we discussed in the Focus RS thread, Ford is falling victim to the same problem today:

Greedy dealers tried to charge too much, right up until the point that the other shoe dropped and they couldn't give them away. In theory, Ford could sell tens of thousands of the Focus RS, but just like with the GTO, dealers are doing their damndest to make sure that doesn't happen. And the predictable result is exactly the same--the RS is being dropped after just two years. On the flipside, this particular gaffe probably won't be a substantial contributor to the failure of an entire 85-year-old brand.

 

If I remember the GTO, when it first came back, it had a true dual exhaust, but the outlets on one side (not like the pic where it has one on each side), similar the the V8 BMWs in the mid 2000's. I'm fascinated by how true duals existed way back when, but are nothing but fake for the most part today, and nobody cares. In other words, people are happy having a 4 cyl. turbo that has a fake dual exhaust in the rear. I have not been able to pinpoint when this phenom took effect, and who started it, but Lexus, Lincoln, Honda, come to mind as to having it in the 90's....

Again I was given a 1970 LeMans Sport, maroon with black vinyl, no AC, I-250 with a 2-spd auto, and drove it for almost a year in the 90's....I rather enjoyed it, as did females. The only way that could be possible is nostalgia, because otherwise, nothing was good about the car (could not pass a NYS inspection and it coated the inside of the hood with oil, even after replacing the valve cover gasket)....

 

great post. dealers are so often their own worst enemy. just because they hold the cards doesn't mean anyone wants to play.

 

GM has announced that the new 2018 Lacrosse will start at $1500 lower on the MSRP and a new Hybrid e assist model. The current incentives and the new lower price tells that the new Lacrosse is DOA. That is a bit unfortunate as it has grown on me a lot.

 

Not quite dead on arrival. I know I'll have one. But, yes, it will be obvious that I'm not trying to keep up wth the Jones' LOL.

Besides the new Hybrid version (Premium trim level only) and the usual color changes, the major new feature on the 2018 Lacrosse will be the 9T65 9-speed FWD transmission jointly co-developed with Ford (GM and Ford also co-developed a new RWD 10-speed). The slightly less-robust 9T50 version of that new transmission is already standard on the 2.0 turbo Premier version of the 2017 Chevy Malibu.

10 different GM cars and SUVs, BTW, will get that new 9-speed transmission next year...not just the Lacrosse.

 

With all due respect, simply accusing me of being wrong does not actually make it so. Ask yourself WHY you didn't see any on the street. It was more than just dealer-pricing. Dealers also price-gouged on the PT Cruiser and the 2-seater Ford Thunderbird (sometimes asking as much as 50% over list), yet they went out the door faster than they could be ordered. People just didn't like the way the GTO was styled....though I myself saw no problem with it.

 

I looked at that particular GTO. I liked the interior and the powertrain. But the Holden styling IMO just looked very econo-car and not worthy of the name.

 

Exactly. When the 2004-2008 GTO was on the market, that's what I mostly heard from almost everyone who looked at it......rental-car styling. To me, though, the original ones back in the early-mid 1960s had more or less the same problem.....yet they sold explosively. Back then, I guess, people weren't as hung up on styling as they are today....and that was right after the Great Era of the massive tail-fins and wall-to-wall chrome.

 

Buick just announced, a couple of hours ago, that the 2.5L Hybrid (Ugh!) drivetrain would be standard in the new Lacrosse.......that's where the $1500 drop in price is coming from. The N/A V6 (which is a must for me...the hybrid would be a deal-breaker) will still be available on certain trim lines as an option...but doesn't specifically say which ones (as it should). Car and Driver, however, says that the V6 and 9-speed automatic will be an option on the top three trims, including the Preferred trim-level I ordered...but Buick itself hasn't confirmed which trim levels,

http://blog.caranddriver.com/eassist...ers-the-price/

I'm really getting annoyed with GM's (and Buick's) marketing......a shame, since I generally like many of their products. This information (and more) should have been released months ago....the marketers waited far too long to release it. And including the hybrid on all the models as the new base drivetrain is clearly a sop to the new CAFE rules....Lacrosse buyers want REAL Buicks, not gas-stretching econocars. If we wanted that, we'd go buy a Volt or a Prius. What is unclear is if the V6, which was formerly standard on all versions, will (now) cost extra or not on the version I wanted. If it does, so be it....I can easily afford it, but I won't be happy about it.

Buick itself, of course, is not at fault for the absurdly-high CAFE standards that the Obama Administration set (please roll them back, Mr. Trump) ....but if they were going to make the hybrid mouse-motor standard in the Lacrosse, they should have announced that months ago. To wait until now to announce it is absurd.

Sorry about the rant, folks, but this p***es me off. I've said, many times, before, in Car Chat, that auto marketers were the bane of my existence...and I meant what I said. This is a picture-perfect example.

 

You can still get 17% off a 2017, and not get impacted by any of these changes that are upsetting you....

 

no true scotsman?

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/pre...true-scotsman/

 

Will ya buy the 17 now?!? Now you're not only taking the chance that you lose the 17% rebate but that you will have to buy a much higher trim to get the engine you want.

They aren't releasing information quickly on the 2018s because they have so many 2017s to sell on lots. This is actually smart marketing. It's not a brand most people order ahead or anticipate the next year model, so why shouldn't they focus on getting the current models sold instead of releasing information about the next model year?