Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Want a Pontiac G3? There's plenty to chose from ...


So who wants a Pontiac G3? Apparently no one. The rebadged Chevrolet Aveo (built in Korea on a GM-Daewoo platform) is not selling well. In fact, the Wall Street Journal says Pontiac has a two-year supply of G3s sitting around. Apparently, Pontiac sold an incredibly uninspiring 141 units in March.

Just for comparison's sake, here are March sales figures for some other subcompacts:

Nissan Versa:6,733
Toyota Yaris:5,888
Hyundai Accent:5,829
Honda Fit:5,300
Suzuki SX4:4,794
MINI:3,605
Chevrolet Aveo:2,285
Smart:1,746
Kia Rio:1,483
Kia Soul:1,246
Pontiac G3:144


I sat in a G3 at the Portland Autoshow and the interior wasn't terrible. Granted, I haven't driven one so I can't comment. The question (with an obvious answer) is, do we really need the G3 and the Aveo?

LINK
Subcompact sales for March 2009

4 comments:

nlpnt said...

The G3 exists to satisfy a demand from dealers, not customers; plus it's only available in optioned-up form equivalent to an Aveo LT (this on a car that everyone buys the base model of since low price is its' USP).
Add in that it's anyone's guess whether or not Pontiac will be thrown under the bus in two months, and you got a proble.

nlpnt said...

PROBLEM. Must... preview......before...........posting!

Unknown said...

What I take away from this is....Way To Go Nissan!

D2M said...

Awww... that's just.. horrible! Honestly, I feel bad for the G3. It's like... I dunno... it's like seeing that one kid on the playground that's being completely avoided by all the other kids. I just feel sorry for it.

And at least what I've seen on their website, it isn't that bad looking. The inside seems alright too.

However, it does seem to me that Pontiac is just rebadging cars that are already being sold in the US. (Toyota Matrix, anyone?) This seems like an odd move to me. Wouldn't it make more sense to rebadge a car that isn't already available here? It seems like they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot by rebadging vehicles that are already available through other companies....