Pontiac’s Sky Bird Was A Somewhat Cringeworthy Attempt To Make Firebirds More Appealing To Women

There’s nothing wrong with car companies marketing products to certain segments of the population, and sometimes a niche focus pays off. And other times, the targeting is so on-the-nose that the results are disappointing if not downright cringeworthy.

Detroit’s attempts to lure lady buyers certainly fall into the latter two categories. Pontiac might be the brand most associated with T-shirt-wearing guys with grease from their GTOs or Fieros under their fingernails, but that’s not necessarily what Pontiac wanted to be. One attempt to change that in the late seventies was a special Firebird that might have taken things too far.

Girl, Have I Got A Car For You

If you want to see misogyny running wild, take a look at what a room full of chain-smoking dudes in skinny ties at some brands have done over the years to attract women customers. Even if it isn’t chauvinism, many of the choices they made were ill-advised at best. One of the more famous ones was the 1955 Dodge LaFemme. This thing looks basically like what it almost certainly was: a bunch of middle-aged men sitting around trying to decide what kind of car the “little lady” would absolutely want to have.

Pink paint and upholstery? Of course, but that’s too easy. No, the LaFemme package also included a matching umbrella, rain cape, “dainty” rain boots, and a shoulder bag to really make the message clear.

If Dodge thought they had found the secret sauce, they were very mistaken; only 1,500 LaFemmes were sold in 1955, and in 1956, a mere 1,000 left the factory. It turned out that girly stuff pasted onto a car did not attract women who bought their own cars. On the other hand, you can imagine if a LaFemme were being purchased as a second car by a couple, the male partner would envision the times he’d inevitably have to drive it as social death.

Much more recently, Chrysler did something less blatantly gender-based when it released a new compact road-friendly Jeep in 2007 as two different products. These Dodge Caliber-based vehicles were entry-level machines aimed at first-time non-traditional Jeep buyers, and the two proposed concepts tested differently with men and women in consumer clinics, so the decision was made to release both of them. The boxy baby-XJ Cherokee-looking version was called the Patriot and ostensibly aimed at guys:

Meanwhile, the non-traditional, softer-looking one called the Compass was aimed at the ladies:

As the clinics proved, men outnumbered women among Patriot buyers 57 to 43 percent, while women outnumbered men 51 to 49 percent among Compass buyers. Initial sales numbers were quite similar but quickly favored the boxier one, with the Compass selling significantly less than the more traditional-looking Patriot (like, half as many were sold). The big question that nobody seems to have asked was if Jeep had just offered the Patriot, would it have made a difference? I don’t think so. To me, the fact that seemingly well over half of the lifted Jeep Wranglers that I see transporting windshield ducks down the street have ladies behind the wheel proves this.

General Motors was not immune to these kinds of somewhat ill-conceived tactics, and the Firebird was their car of choice.

Fly, Robin, Fly

The changing world of the early seventies essentially killed the “muscle car,” but they also resulted in drastic changes to the “Pony Car” offerings. Straight-up gas-guzzling performance was done, and it was impossible for brands to ignore the fact that car buyers were no longer exclusively men, or at least not men who might possibly bring a lady along simply to sit there while they did the deal. Far more women were purchasing cars on their own, and the Big Three needed to offer products that they’d want.

Trash it all you want, but the Pinto-based Mustang II was a slam dunk in this regard. You could get this much-maligned car in a variety of flavors from the “Cobra II” that replaced outright performance with fun graphics all the way up to the fancy Ghia with a landau roof for your Vogue-reading classy ladies. All you had to do was switch on your television to see it:

Pontiac had to have some of this action as well. Actually, it turned out that they already did; their data showed that around thirty percent of Firebirds in the early seventies were being bought by women. Naturally, Pontiac figured they could get additional female buyers to stray from the imports many were gravitating to by offering a Firebird with an economical twin-cam motor, tighter suspension, and more accurate steering. Nah, just kidding – they would woo them with a flashy trim kit! Yeah, you knew where this is going.

In February of 1976, Pontiac showed the “Blue Bird” concept, essentially a paint-and-stripe package for the more luxury-oriented Esprit version of the Firebird that was the antithesis of “macho.” Maybe somebody remembered the failure of the Dodge LaFemme, so this time the marketing geniuses decided that what “the ladies” would really go for is a bright robin’s egg blue Firebird instead of pink.

What was blue? Everything. Everything was blue. You got a two-tone paint job with “Lombard Blue” on top (a Pontiac Astre color of all things) and a darker tone for the rocker panels. The grille received blue accents; I’ve seen examples with the actual grille material painted blue and some with just the outsides.

You also got darker pinstripe accents and decal identification on the pillars. By the time of production, however, the “Blue Bird” moniker had been changed to “Sky Bird,” since the Blue Bird name was owned by the bus company that made the yellow tin boxes that you jumped around in on the way to fourth grade.

The famous Pontiac “snowflake” aluminum wheels also got the blue treatment. How much more blue could you get?

More blue, that’s how blue. Open the door and gaze upon acres of your choice of blue-grey cloth or vinyl, including special color-coordinated seat belts.

Sky Birds also got an exclusive steering wheel from the Formula that was – you guessed it – also painted blue. How did they get the blue coloring to stay on such a high-touch item? They didn’t; the finish wore off quickly in almost all cases.

Man, I love the “base” gauges of Malaise era cars. From a distance, it looks like you’re getting a whole bunch of instruments, but ultimately, all you got was a speedometer, gas gauge, and “gauge style” warning lights:

If you didn’t want the standard Buick 3.8-liter V6, you could choose from a selection of V8s. Top motor was either a Pontiac or Oldsmobile 350 with around 160 to 180 horsepower.

Sales were not spectacular; as with most cars of the era, exact production numbers are hard to quantify, but it appears that only around 5,700 Sky Birds were sold out of the over 155,000 Firebirds made in 1977. What was Pontiac’s response to what might be considered a failure? Make more colors for the ladies!

I See Red

That’s right; for 1978 Pontiac gave us the Red Bird, which ultimately replaced the Sky Bird. It was the same deal as the blue one but done up in Sammy Hagar’s favorite red, red, (‘cept he wouldn’t run one without a 400).

Actually, this paint job in the two tones of red is sort of fetching and, to my eye at least, far more preferable to the baby-blue Sky Bird, even if it still looks a bit like an unpainted plastic model kit.

Then again, maybe I’m just a sucker for anything with color-coded snowflakes and raised white letters, but can you blame me?

This color combination didn’t prove to be much more popular than the baby blue. Offered in 1978 and ’79, Pontiac is estimated to have sold around 10,000 to 12,000 of the “Red Bird” over both model years. It might look like a Trans Am with those added-on Walrus tusk exhausts, but don’t be fooled, the 400 V8 was not on the table.

So now, finally, Pontiac learned that this marketing strategy was a dead-end, right? No! For 1980, they offered one final version of the series in the form of the “Yellow Bird.” No relation to a certain 911, of course.

This one had a unique camel tan interior and, like its predecessors, had very limited success.

After the run of 3,850 Yellow Birds, Pontiac finally called it quits on the “Color Bird” series. Still, if GM was hellbent on trying anything to get buyers that weren’t muscle car dudes, there might have been a better way. Oddly enough, the other version of GM’s F-Body seems to have done it.

Not For Teenage Dirtbags

While the colorful Firebirds were struggling on the market, Chevy launched a new kind of Camaro for the 1979 model year called the Berlinetta. Aimed at essentially the same market as the Color Birds, the package included a plusher interior and extra sound deadening just like the Pontiac, but the exterior changes were far more subtle than on the all-one-color Firebirds. A little more brightwork to the greenhouse, grille, and lights were accented by simple pinstripes, so the end result looked rather tasteful. Actually, I personally think it’s one of the best-looking of all the second-generation Camaros.

The flares-and-hood-scoop Z-28 is admittedly cool, but the Berlinetta seems to most closely match the fake-Ferrari-250GT looks that Bill Mitchell’s team had in mind from the beginning. Familiarity breeds indifference, and we tend to overlook it, but in this form, it’s apparent that the second-generation Camaro is just a stunning car; it would be great to be able to build one with much of the Z-28’s performance and handling bits in this much more tasteful Berlinetta package.

Chevy continued with the Berlinetta model with the third-gen car, eventually giving it a bizarre Isuzu Impulse-like dashboard. On the outside, though, the subtle color accents and trim made for a really attractive Camaro.

This time, GM got it right. They didn’t pander to women buyers directly with a silly sticker package, but instead made an F-Body that emulated Japanese imports that found favor with female buyers based on their own merits as fun and practical sports coupes. Finally, an automaker had learned the real key to success: make an appealing car, and it will sell regardless of what gender the buyers are.

Still, don’t kid yourself. I know that some marketing person has an idea for a Barbie Corvette, a Baby Duck yellow Jeep Wrangler, or a Hello Kitty-themed Hyundai Venue on their desk. I fear that this ain’t over yet.

Pontiac Points: 65/100 (Sky Bird)

Verdict: It came out better than you’d think it would only by virtue of the second-generation Firebird being so appealing.

Top graphic image: Mecum Auctions