The G6 Street Edition Was A Lame Throwback To Pontiac ‘Visual Excitement’

As dumb as the gas-crunch disco era “performance” cars were with their lurid graphics and spoilers in service of emissions-choked engines posting numbers more minuscule than they were muscular, it’s understandable why American automakers offered them: they were about the best they could muster with the technology of 1975. Thankfully, technology improved in the decades that followed, ensuring factory hot rods would be able to do a charitable job of backing up the performance promised by their decals. Except when they didn’t.

For some reason, Pontiac decided an all-showm no-go “performance package” would fly under the radar well into the 21st century, and the result was the 2008 Pontiac G6 “Street Edition.” This was something even 50 Cent couldn’t save even if he tried. Which he did. I’m not kidding.

The Summit Of The G6

It’s hard to say if anything would have saved Pontiac from the financiapocolips in 2009, but the brand certainly did a lot near the end to seemingly hasten its demise. In the 2000s, Pontiac replaced its front-drive sedans with rather costly rear-drive Australian imports that nobody bought, and filled much of the lineup with barely facelifted, less-than-competitive Chevy products (Montana van, anyone?). Seriously, Pontiac’s best car was the Vibe, a subcompact that was essentially a rebadged Toyota. One not-bad entry that Pontiac did have was the replacement for the long-in-the-tooth Grand Am, a car that just oozed 1990s with a lot of ’80s thrown in for good measure (and two sets of backup lights, as Jason will tell you).

The new-for-2005 G6 ditched the Grand Am’s wing, huge sunken-in fog lights, and overly scalloped lower body cladding in favor of a surprisingly clean-looking car with styling that could arguably be called the best of all the products on the GM Epsilon platform,  better than the Saab and Europe-only variants.

Probably the most famous appearance of this end-times Pontiac was when 276 brand-new G6s were given away to audience members of the Oprah Winfrey show who were chosen to be in the audience because of their dilapidated dailies. “YOU get a car! YOU get a car!”

The only fly in the ointment of the $8 million giveaway was that those receiving the cars had to pay the income taxes that many couldn’t afford (around $7,000 on average). I remember seeing that one person’s sad-story car was a beat-up Corolla. I felt like screaming at the TV, “Don’t get rid of the Toyota!”

Like those Oprah audience members, G6 buyers experienced some great joy followed by some pain. The ride was decent and the handling relatively sure-footed, though there was a bit too much bounce to the ounce and body roll in corners. Also, the standard electric power steering featured much of the numbness that early examples of the platform’s system were prone to. The interior looked good from afar, but the quality was far from good. And the fact that you never see them on the road anymore is likely due to the poor reliability that harkened back to its X-Body forebearers.

No, the G6 wasn’t perfect, but it was a huge improvement over the embarrassment that the ten-year-old Grand Am was at the time versus rivals like the Altimas and Mitsubishi Galants of the day, and Pontiac quickly made improvements to the G6 that culminated in a decent-enough performance version that could outrun some of those Japanese rivals.

For the launch of the G6, a 200-horsepower V6 was the only motor available regardless of trim, but Pontiac shook things up for the follow year. In 2006, the top of the heap model was the GTP; this was the Trans Am of the G6, now featuring a bored-out 3.9-liter V6 that, oddly enough, was a pushrod motor with variable valve timing. The 240 horsepower it produced was decent enough, but the 241 pound-feet of torque was decidedly strong; for comparison, a V6 in the Accord of the time was down 30 ft-lb on that figure. To really show that Pontiac was serious, the GTP could be had with a six-speed-manual transmission, which was good for a 6.2 second zero to sixty time. Oh, and the power steering in the GTP was the good old better-feeling kind that would drip fluid onto your garage floor.

For 2007, the GTP received GM’s new 3.6 High Feature DOHC V6, now with 252 horsepower but only available with the six-speed automatic and not necessarily faster than the outgoing car. All the while, though, this G6 flagship remained remarkably clean-looking and free from all of the boy-racer AutoZone customization aisle junk you would have expected from Pontiac circa 1995. But like those VH1 Behind the Music episodes where a clean and sober rock star falls off the wagon, Pontiac would soon revert to its old ways.

What Street? Sesame Street Perhaps?

What do you do when your brand is struggling a bit? Bring in some halo cars, and if you’re a company that hangs its hat on “excitement,” then they’d better be some Michigan M-Cars. Pontiac’s choice was the GXP series, and some of the models in this GM brand’s stable got some serious performance and appearance upgrades. Most of these aesthetic changes were still surprisingly low-key, particularly for Pontiac. Note how I said “most of them,”

Yes, unlike the previous year’s tasteful GTP, the G6 GXP started out with a new nose featuring Pontiac nostrils that stretched halfway to the ground and were filled with a Home Depot-style mesh pattern, and the big round driving lights from the old Miami Vice days made a return appearance. Wonderful. Most examples I’ve seen also have chrome wheels that look a more like electroplated wheel covers.

That wasn’t all. Pontiac decided to up the ante for the GXP by offering the “Street Edition” of the G6 for you to hit Woodward Avenue and look for willing drag race victims. Did Pontiac increase the horsepower with a supercharger? Did they bore it out for even more output? Well, considering that this was 2008, you’d think that would be the plan. Alas, GM’s recipe for the Street Edition was right out of the heart of the malaise era: visual excitement.

You could get the Street Edition package on the lower-level G6 GT as well, and why not? You see, just like the Astre Lil Wide Track, that Street Edition package added absolutely nothing to the chassis or power output of the top mid-sized Pontiac. The same 252-horsepower V6 of the previous year’s clean and simple GTP was under that double-snouted hood; if anything, all that extra plastic junk probably slowed the thing down. The GXP wasn’t a slug by any means at the time, yet the over-the-top silly body mods promised far more than the unadorned version; the Street Edition was poised for disappointment and failure.

The above ad mentions the “dual-walled chromed exhaust tips” and a “hammerhead style spoiler” because “if you swim with sharks, you definitely need an edge.” Sure.

Look at that spoiler! It’s big enough to hold extra cargo. The extra weight will certainly add downforce to those non-driven rear wheels.

How did Pontiac combat some of the expected ridicule for this seventies-like “performance”? In a bit of the same way it dealt with the only-200-horsepower 400 cu. in. Trans Am in 1976: they collaborated with a pop culture star to boost its image. Back then it was Burt Reynolds; for the 2008 model year, Pontiac chose 50 Cent.

Yeah, that didn’t work. I don’t have production figures for Street Editions; I half expected AI to question why I was even looking for anything at all concerning this disco-era throwback in my search. By mid-2009, GM had declared bankruptcy, and all of the “performance” G6s were essentially gone. The model soldiered one for another year to fill up Enterprise and Avis lots. The 2010s didn’t even have red gauge illumination; nothing else better illustrates how over it was for Pontiac.

Exactly What You Expected From Pontiac, If It Was 1975

All of this is quite a shame, as with some better materials and suspension refinement from its European Epsilon cousins, the G6 could easily have been taken more seriously as an alternative to Big Altima Energy. As it was, the Street Edition was a Pontiac that had reverted to the brand’s old ways.

You know what? Maybe it’s all for the best. Pontiac was likely headed for a meeting with the Grim Reaper regardless, so at least their top-performance mid-sizer died as a car that would have looked right at home in one of those Ride Pontiac Ride commercials. Aesthetic “excitement” is still excitement, and this Pontiac stayed true to its old credo right to the end.

Pontiac Points: 44/ 100

Verdict: A decent, competitive Pontiac made into a rather absurd joke by people who should have known better.

Top graphic image: GM