Pontiac G8 to Return – As a Chevy!

With rear drive and a punchy V-8 under the hood, the Pontiac G8 was the first real sport sedan for Pontiac in decades, and we mourned its demise when GM killed off the Excitement Division as part of its post-bankruptcy rationalization. But it appears the G8 will make a comeback — only this time wearing Chevy badges. Three GM sources have confirmed to Motor Trend the Australian-built sedan will re-appear on the U.S. market as a Chevy in the coming year. And it won’t be called Impala. “We have a good name for it,” smiled one of the sources.

Bringing back the G8 (the 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP is pictured) as a Chevy seemed such a no-brainer — all the certification and engineering work required to transform the Holden Commodore into a Pontiac had already been paid for by the Old GM — it’s a surprise it’s taken so long. Part of the reason for the delay, we understand, is that GM wanted to wait for a mid-cycle facelift on the Holden Commodore to give the car a fresher exterior look.

Cost is a problem. With the Australian dollar now on par with the greenback, shipping cars from Australia is now an expensive proposition. In addition, some minor re-certification work will also likely need to be performed to get the car back to U.S. spec. Because of this, and CAFE requirements, the Chevy sedan will only be available as a V-8, and in relatively limited numbers. Holden has also developed a U.S. market version of its mechanically identical Caprice long wheelbase sedan for police applications, but GM continues to insist that it will be for law enforcement duty only.

“The Commodore Zeta 1 architecture offers us so much with rear-wheel drive performance,” says one of our sources. “The synergy between motor compartment packaging of the Commodore and HSV products versus what we do here with Camaro and Corvette means the opportunities are endless.”

GM’s decision to bring back the Pontiac G8 as a Chevy is a good-news, bad-news story for its Australian subsidiary, Holden. After decades of ignoring the Australians’ engineering efforts, it seems Detroit is about to embrace the Zeta rear drive architecture. But for cost reasons it is likely GM will move further development of the architecture for next-gen Zeta-based cars to Detroit, putting the future of its Australian engineering facility in doubt.