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Junkyard Gem: 2008 Pontiac G5 Coupe

In the grim early days of the Great Recession, the situation at GM's Pontiac Division didn't feel so great but there was some cause for optimism. The Solstice still had a certain glow, the Holden Commodore-based G8 had just arrived, and vehicle shoppers could stride into their local Pontiac showrooms and choose from eight different models bearing the iconic arrowhead badge. Yes, there were still new Torrents and Grand Prix and Vibes for sale in 2008, and of course the Cavalier-twin Sunfire had been replaced by the Cobalt-twin G5 by that time. Here's one of those G5s, found in a Colorado Springs car graveyard. It wasn't long after this car was built that everything went to hell for Pontiac. In April of 2009, GM announced that the Pontiac Division would be "phased out" over the next few years. Just to drive home the point, GM itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy five weeks later. GM had already offed Oldsmobile—a marque dating back to 1897, making it nearly 30 years Pontiac's senior—five years earlier, so everybody knew there would be no reprieve in this case. Just to confuse everybody, Pontiac dealers offered a G3-badged Chevy Aveo (aka Daewoo Kalos) to sell alongside the G5 for 2009, but by 2010 there were just two new Pontiac models still standing in the United States: the G6 and the Vibe. Just over 70,000 G5s were sold in the United States during the 2007-2009 model years, making these cars fairly rare. The Cobalt/G5 ignition-switch fiasco of the mid-2010s really hammered their resale value at the time. Sometimes the definition of "Gem" refers to historical value, not the happier kind. Speaking of ignition switches, the key is still in this one. That generally means that a junkyard vehicle is a dealership trade-in or insurance total that couldn't sell at auction. This one is a base model, which listed at $15,675 (about $22,040 in 2023 dollars). The snazzier G5 GT started at $19,850 ($27,911 now) that year. The engine in this car is a 2.2-liter Ecotec four-banger rated at 148 horsepower and 152 pound-feet (the GT got a 2.4 with 171 hp/167 lb-ft). A five-speed manual was standard equipment, but the buyer of this car paid extra for the automatic. GM stuck these little "Mark of Excellence" badges on the fenders of its vehicles starting in 2005, then ditched the idea in 2009. I have vivid memories of this logo from the seatbelt buttons in my parents' 1973 Sportvan Beauville.

What car brand should come back?

Congratulations, wishful thinker! You've been granted one wish by the automotive genie or wizard or leprechaun or whoever has been gifted with that magical ability. You get to pick one expired, retired or fired automotive brand and resurrect it from its heavenly peace! But which one? That's a tough decision and not one to be made lightly. As we know from car history, the landscape is littered with failed brands that just didn't have what it took to cut it in the dog-eat-dog world of vehicle design, engineering and marketing. So many to choose from! Because I am not a car historian, I'll leave it to a real expert to present a complete list of history's automotive misses from which you can choose, if you're a stickler about that sort of thing. And since I'm most familiar with post-World War II cars and brands, that's what I'm going to stick to (although Maxwell, Cord and some others could make strong arguments). So, with the parameters established, let's get started, shall we? Hudson: I admit, I really don't know a lot about Hudson, except that stock car drivers apparently did pretty well with them back in the day, and Paul Newman played one in the first Cars movie. But really, isn't that enough to warrant consideration? Frankly, I think the Paul Newman connection is reason enough. What other actor who drove race cars was cooler? James Dean? Steve McQueen? James Garner? Paul Walker? But, I digress. That's a story for another day. Plymouth: As the scion of a Dodge family (my grandfather had a Dodge truck, and my mom had not one, but two Dodge Darts – the rear-wheel-drive ones with slant sixes in them, not the other one they don't make any more), I tend to think of Plymouth as the "poor man's Dodge." But then you have to consider the many Hemi-powered muscle cars sold under the Plymouth brand, such as the Road Runner, the GTX, the Barracuda, and so on. Was there a more affordable muscle car than Plymouth? When you place it in the context of "affordable muscle," Plymouth makes a pretty strong argument for reanimation. Oldsmobile: When I was a teenager, all the cool kids had Oldsmobile Cutlasses, the downsized ones that came out in 1978. At one point, the Olds Cutlass was the hottest selling car in the land, if you can believe that. Then everybody started buying Honda Civics and Accords and Toyota Corollas and Camrys, and you know the rest. But going back farther, there's the 442 – perhaps Olds' finest hour when it came to muscle cars.

Junkyard Gem: 1989 Pontiac 6000 STE AWD

During the middle to late 1980s, General Motors made a big push to grab back some of the sales swiped by makers of European luxury machinery during the previous decade. Around the top of the prestige pyramid, there was the Turin/Hamtramck-built Cadillac Allante taking aim at the Mercedes-Benz 560SEC and the super high-tech Buick Reatta trying to seduce away BMW and Jaguar shoppers; even the Riviera offered a futuristic touchscreen computer sorely lacking in anything out of Stuttgart or Bavaria. The General had a plan to take on the smaller German sporty sedans, too, and Pontiac of the "We Build Excitement" era offered a midsize sedan packed with modern hardware at a great price: the 6000 STE. Here's one of the rarest 6000 STEs of them all, an all-wheel-drive-equipped '89 found in a Denver-area yard last week. Any 6000 STE is extremely hard to find today; when I wrote about a front-wheel-drive 1987 6000 STE back in 2018, desperate owners of these cars filled my inbox with requests — sometimes demands —  for parts that continue to this day. Many of them pleaded with me to help them find an all-wheel-drive version, and now I have managed to find one at Colorado Auto & Parts in Englewood, just south of Denver (in fact, the same yard at which I shot the '87). You may recall CAP as the old-school yard whose owners built the amazing airplane-engined 1939 Plymouth pickup a few years back.  The all-wheel-drive system on the 6000 STE was introduced for the 1988 model year, and it became standard equipment on the 1989 STE. At this time, the automotive industry had taken note of the success of the idiot-proof all-wheel-drive systems offered by AMC and Audi/Volkswagen; Toyota began selling Americans all-wheel-drive Camrys, Celicas, and Corollas, while Ford offered the Tempo and Topaz with optional AWD and Subaru was just beginning to make the switch from manually-selected four-wheel-drive to genuine all-wheel-drive around that time (it took a few more years for everyone to standardize on the 4WD/AWD terminology we use today, though). The 6000 STE AWD was intended to compete with such all-wheel-drive-equipped sedans as the Audi 80 ($23,610), Audi 90 ($28,840), and BMW 325iX ($30,750); its $22,599 price tag (about $50,700 in 2021 dollars) certainly made it seem like a bargain compared to those cars. In addition to the all-wheel-drive system, 1989 6000 STE owners got a digital instrument panel and more switches and buttons than the Space Shuttle.