Back when the sport was really popular fans could buy muscle cars. Many were in car clubs and would spend their weekends working on their cars and going to car meets. If you were a Ford guy you didn't hang with the Chevy guys. There was a brand rivalry back then.
I always liked Pontiacs, I used to have an '84 T/A and it was a really fun car. When GM was killing off divisions in the late 2000's, I wish they would have kept Pontiac and killed off GMC. I've never understood the reason for GMC's existence, they've never been anything but Chevy trucks with different grilles.
I didn't understand most of GM's brands, for the same reason. To me, most of them looked like the same cars with different logos, especially Buick, Olds, and Cadillac.
Years ago there was a uniqueness to them: Chevy was the entry level brand, Pontiac was the sporty brand, Cadillac was the luxury brand, Buick was the near-luxury brand for those who couldn't quite afford a Cadillac, and Oldsmobile was kind of a Buick/Pontiac combo as it was a sporty/luxury brand. By the late 70's/early 80's though, badge engineering took over and they all basically became the same car. Never was this more apparent than in the Cadillac Cimarron, which was basically a Chevy Cavalier with Cadillac logos on it.
I had a 79' LeMans Boat. It was pretty fast with a Chevy 305 in it. I sold the SOB for $50. Should've kept it for a demo-derby.
Pontiac was pretty much always GM with just different skins , going back to the very first Pontiac( according to the internet,)
I would say that in most cases when a Chevy and Pontiac shared the same platform, I liked the Pontiac styling better, take for example your beloved T/A, built on the F-Body Platform, for the 70's-81, I find the Camaro styling from those years to be very boring and yawn inducing, but man, the T/A's, great looking cars compared.
I'm sure there's a cocaine joke here somewhere...
It has been that way since the mid-1960's. That is fifty years! For a while, they mounted bodies that resembled production cars, but that ended in 1990. What is wrong with that?
Look at WRC cars. They aren't quite as fast as NASCAR cars, but they race on public roads, paved or gravel, day or night, sun or rain. Can you tell if a car is doing 180, or 160 mph, if they aren't next to each other? Most people can't. I'll ask you this, would you rather have faster cars, where aero,and setup info sharing, is most important, or a little bit slower cars, that puts more importance on driving skill?
