Remembering Pontiac's legacy as GM closes brand (cont'd)

Pontiac repeated its dominance the following season, winning 22 of 53 races and earning Weatherly the first of two Cup championships. But GM leadership made a fateful decision in January of '63. They shut down Pontiac's racing division, causing Bud Moore to switch to Mercurys and Nichels to opt for Plymouths.

However, a Pontiac engineer named John DeLorean and two others tinkered with the idea of a street-legal performance car -- the GTO -- which along with the Firebird and Grand Prix, vaulted Pontiac into a leadership role in the muscle car world.

Rusty Wallace, who with 31 wins in a Pontiac remains the all-time leader, spearheaded Pontiac's second Golden Era in the 1980s. With Raymond Beadle's equipment, Wallace scored his first Cup victory at Bristol in 1986, winning later in the season at Martinsville. He then won twice more in 1987, but things really took off in the second half of the 1988 season. Wallace won three consecutive races, beginning at Charlotte, then after finishing fifth at Phoenix, won from the pole the following weekend at Atlanta.

In 1989, Wallace picked up right where he left off, winning three of the first six races of the season: Rockingham, Richmond and Bristol. He went to Victory Lane back-to-back at Watkins Glen and Michigan during the summer, and scored his sixth victory of the year when the series returned to Richmond, and held off Dale Earnhardt to win the championship by 12 points.

Thanks to Wallace, Pontiac nearly captured a third manufacturers trophy in 1993. Driving for Roger Penske, Wallace won 10 of the 30 races that season. Adding Kyle Petty's win at Pocono, Pontiac finished with 11 victories.

Joe Gibbs Racing added two more Cup titles to Pontiac's resume. In 2000, Bobby Labonte won four times -- and teammate Tony Stewart added six more -- on his way to the championship. Two years later, it was Stewart's turn on top, as he won three races en route to the crown.

Pontiac's final Cup victory came in a thrilling side-by-side, door handle-banging, final-turn battle between Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch at Darlington, with Craven winning by .002 seconds in Cal Wells' Tide ride. But after Gibbs switched to Chevy, fewer and fewer teams were competing under the Pontiac banner. And in the fall of 2003, GM announced it was ending Pontiac involvement in the series.

However, a few independent teams kept Pontiac alive for five more races in 2004, with little success. Todd Bodine's 42nd-place finish for John Carter in the 2004 Pocono 500 was the brand's swan song in NASCAR.

But like Buick and Oldsmobile, two other GM brands that suffered similar fates, Pontiac will be remembered for leaving a significant and memorable legacy in NASCAR's record books.