Remembering Pontiac's legacy as GM closes brand

The news out of Detroit that General Motors was eliminating its Pontiac division after 83 years officially closes the book on one of NASCAR's most successful manufacturers. In 1,262 races spanning 50 seasons, Pontiacs won 154 races, had 805 top-five finishes and wound up in the top 10 a total of 1,695 times. The brand won more than $130 million in prize money, two manufacturers championships and four Cup titles.

A look back at Pontiac's history through the years shows a number of interesting facts. Pontiac's debut came in the 1950 season opener at the Daytona beach and road course. New Jersey driver Dick Clothier entered a '47 Pontiac and North Carolina's Will Albright ran a '46 model. Clothier only completed five laps and finished 36th out of the 41 cars which started, while Albright made 43 of the 48 laps and wound up 19th.

As a manufacturer, Pontiac began to show serious interest in NASCAR near the end of the 1956 season, and outfitted Ray Nichels with a pair of factory-supported cars for Cotton Owens and Banjo Matthews for the return to the beach in '57. Matthews won the pole and Owens started directly behind him in third. By the time the field made one trip down the beach and back up A-1-A, Owens had assumed the lead. The Spartanburg, S.C., native would go on to lead 30 of the 39 laps, scoring Pontiac's first win and bringing home $4,250.

Pontiac's first Golden Era came early in the next decade, thanks to the son of GM president William Knudsen. Bunkie Knudsen had a novel idea: take the Catalina, marketed at the time as a family sedan, widen the wheelbase, stick a powerful Chevrolet V-8 under the hood and see how it would do in NASCAR. Almost immediately, the decision paid huge dividends.

In 1961, Fireball Roberts and Joe Weatherly swept the Daytona 500 qualifying races and two days later, Marvin Panch followed with a victory in the 500-miler. By the end of the season, Pontiac had won 30 of the 50 races on the schedule including eight by Weatherly, two by Roberts, seven by Junior Johnson and three by an up-and-coming newcomer named David Pearson.

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.