Pop quiz: When’s the last time you thought about Pontiac? Been a little while, hasn’t it? Parent company General Motors shut down production of Pontiacs in 2010, retiring the badge indefinitely. So while you can probably still spot a few on the road, the brand is slowly fading into the mist, joining a long list of defunct American carmakers.
Except, apparently, in Montana. According to insurance provider Hagerty, that state truly sticks out as a land where Pontiacs still rule the roads. In terms of Pontiacs per capita (a statistic that you, surely, think about constantly), the bulk of the top 50 counties, including eight of the top 10, are all there. There is no close second place. Roosevelt County has one Pontiac per 25 people; the Canada-neighboring Glacier County has one per 24; and Big Horn County has an incredible one for every 23 people.
Expanding out a little further, while nothing reaches Montana’s level, the Midwest in general seems to hang on to Pontiacs more than most of the rest of the country. Alabama is in the mix, too. And technically, it’s the county of Loving, Texas that has the most Pontiacs per capita at one for every 22 people (but there are only 64 people in the county). These tend to be lower-income states and counties, so it’s possible that people hang on to their cars for as long as possible. Or maybe they just have a soft spot for an old piece of rolling Americana.
What happened to Pontiac?
Pontiac was part of the first wave of American car companies. Its roots trace back to an earlier company called Oakland, which first put models out for sale in 1907. After an acquisition by General Motors, the bigger company in 1926 spun up a new brand called Pontiac, which was so popular that it subsumed Oakland in 1932.
From there, Pontiac helped define American motoring with iconic cars like the Bonneville, a land yacht synonymous with the 1950s. By the 1960s and ’70s, they were also getting in on the muscle-car craze with the GTO and the Trans Am, some of the great “cool cars” of their respective eras.
By 2001, however, the storied brand was producing stinkers like the beautiful-on-the-inside Aztek, an SUV so bad that it was made famous as the crummy car of chemistry teacher Walter White in the heartwarming cancer-recovery show “Breaking Bad.” Things never really got better for Pontiac, and by 2010, GM wound the shop down.