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This story won't mention Walter White. Nor will it give glory to the pile-on that has declared the Pontiac Aztek the ugliest vehicle ever built. And it certainly won't try to change anybody's love/hatred of the Aztek; taste is subjective, after all. It will, however, attempt to explain how the Aztek came to stand out in the automotive marketplace and in subsequent automotive culture, for better or worse.
By the mid-1990s, GM had fallen into a torpor. The Roger Smith era, which ended with his retirement in 1990, left the company inflexible and ill-prepared to handle an increasingly dynamic automotive marketplace. Smith's successor, Robert Stempel, rose through the ranks of GM from its engineering team and seemed to understand the product side of the business, but not the business side of the business, which left the company in the hands of John G. Smale and Jack Smith, both accomplished businessmen who came from Procter & Gamble and from GM's planning and operations side, respectively.
Smale and Jack Smith, ready to turn GM around, turned their eye toward product in 1994. "Smale decided to bring the world's biggest automaker a dose of the give-the-people-what-they-want ethic that had animated Smale's old company, Procter & Gamble Co.," Jonathan Weisman wrote for the Washington Post. "And what the people wanted was sexy, edgy and a bit off-key; in short, a head-turner."
Specifically, as Bloomberg's David Welch wrote, "GM wanted to prove it could transcend its engineering-dominated culture and design a hip, affordable vehicle for young buyers and move it quickly through a traditionally slow-moving bureaucracy."
Out at GM's West Coast Advanced Concept Center in Thousand Oaks, California, Tom Peters, then the director of the ACC, took Smale's directive to his team, which was already investigating "active outdoor lifestyle" vehicles much like the Pontiac Stinger from a few years prior. As he told TFL, he asked his team, "What if you took a Camaro and a Blazer and put it in a blender?" and called the resulting The North Face jacket-inspired sporty all-wheel-drive people and gear hauler - based on drawings by Brigid O'Kane - the Bear Claw.
"The initial Aztek 'Bear Claw' concept was based on an S-series full-frame platform with four-wheel drive, an off-road wheel/tire package and an aggressively styled body featuring big flared wheel arches, a low roof and a wide track," he told TFL.
It generated plenty of excitement within GM. Perhaps too much excitement, as Bob Lutz later wrote for Road & Track.
The guy in charge of product development was Don Hackworth, an old-school guy from the tradition of shouts, browbeating, and by-God-I-want-it-done. He said, "Look. We've all made up our minds that the Aztek is gonna be a winner. It's gonna astound the world. I don't want any negative comments about this vehicle. None. Anybody who has bad opinions about it, I want them off the team."
Such an attitude might have benefited the Aztek had it hewed close to the truck-based Bear Claw concept. However, as Weisman wrote, "General Motors' culture took over from there. Design would be by committee, the focus groups extensive. And production would have to stick to a tight budget."
The latter constraint meant that, instead of basing the resulting production vehicle on the S/T chassis, the Aztek would instead have to run on the GMT200/U-body minivan platform - the second-generation front-wheel-drive successors to the so-called dustbuster minivans.
"This created some serious design challenges and forced us to move away from the original design intent," Peters told TFL. "For example, the cowl and roof had to be raised and the body narrowed. This caused the dash to axle dimension to be raised and moved forward while the minivans small wheels and tires forced the wheel arches to become smaller."
Then, as Lutz pointed out, even though GM submitted the Aztek to plenty of focus groups, GM brass discounted the criticisms levied at the design and at the same time encouraged the designers, engineers, and product planners working on the Aztek to focus on meeting internal development goals and timelines. "Everybody wanted to will this thing to succeed, and it didn't work," he wrote. "All the emotional commitment and pride in the program was that it achieved all its internal objectives."
The Aztek concept arrived in 1999 with the focus on active outdoor lifestyles intact and with Peters himself introducing it. Though not quite the Bear Claw, it was still hailed for its aggressive looks and for taking on the nascent crossover category.
A year later, the production Aztek landed as a late 2000 model year vehicle with almost all of the aggressiveness of the 1999 concept erased and with Pontiac's massive body cladding installed. It came with a tent, sure - just like the Vega and the Nova did in the Seventies - along with all-wheel drive and the lauded removable cooler that doubled as an armrest, but sales did not proceed apace. According to Welch, within months GM started offering rebates to move the Aztek off lots and reduced its annual sales forecast from 75,000 to 50,000. Just 11,200 sold in the short 2000 model year and no more than 28,000 in each of the next three years.
"That's a rough start for a vehicle that GM had hoped would signal a design renaissance," Welch wrote.
Photo by the author.
Its disappointing sales led GM to show a lowered Aztek with a longitudinal V-8 swap and reconfigured wheel arches to fit bigger tires at SEMA in 2003 or so - a concept that probably turned more heads than any Aztek detractor thought possible - but the sales slide continued, and Pontiac canceled the Aztek in 2005. GM sold nearly three times as many of the Aztek's platform mate, the Buick Rendezvous.
Amid the ubiquitous criticism of the Aztek, it did find some earnest appreciation. Owner praise led to high marks from the American Customer Satisfaction Index and from J.D. Power and Associates. And, as Matthew DeBord and others have since noted, GM (perhaps inadvertently) was ahead of the crossover curve with the Aztek, leveraging the legacy of the Stinger and Peters's Camaro-Blazer fusion concept into an entirely new segment that now dominates the automotive landscape.
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Ontario Provincial Police
Over a dozen stolen classic cars were found in a barn in a small town north of Belleville, Canada, after the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) issued a search warrant following a lengthy investigation.
The OPP located the barn find cars in Stirling, Canada, on May 14. The collection is said to be worth around $3 million.
The road to this bust was reportedly a long one that involved several parties. The authorties stated the operation was a “collaboration with the OPP Fleet, Supply and Weapons Services Bureau, Central Hastings OPP Crime Unit and Emergency Response Team, and with assistance from the OPP-led Provincial Auto Theft and Towing (PATT) Team and the OPP-led Provincial Asset Forfeiture Unit (PAFU).”
“Collaboration across our organization and with our partner agencies is imperative to combat the prevalence of auto theft and related fraud within Ontario,” said OPP Det. Sup. Paula Milne of the Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau. “This investigation is another testament to the surge we have seen in auto theft and financial crimes over the last few years and the need for subject matter expert involvement in these investigations.”
According to GlobalNews, the guilty parties are Robert Bradshaw and Gary Leblanc, both of which who allegedly pleaded guilty to ten separate charges and paid thousands in fines in 2003 for violations of the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act. Now, each is reportedly being charged with theft of motor vehicles over $5,000, fraud over $5,000, using forged documents, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offense. Leblanc is facing an added charge of uttering threats.
While the future for the thieves looks grim, the cars will surely have a better outlook. The full list of stolen vehicles found was not revealed to the public, however the shared photos show several classic Chevrolet Corvettes, a classic Ford F-1 pickup truck, and multiple 1930s hot rods, all appearing to be in exceptional condition.
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Geneva International Motor Show
The organizers of the Geneva International Motor Show decided it is time to cancel the event, which began back in 1905, indefinitely. The news was announced on Friday, May 31.
The Geneva Motor Show is known as the premier automotive show in Europe. At its peak, the event hosted upwards of 120 exhibitors. Before going on a five-year hiatus, the Geneva Show attracted 600,000 visitors in 2019. Earlier this year, the 2024 Geneva Show relaunched after being canceled for 2020 due to the pandemic. The number of exhibitors dropped to 37. Only 168,000 visitors were in attendance.
The statement published on Friday said “The Comité permanent du Salon International de l’Automobile Foundation has decided not to organize the next edition of the Geneva Salon, due to an uncertain outlook.”
The committee is planning on dissolving the foundation entirely and pointed toward a challenging post-Covid automotive market as the reason for canceling the Geneva Motor Show; “there are too many uncertainties linked to the automotive industry and the eroded attractiveness of the major European shows to take the risk of investing further into the future.”
The Geneva Show’s president, Alexandre de Senarclens, mentions a decline in demand and a lack of growth from other major automotive events as reasons for canceling the event.
"The lack of interest shown by manufacturers in the Geneva Salon in a difficult industry context, the competition from the Paris and Munich shows which are favored by their domestic industry, and the investment levels required to maintain such a show, sound the final blow for a future edition,” he said, adding, “This extremely regrettable decision should not detract from the efforts and determination with which we have tried to regain our success. The teams had put all their determination into reviving this motor show after the COVID pandemic.
"However, it has to be said that the lack of interest shown by manufacturers in the Geneva Salon in a difficult industry context, the competition from the Paris and Munich shows which are favored by their domestic industry, and the investment levels required to maintain such a show, sound the final blow for a future edition."
The Geneva Auto Show was host to several historically significant automotive debuts, such as the Lamborghini Countach, Porsche 356, Jaguar E-Type, Range Rover Classic, the Ferrari 250, and the McLaren P1.
The Geneva Auto Show will have a successor, the show in Doha, Qatar. Dubbed as GIMS Qatar, the new satellite event curiously abbreviates the Geneva International Motor Show. GIMS Qatar first launched in October 2023. The 10-day event saw 180,000 visitors and hosted 30 brands and 150 vehicles at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center, in addition to 12 world premieres. The next show in Doha is scheduled for November 2025.
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