Pontiac G5: Ridiculous Rebadge

A lot of people really hate two-door cars.  I know this because I recently reserved a full-size car for take a road trip with friends, but was so eager to drive the Fiat 500 that I cunningly upgraded to it when I arrived at the rental car agency.  My passengers didn’t view this as an upgrade, a fact which was hammered into my head over the following nine hours:

“I can’t feel my legs anymore!”

“I can’t breathe in this tiny little box!”

“Do you still write that stupid car blog?”

The popularity of four-door cars over two-door cars is what makes the latest Ridiculous Rebadge so patently ridiculous.

In the photo above, you might see a Chevrolet Cobalt.  But you’re wrong.  Instead, that’s a Pontiac G5, also called the G4 in Mexico where it was, apparently, one less.  But while the Cobalt was offered as a coupe or a far more popular sedan, the G5 was only available with two doors.

The year was 2007, and General Motors was in its “pride before the fall” phase, where it was rebadging everything in sight with an ultimate goal of trying to whittle its product offerings down from SUVs, cars, and trucks to just one single vehicle with slightly different headlights shared between seven brands.

The G5 fell victim to one of the worst rebadges, since it was hampered by both its two-door bodystyle and its Chevrolet Cobalt underpinnings.  That meant in addition to a rough ride, mediocre styling and an interior made from Wal-Mart deck chair plastic, the G5 had the added bonus of back seats that were both inaccessible and inhospitable for any actual human beings, but possibly acceptable for cats.

Not surprisingly, the G5 lasted only three model years before General Motors pulled the plug on its entire Pontiac division and sold the remaining stock to rental car companies.

Now that’s an upgrade I would never take.