Who says Pontiac is dead? Okay, GM execs do, but don’t tell that to famed NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., because while the company may have gone under, his own Pontiac is still alive and well and has actually taken on a different demeanor just recently, according to MotorAuthority. Confused yet? Ah, just what we were going for!
To say that Pontiac is dead is, well, a complicated statement. The company, which went under officially in 2010 has not come back as of yet, but that hasn’t stopped Pontiac fans from continuing on in their glorious ways. Among them, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
While Jr. drives a new Chevy SS under the Hendrick Motorsports team name for this year’s NASCAR season, it’s actually a Pontiac (and one with a twist) that he drives for his own pleasure. Ironically enough, however, Jr.’s Pontiac of choice is not much different from the recently rebadged Holden which appeared earlier this year on the American market as the SS.
The 2009 Pontiac G8 owned by Jr. recently underwent a transformation into an HSV Holden, a performance version of the acclaimed Chevy sister sold in Australia. Not only is the Pontiac trimmed to the nines in HSV trim, from the sheet metal to the badges; it also features a unique black paint job with ghost HSV logos along the sides and across the hood, and a supercharger for the 6.2L engine. Hendrick Motorsports team owner Rick Hendrick apparently helped with the car’s transformation.
Along with helping transforming Jr.’s car, Hendrick also wanted to sell a supercharger upgrade to other G8 owners, but with the demise of Pontiac, all plans of that deal hit a stand-still. Still, according to Australia’s Drive, where the car originally appeared, Hendrick’s G8 conversion for Jr. has received some surprising acceptance from Holden’s former managing director and GM’s current North America Sales Chief Alan Batey. Batey also has a few G8s in his own car collection.
With the Chevy SS officially debuted in the United States, our wait for another Holden cousin is finally over, but Jr. is still among the lucky few to claim to own a real Holden, well, sort of.
Now if only we could get a version of the Holden Gen-F GTS model, which will be a force fed, supercharged LSA version of the Chevy SS here in the States, we’d be talking!