Wednesday 20th January 1909

The newly formed automaker General Motors (GM) bought into the Oakland Motor Car Corporation, which later became GM’s long-running Pontiac division. Oakland Motor Car was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan by Edward Murphy, a manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages. The following year, another former buggy company executive, William Durant, founded General Motors in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company for the Buick Motor Company. GM soon bought other automakers, including Oldsmobile and Cadillac. In 1909, Oakland became part of GM. The first Pontiac model made its debut as part of the Oakland line in the 1920’s. The car, which featured a six-cylinder engine, proved so popular that the Oakland name was eventually dropped and Pontiac became its own GM division by the early 1930s. On April 27, 2009, amid ongoing financial problems and restructuring efforts, GM announced it would discontinue the Pontiac brand by the end of 2010. The last Pontiacs were built in late 2009/early 2010, with the final dealer franchises expiring October 31, 2010.