In this ad for the 1967 GTO, Pontiac introduced "the great one: the ultimate driving experience," as the General Motors division hitched its brand to the "driving excitement" ethos.  

With steadily declining market share and profits, the excitement went away.  And now the division is going away.  As of this morning, the Pontiac brand is officially done.  General Motors has announced its latest restructuring plan.  The automaker will cut 21,000 jobs and eliminate the Pontiac brand by the end of next year.  General Motors is also trying to trade debt for equity, asking bondholders, as Bloomberg reports, "to exchange $27 billion of claims for equity to help the biggest U.S. automaker avert bankruptcy."

GM is trying to prove it’s viable, a U.S. requirement to keep the federal loans. The original loan terms called for GM to slash two-thirds of its bonds through an exchange offer and for the UAW to reduce a cash contribution to the health-care fund to $10.2 billion from $20.4 billion.

The bond exchange offer is contingent on the health-care fund, known as a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA, swapping at least 50 percent of its claims for equity, with the remainder of the obligations paid in cash “over a period of time,” according to the statement.

General Motors was facing a deadline from the Obama Administration to put forward a stronger restructuring plan than the one the company submitted in Feburary.