- General Motors plans destruction of historic building in city of Pontiac.
- One Pontiac Plaza office stood as symbol of the brand’s glory years.
- Vacant since 2020, building once housed the sales and marketing team.
Another piece of American auto history is about to disappear. General Motors has confirmed it plans to demolish the former headquarters of its long-defunct Pontiac division, bringing an end to a building that once stood at the center of one of America’s most exciting performance brands.
Known originally as One Pontiac Plaza, the mid-century-style administration building opened in 1970 on GM’s sprawling Pontiac campus in Michigan. While the structure is often associated with Pontiac legend John DeLorean, who headed up the division when plans for the new HQ were cemented, he had already moved on to lead Chevrolet before the building officially opened its doors, the Detroit Free Press tells us.
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Today, the building is known as Pontiac Engineering Center Building A, though there hasn’t been much engineering going on there lately. Pontiac built its last car in 2010, and GM says the structure has sat empty since 2020. It’s now earmarked for demolition as part of an effort to streamline the company’s real estate footprint. GM hasn’t revealed what might eventually replace it.
For Pontiac enthusiasts, the loss opens up old wounds. The building served as the home for many of the division’s sales, marketing, and public relations teams during Pontiac’s heyday, when models like the GTO and Trans Am helped define American performance culture – and duds like the T1000 (a rebadged Chevy Chevette that should have been terminated) did its best to ruin it.
City Has Moved On
Terry Connolly, chairman of the Pontiac Transportation Museum and a retired Pontiac engineer, told local media that the building remains an important symbol of the brand’s golden years.
“We’re obviously sorry to see it go,” Connolly lamented to the Detroit Free Press. “Because to any of the Pontiac faithful, it is a very famed thing and represented Pontiac’s glory days.”
The demolition also serves as another reminder of how dramatically GM’s presence in Pontiac has changed over the decades. At its peak, the city hosted tens of thousands of GM employees and multiple divisions. Following the company’s bankruptcy and the cancellation of the Pontiac brand in 2010, much of that footprint gradually disappeared, with various other Pontiac buildings having already been sold off, and residents finding work in other sectors.
