Excitement, Yes, but Is It Too Late?

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DETROIT

PONTIAC can’t get a break. It finally rolls up to the party in its G8 sedan — with a big snorting engine under the hood, herds of leather in the cabin and a keg in the trunk — only to find the festivities are over. The last drunk has staggered out. The pool is being skimmed. It’s too much, too late.

Back in the halcyon days of 2002, General Motors had a plan for Pontiac. The division, tarnished by three decades spent selling restyled Chevys, would transform itself into the American version of BMW, building rear-drive performance cars without the high German prices. The G8 would be the flagship, and its role was to make such a notion seem not quite so preposterous.

But today, with G.M.’s future in doubt, the G8 power-slides into unknown terrain. Some people at G.M. say this midsize sedan is the future face of a Pontiac unit that will be downsized and refocused. Some say the G8 is doomed to die in 2013, or that its V-8 engine will be swapped for a less thirsty turbocharged 4-cylinder. Others, including tight-fisted members of Congress, insist that G.M. could never make a car this good in the first place.

So, “Mad Max” fans, the G8 may be the last of the V-8 interceptors. How fitting that it is built in Australia. The G8, which supplants the Grand Prix, was engineered Down Under, where the same basic car is the Holden Commodore.

The G8 is sold in two versions — the base model (with a 3.6-liter V-6) and GT (6-liter V-8) — with a super-high-performance GXP scheduled to go on sale by February. A fourth version with a pickup bed called the Sport Truck may or may not arrive next fall. (Aussies love these car-truck combos, which they call “utes.”) Mere talk about the trucklet has restored a lustrous sheen to the feathered ’70s hairstyles of those who loved the Chevy El Camino.

At $28,875, the base G8 is a fine automobile, though light on power (256 horses) and heavy on weight (3,885 pounds) compared with a comparably set-up Nissan Maxima or Mazda 6.

Yet the base car suffers no visual slights. It has the same flared fenders and 18-inch wheels as the GT. It rides on the same impressive suspension, with struts in front and four links in the rear.

Mainly, though, the base model exists to remind you that for an extra $3,365 you could have had the GT. It offers two extra cylinders and 105 more horses, plus another gear in the transmission, larger disc brakes and a six-CD changer with MP3 playback.

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To opt for the V-6 and not the V-8 is to squander a basic American freedom — to buy the biggest, most powerful car available. And even if supersizing seems like a liberty the nation can no longer afford, in this instance logic sides with extravagance. The V-8’s cylinder-deactivation system pulls the GT’s economy rating up to 15 miles a gallon in town and 24 on the highway, almost on par with 17/25 for the base car.

Indeed, the GT is where the action is. This car is a class-jumper, a $32,240 four-door with the power and grace to hang with luxury-sport titans like BMW’s 5 Series.

Anyone who’s driven a Pontiac in the last 30 years might read that sentence and think that G.M. piped nitrous oxide into my test car. But the comparison is defensible. Despite the yawning cultural chasm between Australia and Germany — in Oz, the sound of breaking glass is the unofficial national anthem; in Deutschland, littering is rarer than Miller Lite — the two nations have the sort of curving, open road systems that breed fantastically cohesive rear-drive cars.

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And that is exactly what we have in the G8. Setting the tone is a cabin whose studied relationship among steering wheel, seat and pedals make it easy to find the optimal driving position.

The interior is all black and silver, and the controls are of seriously high quality. The back seat is as amply proportioned as the front, with a wide pass-through for large items like snowboards. My one complaint is that too-thick windshield pillars make it hard to see through corners.

I know this because I was constantly seeking curves through which to toss this car. Pitched hard into a turn, the big Pontiac claws through the corner. It won’t wallow or pitch or track wide of the intended line.

The G8 is similar to a great stereo system in that it’s defined at low volume levels, yet able to be cranked up without distortion. No matter the speed, the steering returns the same measured response as the throttle pedal, as the braking system, as the body motions. Other cars this harmonious are usually found in German showrooms.

Like a BMW or Mercedes, the Pontiac is a heavy machine that feels stout and energetic rather than cumbersome. This is due primarily to its 50-50 front-rear weight distribution and its stiff structure, which frees up the chassis to absorb bumps rather than to mitigate body flex.

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The powertrain gets the rest of the credit. The V-8 puts out 361 horsepower and has a torque plateau as big as Ayers Rock. Its output flows through a 6-speed manumatic transmission and a limited-slip differential that helps the rear tires bite the pavement.

I was also able to spend some time in a preproduction 2010-model GXP. Because I’m a conscientious, well-trained consumer, this more powerful, almost visually identical car immediately made me forget the GT that I had, up to then, raved about.

Lest anyone forget that Pontiac pretty much invented the muscle car (with the 1964 GTO), the GXP is a reminder. Forty-six model years later, the formula still works: put an oversize engine in a salaryman’s sedan. Performance meets stealth.

But the GXP can do things no ’60s-era muscle car could — like turn and stop. It brings refinement in equal proportion to its aggressiveness.

If the GT is a half-price BMW 550i, then the $37,000 GXP is an M5 for hard times. Its Corvette-derived 6.2-liter V-8 speaks Wookiee, grinds out 415 horsepower and mates to an available, fluidly shifting 6-speed manual. This engine clips more than half a second off the GT’s 5.3-second time in the 0-to-60 m.p.h. run. G.M. says it will do the sprint in 4.7 seconds.

Though its pulse is quicker, the GXP has the same integrity as the GT. Pontiac added 14-inch Brembo brakes up front and it upgraded up the suspension. Both cars feel finished, resolved.

The G8s are an accomplished family of sport sedans, the kind of cars that make Pontiac’s old “We build excitement” ads something more than ironic fodder. They also make a convincing claim to a niche that Detroit has largely left unfilled since the ’60s — the sporting, affordable, rear-drive midsize sedan.

It’s a pity that America isn’t in the market for a sharp-looking V-8-powered anything right now. Personally, I hope someone will invent a time machine within the next week or two and have the good sense to set the controls for the year 2000.

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INSIDE TRACK: Pontiac builds an American BMW.