Cars killed by the Corvette

Although Cadillac has always been the "Flagship" of the GM line, Chevrolet has always sold the most cars, and therefore been the most profitable of GM divisions. This however, has made Chevrolet engineers and bean counters bullies throughout the years. By bullies, I mean demanding other divisions kill projects that might hurt sales of High-Profit Chevy models, or if other divisions came up with a cool idea, they demand a Chevy version. Here's some cars that never were, but would have been way cool. I've even seen pictures and prototypes. # 1 Pontiac XP-833. This one had two prototypes built. It looked a lot like the famous 1965 Mako Shark show car, which looked a lot like a 1968 Corvette. It was a two-seat sports car, and Pontiac built two, one with the 215 hp, 250 inch OHC six-cylinder engine, and one with a 421 V8. The Chevy brass demanded it be killed, and it was. However, when Chevrolet was designing the Camaro to compete with the hugely successfull Mustang, John DeLorean, who was president of Pontiac, at the time, told the brass that since they had killed XP-833, they owed it to the division to give him a Camaro derivative. Chevy engineers bitched and moaned, but the brass ultimately said DeLorean had a point, that Chevrolet couldn't have it both ways. The other GM divisions had  a right to develop cool stuff-like the Racy,front-drive Olds Toronado for instance, and if Chevy was going to demand that stuff like Xp833 be killed to protect the Corvette's market share, then they had to give Pontiac a piece of the Camaro program. That's how the Firebird came into being. # 2 Pontiac Fiero Turbo/ Supercharged. That's not a typo. Back in the mid-'80s Pontiac introduced the Fiero as a cheap sports car. However, because of the plastic body, insurance companies basically killed the car. People would want to buy one, and then find out the insurance premiums were as much as the payments. Pontiac decided to go the other way, and make it a high-performance sports car. They built a few of prototypes. One had a turbo on the 2.8 liter V6 that was optional in the car already. One, had a Buick Grand National motor in it, and one had a 231 inch V6 with a roots-type blower on it. The same powerplant that was used in Buick Rivieras and Pontiac Bonnevillee SSEIs in the early '90's. They quickly scrapped the 60 degree 2.8 liter models because of reliability problems. But the GN motors were already emission certified and bulletproof. And needless to say, the GN engined Fiero was ungodly fast. Pontiac was actually going to make them, and sell them for under $25,000! Chevrolet brass demanded that the project be killed, because they'd never sell another Corvette. # 3 Buick Reatta. Again, I'm not kidding. Buick engineers initally wanted the racy Reatta two-seater to be rear-wheel drive and have the vaunted Turbo GN motor. Again, Chevrolet cried foul, saying that the badass Reatta would hurt the Corvette. Buick then wanted to power it with the Cadillac Allante powertrain, and make it mid-engine, but Chevrolet sang the same song, and that idea was killed too. Ultimately, the Reatta became the piece of crap that it was-front drive, and with barely 150 hp from its normally aspirated 3.8 V6, which is why it didn't sell. # 4 Pontiac Turbo Trans-Am. After 1988, when the GM Intermediates-i.e.-Monte Carlo, Cutlass, Regal-which the Grand National was based on went front drive, that was it for the GN package. But the engineers and the automotive press loved the motor. And GM engineers wanted to keep it alive. In 1989 Pontiac installed GN motors in a few Trans-Ams- the 20th anniversary edition. The Turbo V6 was lighter than the small-block Chevys that came in Camaros and Firebirds,which improved the T/A's already phenomenal handling. They also had more power and got better mileage than the Chevy V8s. The buff magazines raved. For 1990, Pontiac wanted to make the Turbo V6 the T/A's engine permanantly, and turn up the boost to increase power. Again, the Chevy brass threw a hissy fit, saying that T/A with the new powertrain ( Rumored to be clost to 325 hp from 231 cubes ) would put a big dent in the sales of the more expensive, and potentially slower Corvette. GM brass ruled that the 89 Turbo T/A was a limited edition, and the 1990 and later models would continue to use the 305 and 350 Chevy V8s. And the Turbo V6 was history. Instead of killing it's potential competitors, maybe Chevy engineers should have worked on making it better!  Mastermind