Will GM bring back Pontiac? No, it won’t. Winding out of Pontiac franchises cost GM billions of dollars. It was a desperate move to help save the corporation from its bankruptcy woes. But now that it is gone GM wouldn’t suddenly bring it back. But that is not what this is about. It’s about the most searched dead brand on the internet. 

Yep, Pontiac is the most searched dead brand by a wide margin

That would be Pontiac. Yep, Pontiac is the most searched dead brand by a wide margin. Whether for the knowledge or just dreaming the Pontiac brand still holds some interest. Budget Direct, which is an insurance provider, wanted to know which dead brand held the most interest today. It searched through Google search data to come up with those car brands getting the most love on the interweb. And there are many to be sure.

Rating highly in searches included Mercury, Saturn, Sunbeam, Firebird, Cobra, and Bug. Some of those make sense, but others? We’re not quite sure who would want to search for Sunbeam info? But Budget broke out other areas of search.

The Pontiac Firebird is the most searched dead pony or muscle car. Its popularity in movies like Smokey and the Bandit doesn’t hurt its appeal. But it scored 35% higher than the number two most searched, which is also a Pontiac. 

Of the British brands that are gone AC Cobra is the most searched

Of the British brands that are gone AC Cobra is the most searched. That makes sense primarily due to the Shelby Cobra. We say AC is gone but actually, the owners of the trademark have begun making new AC Cobras as electric vehicles.

The Aussies have their own brands, or at least they used to. Now all of them are gone. The number one hit Down Under is Holden by a wide margin. Eight of the 10 top dead brand searches were for assorted Holden vehicles. Of those, Commodore is the winner scoring more than the next nine Holdens combined. 

Curious about the 1950s the folks at Budget also broke down dead car brands from that decade. At the top was Hudson, which doesn’t make a lot of sense since it was fading in the 1950s and was gone by 1957. It was never a huge seller even at its peak and was absorbed into American Motors in the mid-1950s. American was absorbed by Chrysler in the 1980s which is how it ended up with the Jeep brand. 

There were truly great American cars that got edged out

At number two is the Saab 93, that buggy-looking sedan from Sweden. Next is the Plymouth Fury, though there were many years of them starting in 1956. Could the movie Christine have anything to do with so many searches? In descending order was the NSU Prinz, Sunbeam Alpine, Pontiac Bonneville, the Saab 95 wagon, Tatra 603, Triumph Herald, and Nash Metropolitan. To our minds, there were a lot of truly great American cars from the 1950s that for some reason got edged out by some really crappy British cars-sorry Brits. 

The Top Ten overall searches were the afore-mentioned Firebird followed by the Pontiac GTO, Hummer H1, H3, H2, Plymouth Barracuda, Pontiac Aztek, Saab 9-3, AC Cobra, and Hudson Hornet. Surprisingly, out of the top 30 dead brand searches nowhere is the Ford Mustang. Hmmm.