[BigAls87Z28]

The BMW comment was made by Lutz when he first stepped into GM. Since he walked in, he has pushed to make Pontiac a performance oriented division. Moving away from the fancy scooped rebadged Chevy's, to a true RWD design.
The new Alpha chassis will underpin most of its new cars, including a G6 replacement. Now, Pontiac will not directly compete with BMW. But it will go after the same type of mentality, driving performance and handling. Not just V8's in a RWD chassis, you will see Ecotecs and V6's mostly, pumping out good power for a small agile car.
The GTO and G8, and Solstice are some ways that Lutz has tried to make this happy asap without waiting for a new chassis, which wont arive till 2013.

GM will be making larger RWD cars like the G8 soon in Oshawa, and Camaro will be first to run down the line. Eventually there will be other RWD cars built off the Zeta platform that will work right along side Camaro. There will also be 2 larger RWD cars built along side the CTS, one the Buick Park Ave and the replacement for the Caddy STS/DTS.

As for Firebird, wont ever happen. Like Tim said, GM is not going to eat into its own dollars to market 2 niche cars. 40 years ago, when the market couldnt get enough of performance muscle and pony cars, they could work the 2 to gain as much market share as possible. But now, the market is very small, very small. Mustang sales are down month after month. Everyone talks about that it was the Mustang that saved the Camaro. If that was the case, then the people inside GM are stupid. The new Mustang didnt have any great success. It was just talked about a lot because of its design, thats all. If you look back at every single launch of a new Mustang, or any car with a large following, there is always a first year spike. Im sure that GM will sell ever Camaro produced in its first year or two. But just like the Mustang, like the Solstice, like every other performance enthusiast car, after everyone has thiers, the boom is over. Its at that point for GM to figure out how to keep sales up. GM will have the luxury of building other cars along side Camaro so that it can share the burden and spread the costs out.