What U.S. State Has the Most Pontiacs Per Capita?

The last Pontiac automobile rolled off the line nearly 15 years ago, in January of 2010. It was a white G6 sedan, a bland end for a company that had produced some of the spiciest offerings in the portfolio of its corporate parent, GM. Enthusiasm for Pontiacs, though, is still very much alive. Of all the car brands Hagerty insures, Pontiac is the third most popular by number of policies.

This stat got us wondering. Where in the U.S. are Pontiacs most popular? The result was this map, which we assembled using U.S. vehicle registration data for classics (vehicles 25 years old or older) and modern collector vehicles. Hover over it to see which U.S. counties have the most Pontiacs per capita.

Technically, the county with the most Pontiacs per capita is Loving, Texas. But while you might think that those Texans really love their Pontiacs, with 1 Pontiac for every 22 people, it’s worth pointing out that Loving County has a population of just 64. It’s the least populous county in the United States, in fact; so we can probably call that one an outlier. Meanwhile, the county that’s home to the city of Pontiac—Oakland County, Michigan—isn’t even in the top 1500. Where the Pontiacs really seem to be concentrated is in Montana. Eight of the 10 counties with the most Pontiacs per capita are in The Treasure State.

Now, if you read our breakdown of the Montana license plate loophole last week, you might assume that the state’s loose registration rules are throwing the numbers off; perhaps Californians with Montana-plated GTOs are skewing things toward Big Sky Country. A closer look at the data, however, shows that this isn’t the case.

While ’79 Firebirds are particularly popular in Montana’s three largest counties (Yellowstone, Missoula, and Gallatin), so are Grands Prix and Grand Ams from the 1990s and early 2000s. In Big Horn County, which has the most Pontiacs per capita in the state, the five most popular Pontiacs are all ’90s Grand Ams. It’s hard to imagine out-of-staters using the Montana LLC loophole on a car like that.

On one hand, it makes sense why these more ordinary mass-produced cars from the brand’s catalog would be the most popular, but compare Montana to a state like California, where the five most popular Pontiacs by make and model are the considerably more exciting 1979 Firebird, 1978 Firebird, 1968 Firebird, 2009 G8, and 1977 Firebird. In Florida, the most popular Pontiacs are Solstices and Firebirds.

The reasons why Montana is so Pontiac-crazy, and why its residents own so many of even the brand’s more generic models, aren’t entirely clear. One may be frugality. If you rank the states in terms of the average model year of vehicles on their road, Montana is seventh in the nation. In other words, it’s more common for someone to still be rocking a 30-year-old Grand Prix in Montana than it is in, say, New York. Another reason may be availability. Montana is a huge, sparsely populated state (its population density is the third lowest in the country), so maybe Pontiac just had more of a dealership presence than the other brands in this not-very-competitive part of the country—but we’re just speculating. Or maybe the reason is just plain old loyalty—Pontiac did, after all, give the state its very own model, the 1997–2009 Montana minivan.

Whatever the reason for Montana’s Pontiac predominance, we’re surprised and happy to see this gone-too-soon brand get some love.