I never had a Pontiac. My first car was an Olds F-85. It was ten years old when I bought it. I probably replaced everything related to the cooling system twice in the two years I owned it. It had lots of other problems and I probably put three times the money into fixing it than what I paid for it originally. But it made two trips from NY to Tennessee.
My second car was an AMC Hornet. The transmission never seemed to work right and no one ever fixed it properly. I love American Motors cars. They were ugly, but in a kind of glorious way, as if the designers were saying "we have no talent and we're proud".