After spending much of his life around Tucson's Pontiac dealership, Thomas Quebedeaux heard about the famous marque's demise just like most of us.
A zone representative for Pontiac called him Monday morning to tell him General Motors was closing the division, but Quebedeaux said that by then, he'd heard about it on CNN and Bloomberg.
Before that, "rumors were all we heard," said the 59-year-old Tucson Pontiac and GMC dealer.
"It's disappointing. We're sad," Quebedeaux said. "We've got thousands of loyal Pontiac customers. We're sad for them."
As of Monday afternoon, Quebedeaux said the dealership at 3566 E. Speedway had received surprisingly few calls from customers concerned about the future for them and their Pontiacs.
"I anticipate we'll get more. A lot of them are working," Quebedeaux said. "We're going to make them feel confident."
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He said the dealership with the huge flag on Speedway will stay open, selling genuine Pontiac parts and service and doing authorized warranty work for a long time — while continuing to sell its other line, GMC.
"I've got two sons in the business. I've got a grandson that's 5," said Quebedeaux, himself the son of the Tucson dealership's former owner. "We're going to be here a long time."
And that huge flag?
"That'll stay. Love America," Quebedeaux said.
Quebedeaux's father, John I. Quebedeaux, bought the dealership — formerly Hoffman Pontiac and Hackett & Whiting Motor Co. — in 1960 at what was then 1430 N. Miracle Mile Strip — and moved it to the Speedway site in 1967.
That was before the GM sisters — Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac — increasingly shared platforms: chassis and drivetrain, and later even the bodywork. A couple of decades later, you could often tell the difference only by reading the badges. Now the "sisters" are three; GM closed the Oldsmobile Division in 2004.
There were Pontiac models, especially in the 1960s, that were closely related to the sister divisions' models, but they still had strong identities: Firebird, Trans Am and, the daddy of the muscle cars, the GTO.
Bill McCoy, 58, of Chandler has a couple of Firebirds, including a 1999 anniversary model Trans Am, but the royalty of the garage is a red 1965 GTO.
It's the car he wanted in high school.
"I remember when I was in high school, I wanted to get a GTO. (But) I had to pay for my own car," he said. "So I got a 1964 Tempest (same body as the GTO) and made it look like a GTO."
McCoy and his wife, Barbara, belong to a Phoenix-area GTO club. Even last year's $4-a-gallon gas didn't dampen their appreciation for Pontiac's performance cars — though it made them consider how far they'd go on club trips.
"What's fun with car shows is that you can just park it," Bill McCoy said.
He said the back row of a monthly nighttime car show at a Scottsdale mall is all Pontiacs. They'll have something to talk about back there.
"It feels like a death in the family," McCoy said of GM's decision to close the Pontiac Division. "Most people won't understand that."
Leaders of several Tucson Pontiac fan clubs could not be reached for comment Monday.
Quebedeaux, meanwhile, said that although he was the son of a Pontiac dealer and was just becoming old enough to drive in the mid-1960s, he didn't get a "Goat" — the nickname for the powerful Pontiac GTO, one of the era's most desired muscle cars.
"My father probably thought it better that I didn't," he said.
On StarNet: A brand-new Pontiac for $770? Read about it in the Star's "Morgue Tales" blog, go.azstarnet.com/morguetales