It seems to me that Pontiac could've been stronger had they had the Firebird relaunch alongside the Camaro.
Actually, no it would not. At that point in time doing such a blatant rebadging would not have worked as well as could be expected (particularly as by that point most Pontiacs were basically rebadged Chevys, with some exceptions like the Vibe, which was a rebadged Toyota). At that point people could have sensed (if not already knew) that Pontiac was in trouble and GM was desperate to do something, hence the revamp mid-decade (plus the Wave and Pursuit in Canada and the Daewoo derivatives in Mexico). But a Firebird relaunch was ruled out, not when GM is trying to shut it down (or sell it off if there was a suitable buyer).
Now, that's not to say that that would rule out the Firebird completely. As I said earlier, if we take the Renault route for Pontiac's survival then what would be needed would a revival of the Alpine brand in Europe to provide a steady stream of high-end vehicles
like the Firebird with a base from which it could be modified for North American conditions. In this sense Pontiac would play a dual role - one, as the family brand, which would allow Renault vehicles to have another route to North America outside of the bits and pieces in Nissan vehicles, and another (probably via GXP and GTO sub-brands or "collections") which would attract the youthful/sporty set and thus also be our Renault Sport/Alpine equivalents. For example, the recently-revived
Alpine A110 could work as a decent base for a Firebird:
Add the G8/GTO clip to that et voilà. (And for the Québec market Renault could use the services of the advertising agency responsible for VW's "Tasse-toi, mon oncle!" campaign for the Golf GTI for the Firebird.) The only complication here would be Mexico, since Renault already exists in that market, so Pontiac would be limited to the high-end (Alpine-esque) models only for the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresa]fresa[/url] set.
For the US and Canada, therefore, I could see the following (based on the current models) as an example:
*Pontiac G1 = Renault Twingo and Renault Wind (Canada only)
*Pontiac G2/G3 = Renault Clio (in Canada's case, the G2 is the spiritual revival of the Nissan Micra; in the US's case, the G2 is a partial replacement for the Vibe, as would the closer-in-size G4)
*Pontiac G4/G5 = Renault Mégane (except sedan), Samsung SM3 (sedan)
*Pontiac G6 = Samsung SM5 (Renault Latitude/Safrane, which is treated as an executive car there) [this would be a replacement for both the old G6/Grand Am as well as the lower end of the Grand Prix]
*Pontiac G7 = Samsung SM7 [this would be replacement for both the upper ends of the Grand Prix and the entirety of the Bonneville]
There's also the Captur (Pontiac QM3) and Koleos (Pontiac QM5) crossovers, plus the Pontiac
Scenic and Grand Scenic MPVs (no Trans Sport/Montana for you here), and the new Twizy electric car. Only the Torrent would be troublesome to replace within the Renault stable, which would mean either rebadging from Nissan's Pathfinder (which itself would undergo replacement within a couple of years) or source the replacement from Suzuki via stretching the (Grand) Vitara/Escudo (and probably even adopting the Escudo name and reviving the XL-7 concept for this purpose). Some iconic Pontiac names would be recycled for purposes of rebadging Alpine vehicles for sale in North America (and it's these models which would be the only Pontiacs sold in Mexico). We've already established that one of them - the A110 - would be used for the Firebird (and based on OTL would currently be the only vehicle which would fit); in TTL, this could mean the revival of other models, such as the Alpine GTA/A610, that could also be sold as Pontiacs in North America and hence bring back some of the old model names. The GTO in this case could even harken back to the 1999 concept car for design inspiration while still on an Alpine base.
Just one possible idea.