Interesting... I agree that rear wheel drive certainly seems to meet the "performance" definition, at least by those that seem to appreciate BMW, and other similars.

But I'm not sure selling nothing but RWD would help sales. I think many people, including myself, would need to be convinced that a RWD would perform as well or better than a FWD in winter conditions. When the streets are icy, and you need to get up a hill, and your at a full stop waiting for the light to change, there something about having the engine weight over your driven wheels that just seems to make sense. That perception could be wrong, but it's shared by many, right? Perhaps it's both an engineering AND a marketing problem...

I'm not sure I've ever liked the idea of Pontiac being the supposed "performance" division though. In my mind, Pontiac was a notch up from Chevy, meaning a little nicer interior, nicer "options", maybe a little better handling, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that was good enough. To say that Pontiac is the "performance" division is almost to say that the other divisions therefore are NOT performance. And if that's the case, does that mean the Corvette, Camaro, and several other cars should have the arrow head on their nose? I don't see that happening, but how can you call yourself the "performance" division if the top performing car wears a blue bow-tie?

ps: my other car is a 1999 Grand Prix GT, and I love it.