This Is The US State With The Most Pontiac Owners

There are numerous car brands out there that have managed to withstand the test of time. The likes of Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, and Subaru have been around for ages, standing as pillars of the car community throughout much of the 20th and 21st century. As each has risen to prominence, though, the car industry has witnessed numerous competitors fade into the rearview mirror and ultimately wind up discontinued. Long after when the first Pontiac car was made, the brand was one example that was retired in 2010 along with a few others — a decision made by its parent company, General Motors.

At the time of writing, Pontiac has been gone for nearly a decade and a half. That said, even though new Pontiac cars aren't being produced, that doesn't mean there aren't loads of Pontiacs still on the road today. In fact, one state within the United States has taken its place as the one with the most Pontiac vehicles occupying its roadways. 

According to a report by Hagerty, Montana currently holds the title of the most Pontiacs in a single state, with it boasting eight of the 10 counties with the most Pontiac vehicles in the country. According to Polk vehicle registration data from October 2024; Big Horn, Montana is especially Pontiac-rich, with one Pontiac registered per every 23 people. The fact that Montana is effectively the Pontiac capital of the U.S. is fascinating. After all, the brand's home is located in another state entirely.

Evidently, Montana has become quite a Pontiac hotspot throughout the years. Counties such as the aforementioned Big Horn, as well as Glacier, Roosevelt, and Rosebud boast especially high registration numbers for this car brand. There's no clear-cut reason for this phenomenon either, and there hasn't been any thorough research published regarding why Montana drivers gravitate to Pontiac. At the same time, it is a bit strange that this state in particular has such a high concentration of Pontiac vehicles, given it's not anywhere close to where the brand made its name.

Way back in 1926, Pontiac got its start with the release of the Pontiac Six. However, the Pontiac story technically starts a couple decades earlier with the founding of Oakland Motor Car. Edward Murphy created the company in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan, hence the use of the Pontiac name in the 1920s and beyond. Despite being the home of some of the coolest looking Pontiac models ever made, Michigan doesn't have a ton of them on the road today. Using the previously mentioned registration data, the county of Tuscola, Michigan currently has the highest density of registered Pontiac vehicles — with one car per every 138 people, paling in comparison to Montana.

At the very least, there are some Pontiacs registered in each of Michigan's counties. Elsewhere in the United States, though, there aren't Pontiacs registered at all in some counties.

Based on Polk registration data, Pontiacs can be found all over the United States — coast to coast, as well as in Alaska and Hawaii. As it happens, Loving, Texas is something of an outlier as the only county outside of Montana to have a remarkably high Pontiac density: One Pontiac registered per every 22 people. Conversely, there are several counties throughout the U.S. that don't even factor into national Pontiac registration data. Three of these counties — Kent, King, and Roberts counties — are within Texas and not far from Loving. The few other Pontiac-free counties are in other parts of the country.

Kansas is home to one of the few counties lacking in Pontiac registrations, that being Morton county. To find the remaining counties without Pontiacs on the books, we move outside of the continental U.S. In Alaska, there are a handful of regions pertinent to this discussion: Wade Hampton, Valdez-Cordova, Yakutat, Skagway Hoonah-Angoon, and other smaller portions of the Alaskan peninsula are devoid of Pontiacs entirely. It'll be interesting to see if any of the remaining Pontiacs out there make it to any of these locations, or if they'll remain non-factors in Pontiac ownership data going forward.

For now, Montana is the undisputed capital of Pontiac ownership. The brand may be long gone, but in that state and a few of its key counties in particular, it is far from forgotten. Now, one has to wonder what the distribution of Pontiac models that were rebadged from different brands might look like.