Since Tuesday, when I wrote about a sticky ignition switch in a local woman’s PONTIAC Vibe, I’ve heard from about a million GM workers who tell me the Vibe is actually a Toyota.
Huh?
So, that’s the way it went all day Tuesday. “You realize,” said the typical caller, "that the Vibe is a Toyota …”
An e-mailer who called himself “Joe Worker” wrote: “The Vibe is a Japanese vehicle with a Pontiac badge.”
He added: “You made a lot of GM employees pretty angry today.”
Like I’m supposed to know that a Pontiac is actually a Toyota? Isn’t the attempt on the part of some of us to buy American already confusing enough?
I surfed the Net and found that the Vibe is, indeed, the product of a mixed marriage. The Web site www.about.com puts it this way: “The Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix are fraternal twins and the youngest children of a Toyota-General Motors partnership that goes back twenty years …”
Your assignment: Find out whether the ignition switch was made the U.S., or Japan.
