@pip-bip At the time, they were trying to brand Pontiacs in a very weird market segment - not as professional as a Buick, not as fancy as a Cadillac, not as big or fast as an Olds, not as... well, poor as a Chevy.
Mostly that was failing and they were just being bought by thrifty old people.
They tried to rebrand more aggressively for "young people too suave to buy a Chevy" at the end of the '50s, which is when they got rid of the chrome hood stripe that had been a trademark for years. The rebrand... sort of worked, but it left Pontiac as the company that built "cooler than Chevys" AND "cheaper than Caddys". Because they didn't eliminate the big boats, because they were money makers.
To this day, you see a lot of well-kept big Pontiacs of the '60s in urban areas and poorer rural areas where they stayed as a status symbol up through the 70s.