DETROIT (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp. peddled Pontiacs for years with the slogan "We Build Excitement". To stay afloat, it's producing fewer thrills — and models.

The company may shrink the Pontiac division to a single model from six following a drop in sales every year since 1999. "It might be just one model," Mark LaNeve, GM's North American sales chief, said in an interview.

GM joins Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. in trimming brands as US sales sag amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. GM has said it will run out of cash by the end of the month and is seeking financial aid from the government to avoid a collapse.

While GM told Congress on December 2 that it would shrink the number of models it sells, including at Pontiac, it hasn't said previously that it might jettison all but one Pontiac brand.

Paring Pontiac to a lone model would deprive GM of its third highest-selling brand after Chevrolet and GMC, and almost 2.2 points of US market share accounted for by Pontiac's sales of 358,022 vehicles in 2007. GM's market share has dwindled to 22.1 percent from a peak of 51.1 percent in 1962.

Sales of GM vehicles are down 22 percent through November of this year from the year-earlier period, including a 23 percent plunge for Pontiac to 250,902 units. Only Pontiac's redesigned Vibe small car has increased sales this year.

Jettisoning the Pontiac brands would help GM by cutting jobs and production costs, trimming advertising and eliminating lower-margin vehicles, said Efraim Levy, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York.

"GM can get more bang for their buck," said Levy, who rates the Detroit-based automaker as "sell". GM shares have fallen 82 percent this year through Wednesday.

The company, which scrapped the Oldsmobile line in 2000, said in its request to Congress for help that shrinking brands would result in 20,000 to 30,000 fewer US hourly and salaried workers.

GM already plans to eliminate its Pontiac Torrent sport-utility vehicle, said Debbie Frakes, a spokeswoman. GM gave no estimate of cost savings or worker reductions at Pontiac.

The one remaining Pontiac would be a car to be sold alongside Buicks and GMCs, on a scale similar to its Corvette available in Chevrolet showrooms, LaNeve said. GM sold 33,685 Corvettes last year.

While LaNeve wouldn't name the remaining Pontiac, he described it as "a very high-appeal, performance-oriented model as opposed to a mainstream high-volume model". It would be less expensive than the Corvette, which starts at about $50,000, LaNeve said.

That most likely means the Pontiac G8 sedan, introduced this year in the US, said John Wolkonowicz, an analyst with IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.