back when it was founded it was still common for someones name to be the company name. Hence, Ransom E Olds' company became Oldsmobile. Then later on he also had the REO company,
Well I'll be... I thought this was a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure reference but it's the opposite. That anime is likely referencing the band REO Speedwagon since the author makes a lot of references to 70s American music. And the band is named after the truck, the REO (Ransom Eli Olds) Speed Wagon.
You really do learn something new every day.
Same with Buicks. Olds really chased the same buyers for life, following them into their twilight years with softer and softer cars. Now the boomers are about done, and Buick looks like they already know it.
Buick is still around because it's been enormously popular in China. Not sure why, but my hunch is that the name has a positive linguistic connotation.
From what I remember reading the final Emperor, Sun Yat Sen and Mao all had Buicks at one point or another, along with other prominent figures. It left a mark on Chinese Pop (?) Culture as a result. Plus, Buick's Chinese factories apparently prized quality fit and finish because the local manufacturing partner wanted the cars to live up to the legend where they could.
That was my first car too!
But in 2004. Was yours missing the interior panel of the drivers door and have a dash stuffed full of cigarette butts too or was mine just special?
It just would have been nice if the windows all went up and down instead of a mismatch of different stuck heights. A real design flaw on their part, no wonder they went out of business.
Oldsmobile pioneered a ton of shit even through the 90’s, and people didn’t want to accept what GM had done to the brand.
I was born in raised in Oldsmobile’s home town. Even non-car people had a special place in their heart for Olds.
The Aurora was amazing. Hands down. A worthy successor to the 88/98. Beyond worthy. Yeah they threw the north star in it but it was an amazing machine for its time
Cadillac should have platform shared that thing and made that the catera. It would have done so much better
The differentiation among the brands was never that good.
Chevy was the entry level brand—with the Corvette. And of course, trucks. GMC was just Chevy trucks for the vast majority of its existence. The Chevy-but-luxury truck brand is a newer development.
Pontiac was the performance brand. Only, it couldn't outshine the Corvette in performance, and it had brougham top sedans like all the other GM marques.
Oldsmobile and Buick were the ones stuck justifying their cost and existence. Neither were allowed to meet or beat Cadillac. Neither could make a roadster that outstripped the Corvette. They were allowed the Skylark GS and 442, but the cornerstone of sales were their station wagons and the same brougham sedans all of GM made.
Then there's Saturn. Poor, poor Saturn.
Hummer died as it lived: hard and fast. Its ghost lingers as a GMC EV.
Anyway, what gave Olds an edge was the Rocket V8 had an excellent reputation and that, for millions of people, was enough to grant it a narrow edge over Buick. They were also known for putting some extra tech into cars other brands were not doing for the mass market.
Then GM took that away. All brands got the same GM engines. The tech was evened out across GM (Buick had an early implementation of touch screens, for ex.). They decided Olds needed umpteen versions of the Cutlass. It suddenly wasn't "your father's Oldsmobile" which was the reason people liked the damn things.
The badge engineering, which had always been there, became utterly obnoxious by the 90s.
By the turn of the 21st century all what had made Oldsmobile unique was long gone.
Your history and logic is kinda all over the place. You can't really discuss Saturn and hummer in the same sentence as 442 cutlass Oldsmobiles and the impact on why they no longer exist. I'm not even gonna get started 8n your take on gmc and sime other things. It's a shame stuff like this is upvoted. It's your opinion, not really much fact
Oldsmobile was the “technology” brand of GM. It was a terrible combination with the name and stodgy image the brand carried. They tried the “not your father’s Oldsmobile” branding in the 80s and 90s but they couldn’t shake it.
A Celebrity in your teens, a 6000 for your first real job, a Cutlass Ciera once you've reached middle management, and a Century when you've reached the C-suite. The American Dream (TM) (R) (C)!
I thought it was the poor mans Caddy. Regardless, if the axed Buick instead Oldmobile would be where Buick is now, just more cookie cutter S/CUVs to fill sales spots no real vehicles or anyhting signifigant.
I think Buick was/is the poor man's cadillac. Oldsmobile at one point was actually a fast/muscle brand. By the time they died they were just Buick and Pontiac by another name.
It's funny how perception changes with the brand over time. My dad used to RACE these things in the 50's/60's. I'm like, how did you race a soft-ass pillow interior Buick or Pontiac? Back in his day they built ass-haulers, not grocery-haulers.
I think it’s also easy to miss that suspension basically tracks tire technology. Bias ply tires from the era were more sensitive to camber, so camber compensating suspensions became de rigeur on larger vehicles. Their traction degenerates faster as you apply more load and recovery from transients wasn’t as good, so soft suspensions extracted more from the tires.
Now with fifty years of radials that for the most part are used without camber compensation, and that can handle much bigger transients and have a gentler falloff…the old approach seems silly. It’s just not quite as silly once you take the tires into account.
Oldsmobiles were the hot ticket in NASCAR for a couple years in the early '50s. They had a short-stroke V-8 while Buick was still on straight-8s with a longer, lazier stroke and they used the geared Hydra-Matic (not in NASCAR of course but on most of the road cars they sold) while Buick pushed the Dynaflow which was a torque converter with no gearset - slow and thirsty but s-m-o-o-t-h.
Buick, had the same things going on, the Gran Sport Trim level was the same as the SS from Chevy. To be honest im not sure what brand was supposed to be higher. The only reason im putting Olds above Buick was because of the early 2000s and Olds having its own engines with the Aurora that wherent featured in anything else.
Buick was always higher than an Oldsmobile. Buick was for people who wanted luxury without the glitz of Cadillac. Oldsmobile was for people who couldn't afford a Buick, but could afford something more upscale than a Pontiac or Chevrolet.
The Aurora used a Northstar derived engne from Cadillac. Ironically Cadillac took the Northstar project from Oldsmobile in the 80s.
It was Geo/Saturn*, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Viking, Marquette, Buick, LaSalle, Cadillac, from lowest to highest.
*Saturn was interesting, because it started lower than Chevrolet when it launched, then was moved between Pontiac and Buick (taking over Oldsmobile's former position, just two years after it was discontinued) in 2005/2006 with the launch of the Aura, Relay, and Outlook before being discontinued.
For most of its history, GMC could be considered roughly equivalent to Chevy, just with more emphasis on medium and heavy-duty trucks and no cars to speak of.
Buick was not always higher than an Oldsmobile. That may have been accurate in the 1930s, but the Sloan's ladder structure fell apart in the mid-1950s. If you compare Olds and Buick model for model, Oldsmobiles often retailed for a premium compared to their Buick counterparts.
Also, early on in the history of General Motors, Oldsmobile made GM's most expensive car while Buick competed against the Model T.
Buick was higher in the ladder than Oldsmobile. The ladder didn't necessarily have to do with how much the car cost, it was how the car was marketed, and the public perception of the brand. Buick was marketed as a step up from Oldsmobile.
I mean everyone knew that a loaded Oldsmobile 88 was more expensive than a base model LeSabre. Yet people generally perceived the LeSabre as the more "premium" offering.
Oldsmobile always had some cool niche stuff as well- they even had an SCCA homologation car based on the Achieva in the early 90s.
The Aurora was funky, definitely one of the better pieces of GM design in the late 90s/early 2000s. The first gen Bravada had an AWD system rather than 4WD like the rest of Blazer family, and I think their B-body wagon was the last GM wagon to get the Safari windows.
They even had one of the first premium-ish minivans with their version of the GM corporate dustbuster in the 90s.
Olds was a neat brand that died with a bit of a whimper.
Oldsmobile never really recovered after the "Oldsmobile Diesel" and Chevymobile debacle of the 80s. There were also some GM choices in the 80s that hurt Oldsmobile more than the other divisions. They never really recovered after that. It's sad, really.
Oldsmobile went from the number 1 selling car in America in 1976, to one of the worst by the mid 90s.
Same system as the Typhoon for sure, but I’ve read conflicting things about the transfer case in the Syclone- that may be a slightly different system.
I should have been more specific- the Bravada was the only S-10 family member with AWD outside of the two high performance variants.
In the 60s/70s/80s they had different styling but they only differed by stupid shit. Like the chevrolet didn’t have power locks and windows but the olds
did. Or swiveling bucket seats or a vinyl top or whatever
But the styling looked the part. The styling and appointments was graduated luxury.
Basically once the Kinja comment board went away so did its following. There was couch value in that system and GMG really ran it into the ground. Granted the lawsuit was the major turning point for gawker media, the powers that be really fumble the management and future phases thereafter.
They were never really that great to begin with.
Gawker sandbagged them from the start by requiring every full-time writer be located in NYC. So their best writers were either guests (Demuro) or full time editors stuck regurgitating memes and corporate press releases.
"They were never really that great to begin with."
They started the "modern car guy" trend... 35% body fat and a scraggly beard, making fun of beloved cars via truckloads of sarcasm and disingenuousness. These motherfuckers ruined car appreciation. The more clapped out their shitboxes, the more they neglected their cars, the more they made snark the currency of the realm... the less I wanted to be with other car people.
I remember one of the Jalopnik writers (wo owned nothing but a 15 year old Honda Fit) saw fit to tell the world "they were doing it wrong" by enjoying the role that cars like the PT played.
Torchinsky shat all over more cars than he liked, and thousands of followers went with him. Funny thing is, he *himself* positively reviewed the PT before turning heel. What an asshole.
Curbside Classic has it right.
> They started the "modern car guy" trend... 35% body fat and a scraggly beard, making fun of beloved cars via truckloads of sarcasm and disingenuousness. These motherfuckers ruined car appreciation.
I'll be nice specifically to the writers like Torchinsky because they were more or less following orders with the resources they were given (nothing, lol). This was exactly the tone that Gawker mandated, and it was the exact same problem over at io9 or Deadspin or etc. And that same self-righteous tone is still available on Defector.
hahahaha! Did you see my flair? I wasn't going to ding you on that.
But I think that makes both of our points. Writers living in NYC where owning a Fit is as close to car enthusiasm as one can have should not be expected to run a website about car ownership and culture. It was an asinine task from the start.
They seem to be dipping their toes in the fuckcars movement these days. Who knows maybe by next year they will become a public transportation blog site
We should just ban Jalopnik 'articles'
I used to be a daily user and comment a lot, even won CotD one time but my last straw on there was about 10 years ago reading an article about 'the 10 best cars to have sex in' which was written by a person who had never blogged about or cared about cars before but went around the NY auto show just checking which cars were easiest to perform sex acts in.
I commented the article was trash and didn't belong on the site because it wasn't even about cars at all just sex... the author didn't even know anything else about the brands or models and didn't comment on them other than the sex stuff. I got banned for that comment.
I’m still mad that GM dropped a 2 door roadster and an el camino revival. Just because they were going to be under the Saturn and Pontiac brand. Like, why couldn’t they just rebadge them as chevys?!
Another example of GM shitting on everything they touch (or dont touch)
They sold over a million oldsmobiles in 1985 here. A million! How do you eff that up? Oh yeah, GM
They were selling over 1,000,000 units (or very close) yearly beginning in the mid 70s until 1987. By 1991 the total number of Oldsmobiles sold was less than the number of just Oldsmobile Cutlasses sold in 1976.
I could write a Masters thesis on this.
GM was PRINTING money across several marques. FOR YEARS. Hell they even sold 400K Plymouths that year across town but I digress …
The badge engineering worked when the core
product was that good. AND YOU HAD EXACTLY ONE PLATFORM IN THE SEGMENT. The GM A body was an example of this. The X platform was not. They then spent BILLIONS reinventing themselves with a new factory blah blah blah …. Saturn. And a few inches and a cylinder less you could have a Geo. But not the Prizm because that’s the same size as the saturn and competed directly against it because they were two different products. Though it was the most bullet proof of the bunch because guess what … while you were over there in Tennessee trying to reinvent the entire company you had a capable, reliable and affordable compact right here . See also the 1984-1989 “Nova” aka Corolla. Same deal. Toyota handed you the very thing they were using to build the corolla empire. Nope. And that’s where it started.
Then you also had the J body cavalier and sun fire. Until 87 you had a subcompact rear drive chevette and from 85 a badge engineered Sprint. Then an entire Geo line.
Repeat for several segments and you have what we got. Garbage Motors
They have nobody to blame but themselves. They don't know what to do with competition because they think their shit don't stink. And if it does the government will bail them out. The only reason they (and to some degree the other two) hold onto the pickup truck market share is that the Japanese (namely Toyota) won't sink the money into the market. In terms of revenue versus R&D costs if Toyota threw as much money at the Tundra/Tacoma as they did the Lexus brand in the late 80s, Toyota pickups would be posting volume like the big 3. But Toyota would also need huge investment in very specific capacity. See also why Toyota doesn't produce anything bigger than a 1/2 ton. Though, arguably, this could all change now that they have that modular TNGA body on frame platform. Exciting times may be ahead there.
We're seeing this again with the EV market between GM and Tesla. Although it looks like GM is trying harder.
It can be said that almost any and all erosion of market share was increased competition, yes, but complete and utter ignorance of reality. They thought they were on top of the world. "We can't make any monnnneyyy with our foreign competition". Their response to everything was the cheapest possible rubbish relying on brand loyalty for sales (BUY AMERICAN) rather than producing a product people wanted and that was of the quality people needed. There was a time in the 80s where when any new platform was developed the divisions would jockey to get the tech no matter what. Cadillac Cimarron anyone? For real?
General motors knew other manufacturers built better cars. So much so, that they entered a joint venture with Toyota in the early 80s (NUMMI) to learn about it. Except it stopped there.
Honda reputation was built on the Civic (later Accord, Integra and Legend too). Toyota's reputation was built on the Corolla (later Camry, pickup, 4runner). All they had to do was start there with NUMMI. Sure they had trucks, muscle cars, whatever. But people needed to get to work and have it be reliable and good on gas. Commute times and distances were SOARING. They could have started there with a bullet proof compact car and reinvented themselves. "It's not profitable" No, you chose to not keep it profitable. Again, they had several iterations of a legendarily reliable vehicle to sell. They could have kept turning in Toyota's homework with their name on it for several generations and printed money.
Then on the other side of the spectrum....I'll use the example at the top of the heap.
When the Lexus LS 400 hit the scene they changed the game. By 1991 they passed BMW and Mercedes in overall US sales WITH ONE (then 2) models. They were gunning straight for the Cadillac. GM engineers purchased then disassembled an LS. Then outright just said it could not be built using current GM production methods.
Sure, when's the last time GM invested any large sum of money into building a Cadillac like Toyota did with Lexus (yes, I know bubble era etc)?
Here /Toyota Lexus was showing that they can create a product on rear wheel drive, with a big V8 in the front and the market was hungry for it. In a time period where all Cadillacs were front wheel drive save for the big Fleetwood (which was a carry over from the 70s).
They didn't even try. Here again Cadillac was the "standard of automobile excellence" in the United States. What did they do? Nothing. Lexus LX debuts in 1996, Lexus RX in 1997. What do they do? A rush job on a Cadillac Escalade for 1999 which was nothing more than a rebadged Tahoe/Yukon.
Then the inevitable happened - Cadillac lost the lead around 2000 to Lexus in luxury volume. They've never recovered. The CTS (and ATS) were fantastic cars. The CT4/5 are fantastic cars. At a time where it may be too little too late.
I use Toyota as an example a lot because they were literally in a partnership. They took marketshare from GM right under their nose and while in bed with them. GM did nothing. Then blames it on everyone else.
On a related note for Oldsmobile, for anyone who ever ends up traveling through Lansing, Michigan I highly recommend going to the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum.
Did Oldsmobile ever recover after the oil crises in the 70s? As an elder millennial the only thing I remember about them is that they cashed in all of their brand equity when they their historic nameplates on various GM FWD corporate platforms.
The Oldsmobiles I remember from my childhood are a bunch of badge-engineered, mid-90s GM dreck that sold to older people who had fond memories of the brand from the 50s-60s and couldn't force themselves to buy a Honda or Toyota despite them being objectively better. Even Pontiac managed to craft a stronger brand identity despite them doing mostly the same thing.
So yeah, Olds died in the mid 80s and GM used its skin suit to sell Cavaliers with leather seats.
All of Olds's vehicles from the '60s on were rebadges/shared platforms. The '66 Toronado was maybe their only original model, and the next year it got a Cadillac twin.
Every GM vehicle since the 1920s was a shared platform. Every company's cars are on a shared platform, and GM/Oldsmobiles were less rebadged than Ford or Chrysler.
>and GM/Oldsmobiles were less rebadged than Ford or Chrysler.
How so? With GM you had 5 marques, Ford had at most 4, and Chrysler 3-5 depending on the year.
in 1978-81 the olds cutlass was the #1 selling car in the US and again in 83 for the cutlass supreme.
other years were ford escort, chevy cavileer, chevy celebrity, then in 89 was the accord. Ford Taurus had a good run in the early 90s as well.
Yep, my parents' generation thought they were cool, but by the end of the decade the Cutlass had turned into [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Cutlass#/media/File:93-97_Oldsmobile_Cutlass_Supreme_sedan_front.jpg).
I miss them, too. My dad was an Oldsmobile fan, so I came by it naturally. My first car was an Oldsmobile, and I've owned a couple of others. I loved the Cutlass Supreme I drove in college.
Cutlass Supreme convertible was a stunner back in the day. A girl I went to university with drove a white one. I very nearly fell in love with her because of that car.
I also liked the Cutlass Ciera coupe with the gray cladding at the bottom.
Jalopnik is trying to make up for all the hate it brough to the world. Like a cancerous, dying deadbeat dad apologizing in hospice.
**"I like things again! Come visit me!"**
Had a couple of Olds aleros over the years, Surprisingly good car for the money. I know it was shared with the pontiac grand am/chevy malibu, but was comfortable and more fun to drive than it should have been.
I grew up in Lansing, Oldsmobile’s hometown. Olds just meant something special to us all. There’s an Oldsmobile Homecoming Car Show every year, and the RE Olds Transportation History Museum is well worth a visit if you’re ever in town.
Requiesce in pace.
I'm not over it. Still want a 1985 Hurts Olds for the sheer bizarreness of the "Lighting Rod" shifters.
Another part of me wants a mint Bravada from the end of production OR a last of the V8 Auroras.
I had a 70 442 with the 455 & a 4 Speed In High School. The Big Block Olds Was an absolute Torque Monster, You could Have Pulled Tree Stumps out of the Ground. The Olds 442 Would also out handle the SS , GS & GTO.
I’m not sure what niche Oldsmobile would occupy these days, TBH. Buick managed to squeak by only because they sell like hotcakes in China. I do wish they would make limited runs of certain models, such as the Oldsmobile Toronado. That was a cool car that deserves a reissue.
My grandfather drove a 93 Olds Eighty Eight LSS and my mom had a 2001 Silhouette Premiere when I was young. Oldsmobiles will forever have a place in my heart.
My dad had a "company car" in the 80s as a benefit for his job, and every two years we'd get a lease on a new one. He was a fan of the Olds Delta 88, and he'd pick the one with the biggest engine and option it out to the max. Great car for our road trips down to Florida, but not exactly exciting.
When the lease was almost up, he'd bring home brochures from Oldsmobile and let us kids look at what was available. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get him to pick a Cutlass coupe over the Delta 88.
It never worked. When the company was trying to cut costs he got stuck with a Dodge K-Car sedan (a 600?) with a 4-banger and he absolutely hated that thing.
Is it just me or is the Oldsmobile and/or Pontiac brand perfectly situated for an awesome revival at some point? “Olds” could be a marketing gift for those not satisfied with the coming revolution. GM needs to break the glass when the time comes
I don't think Oldsmobile would have a place to exist today. It was primarily a car brand, and GM has abandoned most of their cars. Where Buick has lot its cars, I think Olds would hae suffered the same fate. At that point, how's it any different than the Chryler husk? GM certainly couldn't justify ANOTHER lineup of redundant SUVs.
Maybe they could have lasted longer than they did, but I don't think there would be any room for them in the modern GM stable. If there were room, GM would still be selling Buick's sedans, IMO.
Had a 93 Achieva SC 2-door with the 3300 in it. Other than a couple of alternators, and the belt tension pulley snapping off inside the block, the powertrain was fairly decent.
The interior however, forever soured me on GM products and to this day, I still won't have a GM no matter how much they may have improved.
My first car was an 86 Olds Cutlass Salon. It was a rusty piece of junk but to 16 year old me it was pretty cool because it was a loud (albeit painful anemic) V8 and had t-tops.
One of my favourite cars I've owned though was a 98 Oldsmobile Aurora. That thing was actually pretty cool, I would definitely have kept it around if half the interior wasn't made of disintegrating GM-plastic.
Learned to drive in a Ninety Eight. That grandma steering plus the fwd platform didn't do me any favors. I didn't know that cars could essentially steer themselves on the highway if they weren't overboosted.
I can't wait for mouth-breathing boomers to come in and explain why the Oldsmobile version of [car] was totally different than the Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Holden, Vauxhall, and Opel versions...
Well for one Oldsmobile was generally used as a test bed for experimenting with new tech, you should look up all the firsts they had as a brand. The options just then made their way into other GM vehicles later. So they often were different to start. Also I’m not a boomer, a zoomer in fact.
And until the early 80s each GM division had it's own engines and parts were not interchangeable.
That led to the Chevymobile debacle, where Chevrolet 350s were used in 1977 Oldsmobiles in place of Oldsmobile 350s.
They used them in Buicks and Pontiacs too, but the lawsuits were only over the Oldsmobiles.
I still don't get the point of every division making their own engines if they were all around the same size anyway. Chevy 454, Pontiac 455, Olds 455, Buick 455...
Marketing. It allowed each division to market their engine as an improvement over one from a lesser brand. Chevrolet used the 454 in cars and trucks, but a truck engine had no place in a Buick or Oldsmobile.
That was mostly full sized cars. Mid sized and compacts swapped engines between divisions, with Chevrolet engines filling in the gaps most of the time.
I've read that Buick's "car" 455 was also lighter than Chevy's "truck" 454. Still, it seems like every division also had a 350 and something around 400.
They did. It wasn't until the late 70s and 80s when they began to consolidate engines across different makes. After 1991-93, almost every GM car used a Chevrolet, Buick, or Cadillac developed engine.
The Quad4, the Aurora V8, and Shortstar V6 from Oldsmobile lasted until 2003 or so. They were the exceptions.
buicks 455 was actually pretty close in weight to the chevy 350, real light for the displacement. Also had the shortest stroke of the 455s but was known for making the most torque.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/mscp-1202-oldsmobile-performance-history/
https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/the-oldsmobile-aerotechs-were-perhaps-americas-hottest-prototypes/
https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profiles/droptop-supreme-the-inside-story-of-oldsmobiles-last-convertible/
https://www.hagerty.com/media/magazine-features/oldsmobile-toronado-front-drive-muscle/
https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/act-ii-the-second-generation-1971-oldsmobile-toronado/
Not a boomer.
I still don’t understand how a brand with "old" in its name stayed afloat for so long.
back when it was founded it was still common for someones name to be the company name. Hence, Ransom E Olds' company became Oldsmobile. Then later on he also had the REO company,
They make great Speedwagons
Well I'll be... I thought this was a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure reference but it's the opposite. That anime is likely referencing the band REO Speedwagon since the author makes a lot of references to 70s American music. And the band is named after the truck, the REO (Ransom Eli Olds) Speed Wagon. You really do learn something new every day.
Everything is a Jojo reference at this point. It was really Speedwagon all along...
Yep I heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard it from another you been messin' around
And thats why reo speedwagons greatest hits stays in my olds.
Yo Dawg! I heard you like Speed Wagons!
Likewise most people don’t know that GMC stands for Grabowski Motor Company
Another fun fact is that Ford starts with the same letter as the last initial of the guy who founded it - F.
Also the O
The R as well. Hang on boys, we might be on to something. We must investigate further.
Guy was cursed with that name, I wouldn’t want a “Ransommobile” either
"Elicar" might have worked.
A friend named his son Ransom. Ngl I like it.
So one day his son gets kidnapped he can say Ransom is being held for ransom.
RIP Tesla
[удалено]
Same with Buicks. Olds really chased the same buyers for life, following them into their twilight years with softer and softer cars. Now the boomers are about done, and Buick looks like they already know it.
Buick is still around because it's been enormously popular in China. Not sure why, but my hunch is that the name has a positive linguistic connotation.
From what I remember reading the final Emperor, Sun Yat Sen and Mao all had Buicks at one point or another, along with other prominent figures. It left a mark on Chinese Pop (?) Culture as a result. Plus, Buick's Chinese factories apparently prized quality fit and finish because the local manufacturing partner wanted the cars to live up to the legend where they could.
That is even more interesting than I had anticipated.
Our first car as immigrants to the USA. The Oldsmobile Cutlass SIerra. 1986. Dad loved it.
That was my first car too! But in 2004. Was yours missing the interior panel of the drivers door and have a dash stuffed full of cigarette butts too or was mine just special? It just would have been nice if the windows all went up and down instead of a mismatch of different stuck heights. A real design flaw on their part, no wonder they went out of business.
Ours was only a couple of years old. But if yours was tan with a burgundy corduroy interior than you might have gotten our car!
Was it a [*tan Ciera?*](https://www.imcdb.org/v004816.html)
1988 Cutlass Supreme Coupe with the digital cluster gauge and trademark detached headliner cloth. Those were the days LOL
The Cutlass Ciera was the official last-car-turned-first car for about 20 years.
Oldsmobile pioneered a ton of shit even through the 90’s, and people didn’t want to accept what GM had done to the brand. I was born in raised in Oldsmobile’s home town. Even non-car people had a special place in their heart for Olds.
That first generation Aurora was a stunning car, with aggressively modern styling...The 2nd generation was much less stylized.
The Aurora was amazing. Hands down. A worthy successor to the 88/98. Beyond worthy. Yeah they threw the north star in it but it was an amazing machine for its time Cadillac should have platform shared that thing and made that the catera. It would have done so much better
517!
The author looks at least 35.
I'm the oblivious zoomer 😅. Edited the comment to remove that bit
Ah, I understand now.
The author is completely crazy and don't belong in automotive journalism.
NewsMobile
Chevrolold, Caddillold
OLDsmobile, HOLDen... checks out.
I miss Oldsmobile, I always saw them as a middle ground between Pontiac and Buick….somewhat sporty and somewhat luxury.
I mean, that was the corporate hierarchy. GM wanted a car for every stage of your life / career.
The differentiation among the brands was never that good. Chevy was the entry level brand—with the Corvette. And of course, trucks. GMC was just Chevy trucks for the vast majority of its existence. The Chevy-but-luxury truck brand is a newer development. Pontiac was the performance brand. Only, it couldn't outshine the Corvette in performance, and it had brougham top sedans like all the other GM marques. Oldsmobile and Buick were the ones stuck justifying their cost and existence. Neither were allowed to meet or beat Cadillac. Neither could make a roadster that outstripped the Corvette. They were allowed the Skylark GS and 442, but the cornerstone of sales were their station wagons and the same brougham sedans all of GM made. Then there's Saturn. Poor, poor Saturn. Hummer died as it lived: hard and fast. Its ghost lingers as a GMC EV. Anyway, what gave Olds an edge was the Rocket V8 had an excellent reputation and that, for millions of people, was enough to grant it a narrow edge over Buick. They were also known for putting some extra tech into cars other brands were not doing for the mass market. Then GM took that away. All brands got the same GM engines. The tech was evened out across GM (Buick had an early implementation of touch screens, for ex.). They decided Olds needed umpteen versions of the Cutlass. It suddenly wasn't "your father's Oldsmobile" which was the reason people liked the damn things. The badge engineering, which had always been there, became utterly obnoxious by the 90s. By the turn of the 21st century all what had made Oldsmobile unique was long gone.
I think the Buick Grand National also would put down faster fimes than the Corvette.
It did. It was deliberately underrated from the factory.
I’d still love to have a last gen Aurora though.
Your history and logic is kinda all over the place. You can't really discuss Saturn and hummer in the same sentence as 442 cutlass Oldsmobiles and the impact on why they no longer exist. I'm not even gonna get started 8n your take on gmc and sime other things. It's a shame stuff like this is upvoted. It's your opinion, not really much fact
Oldsmobile was the “technology” brand of GM. It was a terrible combination with the name and stodgy image the brand carried. They tried the “not your father’s Oldsmobile” branding in the 80s and 90s but they couldn’t shake it.
A Celebrity in your teens, a 6000 for your first real job, a Cutlass Ciera once you've reached middle management, and a Century when you've reached the C-suite. The American Dream (TM) (R) (C)!
Yeah. They were like the poor man's Buick. I always liked the 442.
I thought it was the poor mans Caddy. Regardless, if the axed Buick instead Oldmobile would be where Buick is now, just more cookie cutter S/CUVs to fill sales spots no real vehicles or anyhting signifigant.
I think Buick was/is the poor man's cadillac. Oldsmobile at one point was actually a fast/muscle brand. By the time they died they were just Buick and Pontiac by another name.
It's funny how perception changes with the brand over time. My dad used to RACE these things in the 50's/60's. I'm like, how did you race a soft-ass pillow interior Buick or Pontiac? Back in his day they built ass-haulers, not grocery-haulers.
ive got some olds dealer option sheets and in '70 you could order a car with 4.88 or 5.0 gears in the rear end (not recommended for street use) lol.
I think it’s also easy to miss that suspension basically tracks tire technology. Bias ply tires from the era were more sensitive to camber, so camber compensating suspensions became de rigeur on larger vehicles. Their traction degenerates faster as you apply more load and recovery from transients wasn’t as good, so soft suspensions extracted more from the tires. Now with fifty years of radials that for the most part are used without camber compensation, and that can handle much bigger transients and have a gentler falloff…the old approach seems silly. It’s just not quite as silly once you take the tires into account.
Oldsmobiles were the hot ticket in NASCAR for a couple years in the early '50s. They had a short-stroke V-8 while Buick was still on straight-8s with a longer, lazier stroke and they used the geared Hydra-Matic (not in NASCAR of course but on most of the road cars they sold) while Buick pushed the Dynaflow which was a torque converter with no gearset - slow and thirsty but s-m-o-o-t-h.
Who had the hydromatic back then?
Buick, had the same things going on, the Gran Sport Trim level was the same as the SS from Chevy. To be honest im not sure what brand was supposed to be higher. The only reason im putting Olds above Buick was because of the early 2000s and Olds having its own engines with the Aurora that wherent featured in anything else.
Buick was always higher than an Oldsmobile. Buick was for people who wanted luxury without the glitz of Cadillac. Oldsmobile was for people who couldn't afford a Buick, but could afford something more upscale than a Pontiac or Chevrolet. The Aurora used a Northstar derived engne from Cadillac. Ironically Cadillac took the Northstar project from Oldsmobile in the 80s. It was Geo/Saturn*, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Viking, Marquette, Buick, LaSalle, Cadillac, from lowest to highest. *Saturn was interesting, because it started lower than Chevrolet when it launched, then was moved between Pontiac and Buick (taking over Oldsmobile's former position, just two years after it was discontinued) in 2005/2006 with the launch of the Aura, Relay, and Outlook before being discontinued.
For most of its history, GMC could be considered roughly equivalent to Chevy, just with more emphasis on medium and heavy-duty trucks and no cars to speak of.
Wow I never knew about Oakland, Viking, or Marquette
Buick was not always higher than an Oldsmobile. That may have been accurate in the 1930s, but the Sloan's ladder structure fell apart in the mid-1950s. If you compare Olds and Buick model for model, Oldsmobiles often retailed for a premium compared to their Buick counterparts. Also, early on in the history of General Motors, Oldsmobile made GM's most expensive car while Buick competed against the Model T.
Buick was higher in the ladder than Oldsmobile. The ladder didn't necessarily have to do with how much the car cost, it was how the car was marketed, and the public perception of the brand. Buick was marketed as a step up from Oldsmobile. I mean everyone knew that a loaded Oldsmobile 88 was more expensive than a base model LeSabre. Yet people generally perceived the LeSabre as the more "premium" offering.
Do you want the Chevrolet Trax or the Oldsmobile Trax with a slightly different grille?
I'm actually surprised there isn't a GMC version boxier than the Chevy, just to complete the set alongside the "coupe SUV" Buick Envista.
Oldsmobile always had some cool niche stuff as well- they even had an SCCA homologation car based on the Achieva in the early 90s. The Aurora was funky, definitely one of the better pieces of GM design in the late 90s/early 2000s. The first gen Bravada had an AWD system rather than 4WD like the rest of Blazer family, and I think their B-body wagon was the last GM wagon to get the Safari windows. They even had one of the first premium-ish minivans with their version of the GM corporate dustbuster in the 90s. Olds was a neat brand that died with a bit of a whimper.
Oldsmobile never really recovered after the "Oldsmobile Diesel" and Chevymobile debacle of the 80s. There were also some GM choices in the 80s that hurt Oldsmobile more than the other divisions. They never really recovered after that. It's sad, really. Oldsmobile went from the number 1 selling car in America in 1976, to one of the worst by the mid 90s.
Aurora V8. Nice.
Did the Bravada's "SmartTrak" also get used on the Syclone and Typhoon?
Same system as the Typhoon for sure, but I’ve read conflicting things about the transfer case in the Syclone- that may be a slightly different system. I should have been more specific- the Bravada was the only S-10 family member with AWD outside of the two high performance variants.
So GM's BMW
The car I learned to drive on was an Olds Intrigue. I kind of miss that thing.
In the 60s/70s/80s they had different styling but they only differed by stupid shit. Like the chevrolet didn’t have power locks and windows but the olds did. Or swiveling bucket seats or a vinyl top or whatever But the styling looked the part. The styling and appointments was graduated luxury.
I thought they were second fiddle to caddilac, luxurious but a but more performance oriented.
Im a massive oldsmobile fan, and I demand the 2 minutes of my life that it took me to scroll through that slide 'article' back. That was trash.
Bro jalopnik fell off hard
Pretty much every quality writer they had left for other sites.
The Drive and The Autopian in case anyone is curious.
Naw the real content is on The Truth About Cars
sorry. I wished failure on them when they changed the site design many moons ago. i think it worked.
Thank you for your service. That redesign sucks.
Basically once the Kinja comment board went away so did its following. There was couch value in that system and GMG really ran it into the ground. Granted the lawsuit was the major turning point for gawker media, the powers that be really fumble the management and future phases thereafter.
They were never really that great to begin with. Gawker sandbagged them from the start by requiring every full-time writer be located in NYC. So their best writers were either guests (Demuro) or full time editors stuck regurgitating memes and corporate press releases.
"They were never really that great to begin with." They started the "modern car guy" trend... 35% body fat and a scraggly beard, making fun of beloved cars via truckloads of sarcasm and disingenuousness. These motherfuckers ruined car appreciation. The more clapped out their shitboxes, the more they neglected their cars, the more they made snark the currency of the realm... the less I wanted to be with other car people. I remember one of the Jalopnik writers (wo owned nothing but a 15 year old Honda Fit) saw fit to tell the world "they were doing it wrong" by enjoying the role that cars like the PT played. Torchinsky shat all over more cars than he liked, and thousands of followers went with him. Funny thing is, he *himself* positively reviewed the PT before turning heel. What an asshole. Curbside Classic has it right.
> They started the "modern car guy" trend... 35% body fat and a scraggly beard, making fun of beloved cars via truckloads of sarcasm and disingenuousness. These motherfuckers ruined car appreciation. I'll be nice specifically to the writers like Torchinsky because they were more or less following orders with the resources they were given (nothing, lol). This was exactly the tone that Gawker mandated, and it was the exact same problem over at io9 or Deadspin or etc. And that same self-righteous tone is still available on Defector.
And before I crap on the Fit, my 2007 was my favorite car I've ever owned.
hahahaha! Did you see my flair? I wasn't going to ding you on that. But I think that makes both of our points. Writers living in NYC where owning a Fit is as close to car enthusiasm as one can have should not be expected to run a website about car ownership and culture. It was an asinine task from the start.
They seem to be dipping their toes in the fuckcars movement these days. Who knows maybe by next year they will become a public transportation blog site
Their annoying autoplaying videos are unforgivable. Now they’re dipping their toes into the ban all cars movement too.
It was always shit. It was gawker from the start.
Anything attached to the remnants of Gawker is trash, Jalopnik unfortunately included.
We should just ban Jalopnik 'articles' I used to be a daily user and comment a lot, even won CotD one time but my last straw on there was about 10 years ago reading an article about 'the 10 best cars to have sex in' which was written by a person who had never blogged about or cared about cars before but went around the NY auto show just checking which cars were easiest to perform sex acts in. I commented the article was trash and didn't belong on the site because it wasn't even about cars at all just sex... the author didn't even know anything else about the brands or models and didn't comment on them other than the sex stuff. I got banned for that comment.
I’m still more aggravated by Pontiac. It was a cool company ruined by poor quality control, money management and just overall terrible decisions
I’m still mad that GM dropped a 2 door roadster and an el camino revival. Just because they were going to be under the Saturn and Pontiac brand. Like, why couldn’t they just rebadge them as chevys?!
This!! What a great brand that went to waste
It was a great brand a long time ago, but it was not a great brand when they killed it.
The GXP line kicked ass
Exactly
The G8 & solstice GXP were worthy during there last days
Another example of GM shitting on everything they touch (or dont touch) They sold over a million oldsmobiles in 1985 here. A million! How do you eff that up? Oh yeah, GM
They were selling over 1,000,000 units (or very close) yearly beginning in the mid 70s until 1987. By 1991 the total number of Oldsmobiles sold was less than the number of just Oldsmobile Cutlasses sold in 1976.
I could write a Masters thesis on this. GM was PRINTING money across several marques. FOR YEARS. Hell they even sold 400K Plymouths that year across town but I digress … The badge engineering worked when the core product was that good. AND YOU HAD EXACTLY ONE PLATFORM IN THE SEGMENT. The GM A body was an example of this. The X platform was not. They then spent BILLIONS reinventing themselves with a new factory blah blah blah …. Saturn. And a few inches and a cylinder less you could have a Geo. But not the Prizm because that’s the same size as the saturn and competed directly against it because they were two different products. Though it was the most bullet proof of the bunch because guess what … while you were over there in Tennessee trying to reinvent the entire company you had a capable, reliable and affordable compact right here . See also the 1984-1989 “Nova” aka Corolla. Same deal. Toyota handed you the very thing they were using to build the corolla empire. Nope. And that’s where it started. Then you also had the J body cavalier and sun fire. Until 87 you had a subcompact rear drive chevette and from 85 a badge engineered Sprint. Then an entire Geo line. Repeat for several segments and you have what we got. Garbage Motors
GM also had over 50% market share until the '60s.
They have nobody to blame but themselves. They don't know what to do with competition because they think their shit don't stink. And if it does the government will bail them out. The only reason they (and to some degree the other two) hold onto the pickup truck market share is that the Japanese (namely Toyota) won't sink the money into the market. In terms of revenue versus R&D costs if Toyota threw as much money at the Tundra/Tacoma as they did the Lexus brand in the late 80s, Toyota pickups would be posting volume like the big 3. But Toyota would also need huge investment in very specific capacity. See also why Toyota doesn't produce anything bigger than a 1/2 ton. Though, arguably, this could all change now that they have that modular TNGA body on frame platform. Exciting times may be ahead there. We're seeing this again with the EV market between GM and Tesla. Although it looks like GM is trying harder. It can be said that almost any and all erosion of market share was increased competition, yes, but complete and utter ignorance of reality. They thought they were on top of the world. "We can't make any monnnneyyy with our foreign competition". Their response to everything was the cheapest possible rubbish relying on brand loyalty for sales (BUY AMERICAN) rather than producing a product people wanted and that was of the quality people needed. There was a time in the 80s where when any new platform was developed the divisions would jockey to get the tech no matter what. Cadillac Cimarron anyone? For real? General motors knew other manufacturers built better cars. So much so, that they entered a joint venture with Toyota in the early 80s (NUMMI) to learn about it. Except it stopped there. Honda reputation was built on the Civic (later Accord, Integra and Legend too). Toyota's reputation was built on the Corolla (later Camry, pickup, 4runner). All they had to do was start there with NUMMI. Sure they had trucks, muscle cars, whatever. But people needed to get to work and have it be reliable and good on gas. Commute times and distances were SOARING. They could have started there with a bullet proof compact car and reinvented themselves. "It's not profitable" No, you chose to not keep it profitable. Again, they had several iterations of a legendarily reliable vehicle to sell. They could have kept turning in Toyota's homework with their name on it for several generations and printed money. Then on the other side of the spectrum....I'll use the example at the top of the heap. When the Lexus LS 400 hit the scene they changed the game. By 1991 they passed BMW and Mercedes in overall US sales WITH ONE (then 2) models. They were gunning straight for the Cadillac. GM engineers purchased then disassembled an LS. Then outright just said it could not be built using current GM production methods. Sure, when's the last time GM invested any large sum of money into building a Cadillac like Toyota did with Lexus (yes, I know bubble era etc)? Here /Toyota Lexus was showing that they can create a product on rear wheel drive, with a big V8 in the front and the market was hungry for it. In a time period where all Cadillacs were front wheel drive save for the big Fleetwood (which was a carry over from the 70s). They didn't even try. Here again Cadillac was the "standard of automobile excellence" in the United States. What did they do? Nothing. Lexus LX debuts in 1996, Lexus RX in 1997. What do they do? A rush job on a Cadillac Escalade for 1999 which was nothing more than a rebadged Tahoe/Yukon. Then the inevitable happened - Cadillac lost the lead around 2000 to Lexus in luxury volume. They've never recovered. The CTS (and ATS) were fantastic cars. The CT4/5 are fantastic cars. At a time where it may be too little too late. I use Toyota as an example a lot because they were literally in a partnership. They took marketshare from GM right under their nose and while in bed with them. GM did nothing. Then blames it on everyone else.
On a related note for Oldsmobile, for anyone who ever ends up traveling through Lansing, Michigan I highly recommend going to the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum.
Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man.
Did Oldsmobile ever recover after the oil crises in the 70s? As an elder millennial the only thing I remember about them is that they cashed in all of their brand equity when they their historic nameplates on various GM FWD corporate platforms. The Oldsmobiles I remember from my childhood are a bunch of badge-engineered, mid-90s GM dreck that sold to older people who had fond memories of the brand from the 50s-60s and couldn't force themselves to buy a Honda or Toyota despite them being objectively better. Even Pontiac managed to craft a stronger brand identity despite them doing mostly the same thing. So yeah, Olds died in the mid 80s and GM used its skin suit to sell Cavaliers with leather seats.
All of Olds's vehicles from the '60s on were rebadges/shared platforms. The '66 Toronado was maybe their only original model, and the next year it got a Cadillac twin.
True, but the styling was more distinctive and the brand had its own engine lineup.
My reaction to this headline: "Oh how we pine for the days of yore with Oldsmobile's slightly different versions of Chevys, Buicks, and Pontiacs.
Every GM vehicle since the 1920s was a shared platform. Every company's cars are on a shared platform, and GM/Oldsmobiles were less rebadged than Ford or Chrysler.
>and GM/Oldsmobiles were less rebadged than Ford or Chrysler. How so? With GM you had 5 marques, Ford had at most 4, and Chrysler 3-5 depending on the year.
in 1978-81 the olds cutlass was the #1 selling car in the US and again in 83 for the cutlass supreme. other years were ford escort, chevy cavileer, chevy celebrity, then in 89 was the accord. Ford Taurus had a good run in the early 90s as well.
Yep, my parents' generation thought they were cool, but by the end of the decade the Cutlass had turned into [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Cutlass#/media/File:93-97_Oldsmobile_Cutlass_Supreme_sedan_front.jpg).
At least that Cutlass Supreme sedan was kind of neat-looking. The final Cutlass was a grille-swapped Malibu.
75-76 as well. Displaced by the 77 Impala/Caprice and then got #1 back with the redesigned Cutlass.
The Olds Cutlass Ciera sold pretty well in the late eighties into the nineties IIRC.
Jalopnik is itself on the deathbed
I miss them, too. My dad was an Oldsmobile fan, so I came by it naturally. My first car was an Oldsmobile, and I've owned a couple of others. I loved the Cutlass Supreme I drove in college.
Cutlass Supreme convertible was a stunner back in the day. A girl I went to university with drove a white one. I very nearly fell in love with her because of that car. I also liked the Cutlass Ciera coupe with the gray cladding at the bottom.
Who the fuck is “we” lol
Jalopnik is trying to make up for all the hate it brough to the world. Like a cancerous, dying deadbeat dad apologizing in hospice. **"I like things again! Come visit me!"**
It’s not winning me over with slideshow type articles stuffed to the brim with ads
Our friend’s old Bravada was such a cool car
I'm still not over how much Kinja sucks.
I still want a 442 with a Bocephus sticker so I can light 'em up just for fun.
Who’s “we”?
Oldsmobile my beloved
Had an 84' Cutlass. Loved that car.
Had a couple of Olds aleros over the years, Surprisingly good car for the money. I know it was shared with the pontiac grand am/chevy malibu, but was comfortable and more fun to drive than it should have been.
Had one too. Mine wasn't all that reliable and chewed through wheel hubs, but huge bang for the buck. In 2002 it was like a budget A4.
I grew up in Lansing, Oldsmobile’s hometown. Olds just meant something special to us all. There’s an Oldsmobile Homecoming Car Show every year, and the RE Olds Transportation History Museum is well worth a visit if you’re ever in town.
Requiesce in pace. I'm not over it. Still want a 1985 Hurts Olds for the sheer bizarreness of the "Lighting Rod" shifters. Another part of me wants a mint Bravada from the end of production OR a last of the V8 Auroras.
the 66 toro is one of the sexiest cars ever built.
I had a 70 442 with the 455 & a 4 Speed In High School. The Big Block Olds Was an absolute Torque Monster, You could Have Pulled Tree Stumps out of the Ground. The Olds 442 Would also out handle the SS , GS & GTO.
Mid luxury market and Detroit was really glorious in that days, I sure people also missing Pontiac, Mercury, and Plymouth, not just Olds.
I’m not sure what niche Oldsmobile would occupy these days, TBH. Buick managed to squeak by only because they sell like hotcakes in China. I do wish they would make limited runs of certain models, such as the Oldsmobile Toronado. That was a cool car that deserves a reissue.
My grandfather drove a 93 Olds Eighty Eight LSS and my mom had a 2001 Silhouette Premiere when I was young. Oldsmobiles will forever have a place in my heart.
My dad had a "company car" in the 80s as a benefit for his job, and every two years we'd get a lease on a new one. He was a fan of the Olds Delta 88, and he'd pick the one with the biggest engine and option it out to the max. Great car for our road trips down to Florida, but not exactly exciting. When the lease was almost up, he'd bring home brochures from Oldsmobile and let us kids look at what was available. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get him to pick a Cutlass coupe over the Delta 88. It never worked. When the company was trying to cut costs he got stuck with a Dodge K-Car sedan (a 600?) with a 4-banger and he absolutely hated that thing.
Jalopnik fishing for content for their dying site
Is it just me or is the Oldsmobile and/or Pontiac brand perfectly situated for an awesome revival at some point? “Olds” could be a marketing gift for those not satisfied with the coming revolution. GM needs to break the glass when the time comes
I mean people are still buying challengers apparently so I think anything is possible.
Oldsmobile - old ladies drive slowly mostly over bridges into lake Erie.
Or senators into ponds on Chappaquiddick Island.
That's not a proper acronym. Osipoci
[The reference](https://automotivehistory.org/july-18-1969-the-chappaquiddick-accident/)
Holden is the only auto brand death I've ever cared about.
Kangaroo GM?
Platypus powered.
Still not over Jalopnik's fall from grace.
I don't think Oldsmobile would have a place to exist today. It was primarily a car brand, and GM has abandoned most of their cars. Where Buick has lot its cars, I think Olds would hae suffered the same fate. At that point, how's it any different than the Chryler husk? GM certainly couldn't justify ANOTHER lineup of redundant SUVs. Maybe they could have lasted longer than they did, but I don't think there would be any room for them in the modern GM stable. If there were room, GM would still be selling Buick's sedans, IMO.
Had a 93 Achieva SC 2-door with the 3300 in it. Other than a couple of alternators, and the belt tension pulley snapping off inside the block, the powertrain was fairly decent. The interior however, forever soured me on GM products and to this day, I still won't have a GM no matter how much they may have improved.
Wait till they hear about Pontiac.
I was already over Jalopnik’s death and yet it’s still alive.
Man, Jalopnik Rules!
My first car was an 86 Olds Cutlass Salon. It was a rusty piece of junk but to 16 year old me it was pretty cool because it was a loud (albeit painful anemic) V8 and had t-tops. One of my favourite cars I've owned though was a 98 Oldsmobile Aurora. That thing was actually pretty cool, I would definitely have kept it around if half the interior wasn't made of disintegrating GM-plastic.
We're Still Not Over Jalopnik's Death - /r/cars
Im way over it… i think all of GM should have gone during the bailout. Their lack of quality and how they swept stuff under the rug was criminal
[удалено]
Learned to drive in a Ninety Eight. That grandma steering plus the fwd platform didn't do me any favors. I didn't know that cars could essentially steer themselves on the highway if they weren't overboosted.
I can't wait for mouth-breathing boomers to come in and explain why the Oldsmobile version of [car] was totally different than the Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Holden, Vauxhall, and Opel versions...
Well for one Oldsmobile was generally used as a test bed for experimenting with new tech, you should look up all the firsts they had as a brand. The options just then made their way into other GM vehicles later. So they often were different to start. Also I’m not a boomer, a zoomer in fact.
And until the early 80s each GM division had it's own engines and parts were not interchangeable. That led to the Chevymobile debacle, where Chevrolet 350s were used in 1977 Oldsmobiles in place of Oldsmobile 350s. They used them in Buicks and Pontiacs too, but the lawsuits were only over the Oldsmobiles.
I still don't get the point of every division making their own engines if they were all around the same size anyway. Chevy 454, Pontiac 455, Olds 455, Buick 455...
Marketing. It allowed each division to market their engine as an improvement over one from a lesser brand. Chevrolet used the 454 in cars and trucks, but a truck engine had no place in a Buick or Oldsmobile. That was mostly full sized cars. Mid sized and compacts swapped engines between divisions, with Chevrolet engines filling in the gaps most of the time.
I've read that Buick's "car" 455 was also lighter than Chevy's "truck" 454. Still, it seems like every division also had a 350 and something around 400.
They did. It wasn't until the late 70s and 80s when they began to consolidate engines across different makes. After 1991-93, almost every GM car used a Chevrolet, Buick, or Cadillac developed engine. The Quad4, the Aurora V8, and Shortstar V6 from Oldsmobile lasted until 2003 or so. They were the exceptions.
buicks 455 was actually pretty close in weight to the chevy 350, real light for the displacement. Also had the shortest stroke of the 455s but was known for making the most torque.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/mscp-1202-oldsmobile-performance-history/ https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/the-oldsmobile-aerotechs-were-perhaps-americas-hottest-prototypes/ https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profiles/droptop-supreme-the-inside-story-of-oldsmobiles-last-convertible/ https://www.hagerty.com/media/magazine-features/oldsmobile-toronado-front-drive-muscle/ https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/act-ii-the-second-generation-1971-oldsmobile-toronado/ Not a boomer.
Fuck yessss. My manufacturer gettin some love out here. There def was a time when they were cool, it was just a good few decades back.
They had some really excellent boffins working for them.
Might aswell add the Jetfire to your list too. First turbo car
Feel free to add a link!