Photos from the Cohort by canadiancatgreen.
Another post in the junkyard, now covering some of GM’s less-than-stellar moments. Not that I want to start this post with such a negative spin, since I know many owned some of these and they probably served you just right. Still, it was hard to get enthused about any of these cars back in the day, or even now. And in all honesty, I don’t have many good memories or anecdotes about any of them.
Regardless, I have done a lot of posts with images from the 1950s and 1960s these past few days. So I better cover some other decades before I sound like an automotive Rip Van Winkle. Then again, looking over this lot, I can see why I revert to other decades when searching for car stuff. In my mind, I fall asleep somewhere in 1971 and wake up in the mid-90s, well into Miata time.
The first image is a 1990 Chevy Lumina, a model I recently complained about. Let’s leave that behind then, and move on with what appears to be the yard’s GM rows.
There, a mid-’80s Pontiac 6000. The one vehicle my mom’s coworker got as part of her divorce settlement in 1988. Hers was the ‘lux’ edition, stuffed with every electrical gizmo 1980s GM could think of then. It became an incredibly trouble-prone vehicle in short order, and after a couple of years, the car looked like a whole decade had passed through it. And then some. Quite worthless by the time I moved for good to California in ’93.
Moral of the story: Cars as part of a divorce settlement are a lousy deal. Get the cash!
A 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix. About the most exciting thing coming from the “We Build Excitement!” division in those days. Not the most exciting of cars, really, but a far better choice than those Daewoos pretending to be a LeMans sold by their side.
A 1993 Cutlass Ciera. I actually didn’t mind these… when they came out in ’82.
A 1989 Buick Regal, another car I always forget it ever existed. Unless it appears in a CC post, or at the Cohort.
A 1989 Chevrolet Beretta, a vehicle I spent a good amount of time in since my college roommate drove one. A car I truly didn’t mind, even if it was still Chevrolet playing catch up with Ford’s Aero Era. Not groundbreaking, but decent looking. Ergonomics and interior were modern too, even if slightly wonky and not up to Japanese standards.
Still, about a year into our studies, the Beretta left my roommate stranded in the middle of the desert. At night. From then on, the car turned into a source of vexing electrical troubles. His had been a true GM family (in California!), but the Beretta was the one car that pushed him to the arms of the imports. A family tradition, shattered for good.
A 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass. The Cutlass that killed the Cutlass dynasty for good, and that’s probably the right epitaph for these.
A 1993 Pontiac Sunbird, another non-exciting offering from the “We Build Excitement!” division. I would add more to this one, but I have a few photos of some of these J-cars (still running!) to share, so I better hold my thoughts for that future post.
So, that does it for today’s outing. Hopefully, this tour was far better for you than for me. In any case, the next junkyard visit should be a cheerer one; or so I hope…
Not GMs best products In my view these were the cars that brought about their down fall as number one car maker. GM knew how to build big cars people wanted
It seems the ’82 – ’96 Cutlass Ciera and equivalent Century and some 6000s were pretty good cars especially after some years of “practice”. The Olds and Buick versions owned by friends, family and acquaintances seemed to be quite reliable, durable, and overall a good automotive value. They, with the right engine, and the bigger-sized cars with the 3800 were perhaps the best of GM at the time, but were surely nothing to set the world on fire, unfortunately.
Yeah, we could said then they become GM’s counterpart of Chrysler A-body Dart/Valiant/Duster.
Strike One – Vega
Strike Two – XCars
So, when GM limped through the 1980s, there was a look and see approach I had towards the company. Never one to ding a domestic, I hoped GM could find a winner. Saturn was as close as it got, and I had several Saturns. Yet, there just didn’t seem to be a car from GM during this decade that reclaimed the GM legacy I grew up with.
Ford and Chrysler had found a styling language, a mission and a vision – however, GM seemed to have been thrown back a bit and seemed over cautious. Not making a mistake seemed to be each car’s purpose.
The GM style of this time looked cheap. A cross between traditional and aero, yet not assembled using quality materials that showed through in the finished products, in my opinion. There is a difference between the minimal modern designs of VW and GM and you have to wonder why.
Finally, Roger Smith did GM no favors. His era became infamous for corner cutting, cheap low quality materials, and back-stabbing GM suppliers. He pimped out GM and didn’t have much love for GM’s beloved legacy. He ended up looking foolish repeatedly by Ross Perot, who objectively questioned his business sense and Michael Moore who subjectively questioned his ethics and morals.
Sad. We needed GM to come back. Fortunately, they didn’t recreate another XCar fiasco, yet not creating a fiasco wasn’t good enough after the 1980s. We needed GM to lead and it seemed afraid to do that.
The good, the bad, and the ugly…..
Growing up, my dad was more GM than not. I suspect part of that was the fact that GM owned his employer, North American Aviation.
I’ve tried many different brands- with the exception of having ever owned any high dollar German car or a Cadillac.
GM really went down so far. The 1977 downsizing was a home run. Then the stupid diesels, X cars and V8-6-4 come to mind. I’m no college educated smart person, but even I thought that GM was nuts to try the V8-6-4 in their top shelf car. Start it in an Impala. Chevy customers were far more likely to come back than a Cadillac customer.
Finally, my wife and I tried Ford-Mercury and even Mazda, but we leased them.
Great article and great reminder of some of the miserable vehicles we endured. (Like the brand new 98 Chevy truck with the 4.3 that wouldn’t run. I fought GM through the lemon law and won, but that a COAL!)
Hey! That could be my ‘89 Beretta!
But I doubt it could’ve limped to Canada after I traded it in ‘03 or so. It was getting ready for its 2nd transmission. Bought it used and owned it for 10 mostly good years. Not sorry for the experience even though I threw away a nice thick folder of repair receipts a few years ago.
The Beretta/Corsica duo, without the bowtie on the grille, could be the tv ad “any car”. I’ve never seen such bland design work. You know Harley Earl was spinning in his grave….
Everything GM did was done on the cheap. Cast iron pushrod engines everywhere. GM really blew it with their engines. When the decision was made to go with corporate engines this was an opportunity to build a high quality engine line up. Probably two modular engine lines would have been needed. There were at least five different engine groups, Cadillac, Chev, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile. Roiling it all into one group would have been the smart thing to do. World class engines.
Transmissions were another disaster. Late to the party with overdrive transmissions. Lock up converter control circuits that fail regularly. Inadequate cooling for the transmissions. How about a putting a damn drain plug in the transmission pan! How about a simple spin-on cartridge filter for the transmission. If GM had done these things and done them right it could have possibly changed the industry.
I was at a national vocational truck industry show, late 90’s or early ’00’s. All the vendors have one hour seminars on their products. GM seminar is talking about hybrid pickups, big fuel savings, much better investment than hybrid compact cars. 20-25 years later and still nothing from them. They did do a “mild” hybrid but that flopped. Also at that time GM was switching over to a new pickup. Standard cabs and crew cabs were released immediately but extended cabs were going to be delayed for awhile. Everyone is looking at each other, what are they doing, extended cab pickups were the bread and butter of the construction business. Sure we bought crew cabs but we probably bought 10-20 extended cabs for every single crew cab we bought.
The new medium duty truck GM came out with in 1990 was an excellent example of what GM could do. It was a huge improvement over the old square body truck.
Clean beefy frame rails, fuel injection, Cast aluminum valve cover, no more overworked small blocks. 366 or 427. Cat diesel engines. Really clean trucks to use and work on.
One fly in the ointment. Started getting blown pistons and lack of power complaints. Turned out the new distributor is over heating the magnetic portion of the distributor shaft. GM finally recognizes the problem and issues a recall, but only for the 366 engine not the 427, which uses the exact same distributor. Tech support tells us to file a “policy” claim with the regional service rep “if” you suspect a problem. Would a 1/2 dozen blown 427 engines fit the criteria? Fix all the 366 customers ASAP, PRONTO, home office is watching! 427 customers, meh, wait til it blows.
The 1990-2002 GMC TopKick/Chevy Kodiak was a good truck. Overbuilt frame for the GVW, nice component box under the cab for fuel filters and air dryer, large fuel tanks, clean frame for body mounting. Good visability too.
I remember that when the Beretta came out in the spring of ’87 as an ’88 model, it was an exceptionally good looking car. I think so again in 2024 now that most examples have disappeared. Roads seemed saturated with them for so long, with minimal / insignificant styling updates after close to a decade that I had stopped noticing them at some point. They’ve come back into my consciousness lately, and I like them again.
A close friend recently recounted her ’89 Beretta having left her stranded while on the way back from college, hours away from home. The story was entertaining they way she told it, but I know it was a horribly traumatic experience for her.
Well not the Beretta, but I remember the first time I saw a Corsica, a co-worker had rented one, I didn’t know about them at all yet (this would have been July of 1987). I had flown to my Grandparents (1700 miles from us) for vacation, then onto a 2 week business trip in Washington state. Not sure why we had 2 rental cars, but I had a Nissan Stanza for that trip.
Makes you feel old when you see a car you remember seeing in inaugural year in the junkyard, and long since discontinued.
My Mother almost bought a Corsica but instead got an ’88 Ford Tempo, which she had for 21 years…I fixed it up when my sister moved in with them in 2006 or so, but in 2009 the A/C compressor blew, didn’t feel like replacing it, she bought a new Ford Focus instead.
The first image has nice bookends with the first Chevy W body in Lumina form and the last Chevy W body in Impala form.
Bleak days indeed. The 6000 is the only one that does anything for me, not because I like it or find it that attractive but it’s the only A body I never saw much of in my life. The taillights are kind of cool in an 80s sci fi sort of way.
It was really inexcusable for a corporation the size GM was, to crumble and fall so dramatically. When you think about the amount of engineering talent employed, all those years of solid reliable products that built GM’s reputation – all seemingly vanished, gone with the wind. Not that they were always junk, but there was always that question, and I guess the unnerving uncertainty that perhaps you ought to have bought another brand.
That wouldn’t have happened a generation earlier. Maybe the odd case, but not across the board.
The more I read, with posts like VanillaDude and xr7 have said here, the more I realize what a blow to America the fall of GM must have been. National pride must have taken a hit.
As I’ve mentioned here before, Japanese makers always seemed to appreciate the customer more than domestic makers here. Making a satisfied ongoing customer, an integral part of the car-making culture. Shareholders and profiteering, perhaps have too much control here. In general corporate culture, as well.
I do give GM credit, for their rust-resistance improvements, over the decades.
“A 1993 Cutlass Ciera. I actually didn’t mind these… when they came out in ’82.”
The fwd A-body cars were current and up-to-date when they first came out as 1983 models, but got stale and outdated real fast, with Toyota’s new Camry, Mazda 626 also introduced for 1983, and the updated Honda Accord with its loaded EX model a year later. The Pontiac 6000STE was arguably the best looking of the four brands in the beginning, but they all should have been retired by 1986.
I have to wonder where those have been hiding? Except for the Ciera, those are pretty much extinct around here. Well, there is the occasional Lumina, but I don’t think I’ve seen a Pontiac 6000 since the mid-2000’s or so. Just to think, at one point all of those cars were incredibly common to the point where I didn’t even notice them anymore.
This is a good cross section a lot of the carscape from that era. Despite its stumbles, GM’s distribution network and sheer size was like inertia.
I have often wondered whether the Internet accelerated the Big 3s decline, After the fuel crises the Big 3 did have a drip drip of share but were still over 2/3 as the century changed. Yet by 2007 they lost their majority and the next year were in bankruptcy. I wonder if someone who just assumed they would buy another Lumina or Blazer from Hometown Chevrolet suddenly could research Hyundai or Subaru. The fact that the Big 3, particularly GM were very slow to adapt to the crossover movement coming out of the Asian brands didn’t help matters.
You can also see what a wasted trip Saturn was. Billions spent. Look at that 1993 Sunbird. That was what most GM dealers had to sell against the decade-newer Civic, Corolla and even Escort.
Now it looks increasingly likely Toyota takes #1 in the US over GM after a brief surge during 2021. GM has bet hard on electrics but now has been put on defense with hybrids surging. Its profitable because of pickups and big SUVs. And its possible the new full-size crossovers and Equinox can win back a little share. But I am not sure what the mission driving the company is going forward.