If there were a prize for cars that have gone from Being Everywhere to Being Nearly Extinct, GM’s N body may win first place. Not long ago, N-bodies seemingly resided in every parking lot… but now? I see a handful per year, and most are abandoned, slowly biodegrading into dust. Then a few months ago, I found this 1990 Olds Calais, which was not only roadworthy, but actually on a road, and carrying three people, no less. At last, with these pictures we can journey back to the early 1990s and imagine life when N-bodies roamed the earth.
Few people got genuinely excited about the N-cars, which included the Calais, Pontiac Grand Am and Buick Somerset/Skylark. Introduced for 1985, these mid-priced cars sold by the zillions, and while some of the later performance-oriented versions piqued some interest, the vast majority of N-cars were run-of-the-mill… as plain as a saltine cracker. Our featured Olds is no exception, being a base model Cutlass Calais bereft of even bodyside moldings.
If these cars were celebrated at all, it was because they replaced the little-lamented X-body cars (Citation, Omega, etc.). Judged by that standard there was ample room for celebration because the Calais and its cohorts were reasonably well-built cars with no major shortcomings – exactly what GM wished could have been said about the trouble-prone X-bodies. The target Calais audience occupied a lower-middle rung of the economic ladder – think of a 28-year old paraprofessional buying her first new car. Towards that end, Calais delivered a bit more style, comfort and quasi-luxury than did the cheaper J-cars, while still offering a compact size and low price (starting well under $10,000 when first introduced).
Although folks bemoan General Motors’ cookie-cutter 1980s designs, Calais’ rear-end treatment was distinctive, with its slightly convex, vertical tail lights and full-length faux light bar. Though somewhat bland, Calais’ overall design worked well, and these were contemporary-looking cars when introduced for 1985.
By 1990, though, when our featured car was produced, the package had surpassed its Best-By Date. Even with some minor styling tweaks (and adding “Cutlass” to the model name) this was clearly a 1980s car trying hard to stay relevant in the 1990s. Olds attempted to maintain interest in the Cutlass Calais range by offering Quad4 performance models on the upper part of the lineup… as well as bargain-basement prices on the lower end. Entry-level models held appeal for budget-conscious buyers, particularly those who didn’t mind a dated appearance, or details such as hubcaps that looked like they were designed in the 1970s. But by any measurement, these cars were considerably less refined than their imported competition, which of course became the kiss of death for GM. Cutlass Calais remained in production through 1991, when it was replaced by the equally bland Achieva.
The International Harvester front license plate is a nice touch.
The 1990 Cutlass Calais range was rather complex, featuring two body styles (2- & 4-door), four trim levels (base, S, SL & International Series) and four engines (three 4-cyl’s & a V-6). Of these innumerable variations, our featured car was the very bottom-of-the-line model: A base 2-door with the 2.5L “Iron Duke” engine, which was meaninglessly called the Tech IV in GM parlance. Notoriously loud and underpowered, the 100-hp Iron Duke was not the best match for a 2,500-lb. car with a 3-speed automatic transmission (as most were equipped). Chances are that this example left the factory with few options, as even bodyside moldings are missing, which came with a frequently-ordered $265 option package.
With three passengers on board, this car was going nowhere in a hurry. But it was still going somewhere after nearly 30 years on the road, which is more than can be said of most N-cars. Oldsmobile’s Calais would qualify for a prize for the most quickly disappearing once-common vehicle. But at the same time, should prizes also be given to faithful N-bodies still hard at work, our featured Calais would certainly deserve one.
Photographed in Paragould, Arkansas in July 2019.
Related Reading:
The General Motors N-Body: How Quickly We Forget Jason Shafer
Vintage Review: 1985 Oldsmobile Calais Supreme GN
1985 Oldsmobile Calais Supreme: A Happy Baby Jon Stephenson
One doesn’t see many run-of-the-mill 30 year-old cars on the road today. Most are some special interest type that have been lovingly cared for by their owners. Here in Texas, where the only rusting problems come from cars kept close to the coast, if you see a 30+ year-old car it is most probably a GM B-body or a Ford Crown Vic (I don’t know the generic name for that configuration).
Nothing runs bad better than “American iron.” That is a quote I believe I first saw on this web site. One certainly does not see BMWs or Audis of this vintage that have been “cared for” in similar fashion to this Oldsmobile.
From what I’ve heard a GM car will take a lot of abuse and run poorly longer than some cars run at all. My Fiance’s 200 Saturn SL1 was driven repeatedly without enough oil and I think even overheated once or twice, but kept going until I totaled it.
The Town Car, Grand Marquis, and Crown Vic are also called Panthers.
Ford’s Panther and Fox sound a lot sexier than GM’s B-bodies and N-bodies.
I had a GM ‘X’-body at one time (a Pontiac Phoenix). That sounds sexy and it looked sort of sexy for a 1980’s compact – two-toned silver over metallic gray with the snowflake alloy wheels but it didn’t live up to the “nothing runs better . . .” axiom. Everything was fine for about 75,000 miles then it all went south in a big way and I did properly maintain the car.
20-30 year old Camrys and Accords are not uncommon to see still looking good and running like a champ. An older gentlemen neighbor of mine has a 1990 Camry with 420,000 miles. My neighbor refers to his Camry as the Energizer bunny as it just keeps going and going.
I found this one last night, perusing Craigslist.
https://littlerock.craigslist.org/ctd/d/sheridan-oldsmobile-cutlass-clais/6996783197.html
63,000 miles! Unbelievable, if real.
Wow. And that one is only about 200 mi. away from where I found the white example. Maybe Arkansas is a secret hub for Calais activity?
Could be. My mom bought one of the last ones (a ’96?) before she died. It was indeed gawdawful.
1991 was the last year for calais. Your probably thinking of the ciera.
The thing I remember most about the early ones was the cynically “engineered” hand brake lever. The console box was just perched on top, and rotated upwards with the handle movement. That one act of Mickey-Mouseness was a metaphor for the whole car.
And the Iron Duke?, ugh!. Those things belonged in forklifts,
not cars.
I’d forgotten about those console boxes atop the handbrake lever. I guess the thought process must have been that the console wouldn’t be needed if the handbrake was engaged and that the handbrake wasn’t used all that much, anyway (at least with the automatic, which is what the vast majority of these cars came with).
In the context of the times, I guess the N-body was okay. Not particularly good, but not bad, either. The biggest issue was how closely they resembled GM’s downsized personal luxury cars. Why buy an Eldorado, Toronado, or Riviera when you could get a very similar Calais, Somerset, or Grand Am for thousands less? This would be a huge problem for GM as the profit margin on the N-body was much less than the luxury cars.
Imagine if Ford decided to design their Tempo/Topaz as a smaller Lincoln Mark VIII. Instead of upright sedan lines, the Tempo had that soft aerodynamic amorphous bar of soap look. That is what GM did here and it just never worked. The X cars were very well done aesthetically, and the market favored what ToyondaNissan was selling, which should have been copied.
This design didn’t work as their compact car line, and it didn’t work as their large personal luxury car design either.
Then there was the GM driving position – too low, in seats too soft, without thigh support. You swear you were driving in a velour covered canvas camp seat. Their cushions would just slowly collapse under you, leaving you longing for a bean bag chair. These interiors looked nice, but once you sat in them a while, you discovered that you were sinking down with your legs horizontal before you. You didn’t sit in these cars, you laid in them.
It is admirable that this one is still on the road.
The thing that kills the aesthetics for me is that seemingly-trademark GM GoofyRoof. While not as square-edged and sharp-looking as previously, it’s still at odds with almost every other companies’ cars, and makes the whole thing look gawky and awkward. While you can kind of expect (and accept) this on the coupe, the sedan looks just plain weird.
Innocuous. And CHEAP. Those are not inspirations for wanting to keep a car for the long term.
On the Buick model, didn’t the Somerset (a BLAH name) become the Somerset Regal by adding a stick-on plastichrome badge that somehow looked like it didn’t quite match?
There is a chance Somerset gained popularity as a major metro Detroit at the time so there is an association with affluence for Buick.
A Cadillac with A lobotomy
Great find! Oddly enough, first generation N-bodies haven’t been very common in my area in probably 20 years. The second generations mostly disappeared by the mid-00s as well, with the final Gran Ams finally getting scarce.
In both generations, it seems to be the Grand Ams that hang on the longest, for some odd reason that I can’t quite figure out.
I got a ride in the Buick Somerset version right around the time it came out. A guy who was in the group of three of us studying for the bar exam bought one. He had an accounting background as I recall and was a pretty buttoned-down guy. I remember thinking that this was what a young professional would drive.
But I ignored the cognitive dissonance that came from not knowing a single other young professional driving one. I lost track of him soon after the bar exam, but remember that he was driving something else about a year later – I don’t recall what it was, but I remember it being about a 180 degree spin from a Buick Somerset Regal.
I have always thought these must have been designed as a two door first with the four door as an after thought. An odd looking after thought. The rear roof line just looks strange on the four door.
This must have been one of last cars with the funny trunk racks that were popular in the late 80s and early 90s.
You may be right. As I recall, the GM-10 cars hit the streets at about the same time as the N-bodies. However, the gestation period for both cars was lengthy and GM introduced the 2-door models first and just in time for the market to start demanding 4-door cars.
My recollection with the story of the N-bodies was that they were originally intended to replace the G-body PLCs for 1985, just as the FWD A body was supposed to for the sedans earlier. But as you mentioned the GM10s were coupes only originally too, and ran concurrently with the N bodies with thorough restyles to boot, so it really confuses matters, on top of the G body getting a longer stay of execution only to finally be ousted by the GM10s in 89.
Purely speculation but it seems as though GM came to the conclusion that the N bodies were going to be percieved as too small to properly succeed the G bodies, but the designs were fresh enough that a 4-door variant would increase the market for them if the coupes bombed, so their market positioning rapidly changed to personal luxury compacts, and the GM10 program launched to make more fitting successors to the G-body PLCs.
I think all of that is basically correct. IINM, the N-bodies were actually sold only as 2-doors for their first model year (1985), then the 4-door body style was added the following year.
The N-bodies were originally planned out as replacements for the G-body personal luxury coupes, in the depths of the post-energy crisis early ’80s recession. At that time, it was assumed that the price of gas would continue rising, and consumers looking for mid-size (or larger) cars in the future would be looking for vehicles that were substantially smaller and more fuel-efficient than what those customers had sought in the past. This was the same mentality that led to the dramatically downsized 1985 C-bodies, 1986 E-bodies, and 1986 H-bodies (as replacements for the RWD B-bodies). There was no Chevrolet version of the N-body planned because it was assumed that buyers in Chevrolet’s price class would no longer be interested in this type of vehicle.
Then, the gas price predictions didn’t come true, and demand for all those RWD cars that were slated for replacement held up better than expected. Meanwhile, the FWD X-bodies imploded. Replacing the X-bodies became a top priority, certainly a bigger priority than replacing the G-body PLCs. Since the N-body was similar in size to the X-bodies, they were repurposed as replacements for the X-bodies, at least the B-O-P versions.
I’m not quite sure how the GM10s originally fit into the puzzle. They weren’t introduced until three model years after the N-bodies, so they may have been put into development at the time it was decided to repurpose the N-bodies as X-body replacements, as new more appropriately sized replacements for the G-body PLCs. On the other hand, someone here once suggested that the GM10s were originally supposed to be a smaller full-size sedan for Chevrolet and Pontiac to use as a replacement for the B-bodies, instead of the H-bodies (presumably in the early ’80s, before it had become apparent that the H- and C-bodies were too small for how gas prices had actually panned out). And in the end the GM10s kinda sorta at least partially replaced the FWD A-bodies, too. Not sure how all of that may (or may not) have been planned to fit together.
Great point about the Ns replacing the original Xs! That’s a missing link that really explains the 1986 4 door and their rather rushed look of them.
I’m having to do mental gymnastics to figure out the places of the GM10, N bodies A bodies alone, throwing the H and C in the mix isn’t helping lol. It’s interesting though, the H bodies really never seemed much bigger than any GM10 car I’ve been in, which were quite a few in the Chicago burbs as a 90s-00s kid, so I can see the legitimacy to that claim as well. The origins of it going back to the repurposing of the Ns to fill the role of the Xs seems to lineup with the timeline best though. But then they weren’t really true PLC successors to the G bodys either, the Regal was the only W body that got truly different styling from Coupe to Sedan. Perhaps in this case though GM accepted the writing on the wall for the falling PLC segment, but then it’s curious why they’d once again debut them all as coupes the first year, once again, echoing the Ns.
Besides those N-body cars,
Dodge Intrepid disappears at an alarming rate also. I don’t recall other cars disappearing quicker than them at such a scale. ( N-body cars hang on for longer time, Chrysler LH-cars stay on the road longer than Intrepid, and Eagle cars disappear just as quickly but not at such scale )
Good point since I hardly ever see a Dodge Intrepid in Tualatin though I see numerous other cars of the same era.
The vast majority of second generation Dodge Intrepids were sold with the unfortunate Chrysler 2.7 V6, probably the worst engine Chrysler ever made.
Not according to Allpar. They were simply misunderstood. If you used synthetic oil and changed it every 2000 miles it was fine. Also, never drive it cold. Let it warm up at least 15 minutes before driving it. Also, never drive it in cold weather, or hot weather, or when the sun was up. Always park it indoors and NEVER drive it over 3000 rpm, or over 60 mph, and never drive it during full moons or solstice periods. Also change the coolant once every 2 weeks.
If you follow these guidelines, they will run at least 40,000 miles before a rebuild.
Also never, ever shift the automatic transmission into any gear while the engine is running, as you risk a major cluster f@@@ in the Chrysler’s impeccably engineered transmission!
Nice catch you have there and I like the front plate as well. What is with the orange police car in the top photograph?
I have no idea — I’m not from that area, so I don’t know what jurisdiction that police car was from. In doing some searching, the City police there have black & white cars and the county sheriff has white cars. I’d love to know where the orange one came from.
That might be red instead of orange. Probably a fire chief’s car.
Thank you for the info.
It appears to have had a grille transplant from an ’87-’88 model. I’m fairly certain the ’89-’91 always had a body color panel in lieu of a full height grille.
Good catch — definitely so.
Had a 1990 4 door with the 3.3L V-6. It was a great car, gave very little trouble, and was quite fast.
It is so generic. It should just say “car” on it an have a big barcode on the side like an 80s generic cereal box.
Blah front end, blah rear lights, blah hubcaps. It looks like the Olds people were given a Grand Am to change into an Olds and just removed any Pontiac-y looking bits quickly before lunch. And replaced those parts with nothing.
Not your father’s Oldsmobile, because his Oldsmobile, whatever it was, compared to this, was awesome.
It probably came painted a bright red or something, but when the color saw what it was adhered to it simply lost the will to live.
+1. Sums up exactly how I feel about these cars (and many other GM products of this era).
I had a 1986 Cutlass Calais GT. It had a V6, it was pretty sporty, at the time.
Well, anyone thinking that Chryslers last longer than GM cars of this era, doesn’t live in the New York Metro area.
I’m still driving my Dad’s 1991 Chrysler LeBaron, and if I spot anyhing from the early 90’s on the roads here it is definiyely NOT a Chrysler product, but GM’s. I almost rebuilt this car from new gas tank, to brake lines, to transmission, to front end; probably put close to $10,000 into it since 2010, but worth it, 4 door, V6, white with blue tuffted velor interior. Love driving it and it drives well, about 130,000 on the clock. Problem I have now is rust on the rear fender behind the rear wheel and hood and trunk losing finish coat. Been told this vintage product had an issue with finish coat adhereing to base coat. Paint job not far off! Wish I could share a photo, it’s almost a classic!
I rode in a few of these in the late 90’s-early 2000’s as a teenager. They were either hand me downs or bought by those working part time jobs and buying the bottom barrel cheap used cars. One kid younger than me had one of the Quad 4 442 ones. I didn’t realize how rare of a car it was then. He destroyed it.
Someone in my town has a blue one of these. I don’t even see achievas anymore, though there are a few second gen grand ams and skylarks around.
I know everyone here hates on them, but at the time as a young teenager and even today as a guy in his 40s, I think these are attractive cars. I liked pretty much each variant but I was always fondest of the Calais (though I liked the dash vents on the Grand Am a lot too).
I was a weird kid and I guess that made me a weird adult.
“By 1990, though, when our featured car was produced, the package had surpassed its Best-By Date.” It seems as if a LOT of 1980s designs aged quickly when going into the 90s, but GM’s especially. It’s amazing how even some 70s designs had managed to survive for that long (the Ford Fox & Panther platforms for example) before being redesigned.
“Notoriously loud and underpowered, the 100-hp Iron Duke was not the best match for a 2,500-lb. car with a 3-speed automatic transmission (as most were equipped).” It felt fairly “adequate” in my grandparents’ ’88 Cutlass Ciera–and maybe it was until you test-drove the V6 version (I never did).
I’ve owned 2 of these and an Achieva. Decent cars and the 3 speed auto had a lockup which seemed to kick in at around 40 mph. One Calais had the Iron Duke, the other had the Quad 4 and was quicker with slightly better mpg. I bought the second one when I was working in Montana around 2000 or so and kept it for two years, then the lockup feature began to either not work or start kicking in at a higher speed. Since both rear quarters and the rockers already had rust showing through them, I wasn’t about to spend serious money on it so I traded it before it got worse.
Both were nice rides on the highway, quiet, bump absorbing and tracked well.
Perfectly sums up typical gm car of the time. It’s so terrible that finding just one is a miracle. The iron Duke was the best engine long term durability wise but way under powered. Had an elderly neighbor who had one in a Pontiac 6000 which was white with crumbling lower body plastic cladding. She was always thinking something was wrong with it since it was so slow and agriculture vs the 77 LeSabre 403 she had before. It actullay held up well except the sporty we build excitement plastic cladding. All I did to it for 7 years was change the oil twice a year and one tune, tstat, hose replacement, fuel filter, belt and air filter, clean battery terminals for watching my cat for 2 weeks.
In July of 1988, my family brought home our first new car in 12 years–a light metallic gold Buick Skylark Custom. Quad 4 engine. Tan cloth seats. Hand crank windows, but did have power locks, cruise, and an upmarket radio. We drove it to California later that year on vacation. It was surprisingly smooth for such a small car and the trunk was quite capacious, too. Rear seat was a bit cramped. After the first 400 miles my legs were crying to get out.
With the Quad 4 it was reasonably spritely, though I do recall Dad grumbling about why the hell the car had a 3 speed transmission with a lock-up feature on the torque converter, especially in an era where 4-speed overdrives had become common. Our little Buick bird managed to dodder its way well into the 1990s before falling victim to the famous Quad 4 maladies that were just becoming all too public. Mom and Dad were embroiled in divorce at this time, and Mom had me trade in the Buick for the then-redesigned Saturn SL series which were introduced in the fall of 1995 as 1996 models. She got a base SL1 in the new that year dark purple, with the preferred option group. It was not much better than the outgoing Skylark.