In researching my article on Oldsmobiles at the Scottsdale auctions, I was stuck by how many variations Olds offered in the sixties. Brock Yates mentioned in his 1968 C/D article featured on CC that the U.S. makers’ number of models proliferated, but their sales didn’t. This is basically true, but a closer snapshot look is revealing.
I don’t think anyone played the model game more prolifically than Oldsmobile. With the addition of the Toronado for 1966, Oldsmobile had three basic body shells. However, if you count all the models and body styles available, they had 39 choices. And they didn’t even offer a full size station wagon! (I think I’m counting correctly, I could be wrong. The 4-4-2 was technically not a separate series, but some sources list it as a model. It’s 34 if you don’t count 4-4-2. On the other hand, Olds lists 6 and 8 cylinder F-85’s separately, so if you counted 4-4-2’s and 6 and 8 F-85’s, it’s 47)
Other medium price brands also had large numbers in 1966, such as Pontiac with two bodies and 34 models (GTO is a separate series), Dodge with three bodies and 36 models and Mercury with two bodies and 32 models, though they all had full size wagons. Chevrolet had 48 models, but that was across five bodies.
In the last ten years, Oldsmobile had added two bodies and 26 models since 1956. For all the extra choices they offered buyers, sales only rose 19%, and they dropped a place in U.S. sales rankings. Going forward, though, Oldsmobile was exceptionally successful and adding cars seemed to have helped them. They would add more basic bodies, but the total number of models would decrease.
Oldsmobile’s methods worked great until the late eighties, when they seemed to lose relevance in the market almost overnight. 1985 was Olds’ all time high water mark: 1.165 million cars and beating out Ford for the number two spot. It took 88 years of work to get there and 19 more years to work their way out of business.
For comparison:
1956: one body, 13 models, 485k, 5th place
1966: three bodies, 39 models, 578k, 6th place
1976: five bodies, 36 models, 891k, 3rd place
1986: seven bodies, 33 models, 1,050k, 3rd place
1996: seven bodies (including an SUV and a minivan), 13 models, 331k, 10th place (4th within GM; also behind Toyota, Honda and Nissan which were 3rd, 4th, 5th respectively; sales less than the 386k 1976 Cutlass 2-doors sold)
2006: zero bodies, 0 models (last car sold in 2004)
R.I.P. Oldsmobile, you had a heck of a run!
(I’m considering 88 and 98 to share a body shell throughout. Olds and some other brands divided their models by engine cylinder count. I combined engines within a model for comparison purposes.)
I’d love to hear what you feel Oldsmobile did right and wrong and what led to their sudden downfall.
Photos taken from oldcarbrochures.com, a very cool and useful website. There I also ran across this GM publication, which has more information than you’d probably ever want to know about the 1966 Toronado.
Olds’ sales explosion came when the Cutlass replaced the Impala as America’s default car for families. Then the Cutlass was replaced collectively by various Japanese sedans.
I remember Olds dealerships exploding in the 70s and closing in the 90s. Locally, a Ford dealer gave up the Ford franchise for Olds in the early 80s. There’s a big Ford store down the street now that mostly sells trucks. Fortunately for his heirs, he’d also taken the franchise for a little two-cylinder car from a company that was well known for motorcycles….
Dad went to replace his Cutlass in 1980 with another one. Part of the interior fell apart in his hand. He walked out of the showroom and across the street, bought a Toyota Supra and never another GM car. He had been mostly a GM guy his adult life.
So I still have most of Oldsmobile Day to get through, but I hadn’t realized Olds’ sales in 1986 were higher than ’76. The Cutlass was the single biggest seller in 1976, the first Olds in that slot since the Curved Dash; by 1986 Cutlass had become basically a sub-brand, and that had become a punch line.
What is interesting is that in my little town, most folks drove Fords or Chevys, Oldsmobile and Buick were borderline also-ran brands…at least in the 50s/early 60s. (Pontiac and Oldsmobile seemed to break out with the arrival of the GTO and 4-4-2.) You bought a Buick if you weren’t quite (financially) ready for a Cadillac and bought an Oldsmobile if you appreciated styling more than brand cachet.
In 1986, at least in the Chicago area (guessing the west coast was a bit different) an Olds was still a Nice Car. Hard to believe only 10 years later that with the exception of the Aurora it was basically an off-brand generic.
Enjoying all the Olds today!
I really think a corner was turned with the GM10s. First they appeared as coupes only, making the Cutlass Ciera look “old” to sedan-seeking up-and-comers while offering them nothing for an agonizing year and a half.
Then GM, realizing they weren’t on track to recoup what were insanely high development costs for such a meh car, cheaped out the interiors bigly in the midcycle facelift that hit the market just as the Camry and Accord hit the highest peak of their Bubble Economy-developed content-richness.
Someone please explain to me: I understand that the 1949 or so 88s shared a body with Chev and Pontiac. The 48-49 98 shared body with Buick senior cars and Cadillac. In 1950 I think the Olds 98 shared a body with a sort of senior Buick and low level (Series 61? ) Cadillac. 1951-1953 88s shared body with Buick Special. 1952-3 98 Shared what body? 1954-56 88s shared body with Buick Century/Special, and Super and Roadmaster shared body with Cadillac 62. But.. 1954-1956 Olds 98, what is the body? Stretched 88?
I was always under the impression that, with very few exceptions, the GM big cars were divided into “B” and “C” bodies. The Bs were Chevy, Pontiac Catalina, Buick Specials/LeSabres and Olds 88s. The Cs were Caddys, 98s, Roadmasters/Electras and (maybe) Bonnevilles.
In 59, GM cars (exc Corvette) from Chevy to Cadillac went to one basic body design of varying lengths, but significant sharing of visible parts like windshields, bulkheads, roof and front doors, plus almost all of the “black” metal inside the body. It’s similar to Chrysler Corp’s 57 line (exc Imperial), except that the GM cars had more chassis variations. Before 59, there wasn’t extensive interchange of body parts between GM’s A/B/C body families. For example, Cadillacs were taller and wider than Chevys, and Buick Roadmasters might be taller and wider than Buick Specials. Those differently dimensioned cars couldn’t share a significant number of body parts inside or outside. However, Chevy, Pontiac, and small Oldsmobiles might share doors, roofs, etc.
Even when Pontiac had stretched models, they often weren’t true C bodies with the stretched rear doors and extra rear leg room. They often were stretched behind the rear seat.
After thinking about it, I think you’re correct about the Bonneville not being a true “C” body, but a stretched “B”.
I think the 71 and 72 Bonneville and Grand Ville were true C bodies with the extra length in the rear seat area and longer doors.
Before that, the longer Pontiacs usually were stretched behind the rear seat. The usual tip off is that the rear door on the long wheelbase car is the same size as the short wheelbase car, with more distance between the rear wheel opening and the cutout at the bottom of the door that wraps around the rear wheel opening on the short wheelbase car. The cutout on the long wheelbase car is the same shape as the rear wheel opening, but there are several inches of body between the the cutout and the rear wheel opening.
There was a post on this years ago. The Grand Villes were B-Bodies with a C-Body roof.
Before 1959, Chevy and Pontiac’s main cars were A bodies. Then A designation returned for 1964 + mid size cars.
Correction: the early full sized A body was also used for entry level Olds and Buick models.
I think you might be right. The Olds 98 of 1954-56 seems to be on a stretched B body that shares a roof structure with the Olds 88 and the Buick Special.
GM seemed to be in a bit of confusion on the A-B-C body thing from about 1947-56. It just now occurs to me that there does not seem to have been a B body in 1949-50. The 49 Buick brochure does not even list a Special, though pictures on the internet abound of 49 Specials still using the old 46-48 bodies. The 50 Special sedan uses a c pillar that looks an awful lot like that of the C body.
If I recall correctly, Oldsmobile only used the B body throughout most of the 1950s. The Ninety-Eight was a stretched version of the 88, with some minor detail changes and different two-tone paint patterns.
Seeing those charts featuring the entire lineup, usually on the last page of a brochure from that year, reminds me of going onto the website of a car brand, especially luxury, and especially German, and to the “build and price” page.
You’d be surprised at how the German brands have proliferated in the recent years as compared to their palty offerings in the 1970s and 1980s.
Let’s take Mercedes-Benz, for example, in 1976, which you could count with one and half hands: W123, C123, W116, V116, R107, C107, and 600.
Today, you have at least 23 models according to Mercedes-Benz Deutschland website. Of course, some are derived from the basic platform (GLE/GLE Coupé and stretched GLS) while one platform has three or more variations (saloon, estate, coupé, convertible, etc.).
Dozens of models, in any color you like as long as it is silver!
“1985 was Olds’ all time high water mark: 1.165 million cars and beating out Ford for the number two spot.”
But what new Ford debuted for the 1986 model year, ensuring Olds would never be #2 again?
TAURUS. The ’55 Chevy of the ’80s.
The mind boggles wondering how it might have gone if the Taurus had been, say, the new Cutlass, instead of the POS FWD “A” bodies GM inflicted upon America?
But if I may borrow from Linkin Park, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
Because even IF GM had continued from strength to strength, never swooning or sliding into the maelstrom of malaise and mediocrity that gripped the General for the better part of forty years, I respectfully don’t see how it could have continued.
Germany, Japan, and eventually Korea were going to gain SOME market share with the caliber of product they were sending – and eventually building – here. The US companies only fueled that fire by their actions.
But perhaps most of all, Oldsmobile’s place on Sloan’s ladder had become something like nailing Jello to a wall. Same as it had become with Buick and Pontiac.
Eventually all three had gotten in the way of each other, and most notably, Mr. Mass-market all-things-to-most-people…GM’s bread & butter…
Chevrolet. Who only now is beginning to recover from 40 years of abuse at the hands of the General.
And before you go “uh, wait, how ’bout the Quad 4? The Aurora? Intrigue?”
Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams provide the answer at the YouTube link below.
To my dying day, once the make-specific engines dried up, there was no reason for Olds, Pontiac or Buick to exist. Of course the jury’s still out on Buick – and GMC.
I agree, Olds mgmt. didn’t know what to do once the RWD Cutlass Supreme died off. Their FWD C, H, and other alphabet soup things overlapped Buick, Pontiac and Chevy.
GM waited an eon [4 years], to finally have a new 4 door W body to compete with Ford/Mercury, and then thought all the former RWD car owners would came back, in masses.
The Cutlass Ciera ended up their #1 seller in the 90’s, and it was an old design. Older buyers got them thinking they were still like the 1949 Super 88.
Meanwhile, younger buyers, couldn’t care less about the 50s through early 80s ‘brand ladder’.
Suddenly switching to ‘import fighter’ brand in 1988, which was also Pontiac’s role, didn’t work at all. And the Aurora was a fad car. Forgotten by 1999.
Olds badges on SUVs and minivans? Who cares.
Best to cancel it and not suffer more “This rebadged truck is a new generation of Olds”.
Thank you for highlighting the importance of oldcarbrochures.com.
It’s a near comprehensive library of car brochures from the dawn of the motor age onward. It’s extremely useful if you want to confirm something about a particular car from a particular year.
They take donations, may I add. They’re well worth your support.
I’ll second the praise for oldcarbrochures.com, and want to alert others to another such site they might not know about:
http://www.lov2xlr8.no
Yes, it’s apparently from Norway, of all places!
Team CC:
It would be great to do a compilation post on the main-line and wacky car-related web sites that are out there like this one….and see what the commentariat add to the mix…
Correct website address for Old Car Brochures is oldcarbrochures.org
I would suggest that by 1966 the Olds 98 was a separate model from the 88, which juices your numbers even more. From the cowl back the 98 was a completely different car from its 88 counterpart, owing to its C body architecture.
I agree that a good case could be made that the B and C bodies were very separate and should be considered different platforms. For this purpose, I was thinking more in terms of full size, midsize, compact, luxury specialty, etc. The 88 and 98 were both full size cars that shared many inner and outer body parts, chassis components, dashboards, often engines, etc., the differences being more superficial than substantive.
But they were different enough that Olds salesmen probably couldn’t often sell a 98 to an 88 customer or vice versa.
I’m not a sociologist, but one factor might be that Sloan’s Ladder of Success no longer matched how Americans thought about themselves.
Oldsmobile was GM’s middle-of-the-market brand, for stolid, respectable buyers who wanted something nice but not too flashy. But over time our social distinctions had polarized into high and low, with few people left in the middle. As the 20th century ended, car shoppers either wanted a Chevy or a BMW, leaving brands like Olds without a brand position that matched the self image of enough car shoppers.
Now it’s not even clear that “near luxury” brands like Buick or Acura has any future in a polarized market & culture.
Or maybe I’m overthinking things, and it was just that as GM’s total market share imploded, it no longer made sense to divide their sales among 6 or 7 or 8 brands. Some of them had to go, and Olds picked a bad time to have weak sales.
The Sloan ladder worked when every division offered a different colored, different flavored bowl of Jello. By the 1980’s, GM was offering 6 different colored bowls of Jello that all tasted like cherry. The imports were serving pudding.