(first posted 10/25/2016) I’ve had a bit of a think since the last time I visited Oldsmobile. Don’t get me wrong, that revolting half-baked attempt at making the Malibu into a Cutlass is still nothing short of insulting, but at the end of the day…wasn’t Oldsmobile already on its deathbed by the time that it rolled around? What was the point of dumping millions of dollars on something completely new and different? That makes that pretty blue car that you see above this text all the more interesting.
Brendan Saur’s Oldsmobile Bravada article reminded me of that horrible car. If anything, the Bravada is worse in execution than that Cutlass, but when that one died it didn’t take such a storied name down with it. Moreover, as I read it, I got into thinking about what exactly killed Oldsmobile. The almost-insulting levels of badge engineering didn’t help of course. But if we take the pragmatical approach, which I seem to be doing in this article, Oldsmobile died the second that someone inside GM’s HQ decided the second they decided to change their brand image fast enough to cause whiplash. When I googled ‘Not your father’s Oldsmobile’ to research this article half of the articles that came back were those “Online Advertising” sites warning everyone who read that this was pretty much the worst way that Olds could change their focus. Yes, in our youth-venerating culture something with a name that has ‘Old’ in it may be seen as toxic, but I think that argument goes right out of the window when you remember Terry Crews bursting through a brick wall to prevent an Old Spice ad from ending.
And now, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that the campaign actually worked. Well, half of it did. It was very good at getting rid of the old people that wanted to buy Cieras, it was not so good at bringing people to replace them though. Couple that with that old GM problem of “Too many brands, not enough boldness” and on December, 2000, the inevitable was announced. Oldsmobile was going away for good. Unsurprisingly, those news came as a punch in the gut for everyone who had just gotten into a new Olds Aurora, Silhouette or the one we are taking a look today, the Alero.
As I mentioned on the Cutlass article, if I had been running Olds at the time I would have sold the Alero under the Cutlass name. I read some of you on the comments (Thank you for commenting, I appreciate your readership) that by the time the Alero came around the Cutlass name was essentially showroom poison. But after the plain water biscuit that was the final-gen Cutlass, I don’t think anyone would have noticed. I also mentioned that this was what Oldsmobile’s version of the N-body should have been from the get-go. Unfotunately the Alero Alpha concept car that inspired the Alero’s design only came around in 1997. Alas.
Anyway, back to our photographed car which was captured in Austria by T-Minor. Aleros sold in Europe were sold as Chevrolets and the American plate on the back window makes me think this particular Alero did some time in the US before jumping the pond. It’s a very nice example with lovely shiny paint and what looks to be a perfectly straight body. Without taking a look under the hood and taking into account the way cars are taxed on the old continent, it’s likely that propulsion is provided by the 140-horsepower 2.2-liter Ecotec four. A bigger 2.4-liter four and a 3.4-liter V6 were also available with either a five-speed manual or a four-speed automatic.
The interior, in sharp contrast to the distinctive exterior, was business as usual, lots of cribbing from the corporate parts bin and plastics that would become so shiny and slippery by year four that GM should have just thrown the AutoZone steering wheel cover from the dealership and called it a day. But at the end of that day, it really wouldn’t have matter if it had been bestowed with an interior so opulent that a Mercedes S600 would have looked spartan, outdragged a Corvette and rode as beautifully as a Silver Seraph while being able to keep up with a Ferrari Modena on the twisties, the baggage that came from the past couple of decades was just too big to fight against. All the cars that surrounded it were either too similar or better. Oldsmobile had long since worked itself into a position where it wasn’t superior in any meaningful way(to consumers) than any other GM brand, let alone outside competition. The Aurora was the sole standout of the bunch and even it could not prevent the death march to that fateful 2000 announcement and that ceremony four years later, where a red Alero became the final vehicle to roll out of a production line bearing the Oldsmobile name. And tragically, it seems as though very few people were really the worse for it.
What we have here is the 96-up Saturn SL2’s big brother.
I knew a co-worker years ago that bought one of these brand new and fully loaded back in the day. Purchased for around $22K If I recall. Dealerships were giving hefty discounts on these like it was nothing. In an attempt to move these bland cars off the lot. I think they new it was going to be a flop. The Alero was suppose to carry the baby “Aurora like look”, but failed. The Aurora & Intrigue were the only beautiful cars Olds offered during this era.
I always thought the Alero was over designed. Too many generic oval shapes, with a very unrefined cheap looking interior (Think Grand Am like). Typical of all GM cars of the time. I thought is needed a plash of wood grain trim in the cabin & a more sophisticated climate control unit instead of cheap knobs.
The bigger, more handsome, and much better (Olds Intrigue GS) cost between $6K to $8K more. Was much more sleeker, with balanced proportioned aero shape.
Alero looked just OK from the front, but the over sized plate style tail lights and overall generic execution makes very few desire this car today. The coupe version was down right ugly!
Just my two cents….
I really liked the style of most of the final Oldmobiles, too bad the quality and marketing were lacking the promise of the style.
The second generation Aurora didn’t match the looks of the original, and the Cutlass Malibu was a sorry mistake. But, otherwise a good looking group of cars that had a cohesive brand look.
The seeds of Olds’ demise were sewn in 1960 when GM’s mainstream brands got junior and compact editions. Rampant platform-sharing reduced destinctiveness. I understand at the local dealer level this made sense. Some GM brands werebetter represented than others. But advertising was national. And how do you differentiate one divisions A-body car from another?
The realities of manufacturing helped nail the lid on Olds. GM was ruled by accountants. How can GM’s bean counters justify the redundancy in maintaining 5 auto divisions. How do you justify a firm making FIVE different V8 designs, at the same time, all of which do the same thing th the same way?
It was inevitable that GM would consolidate their operations. I’m surprised Olds lasted as long as it did. In hindsight, money would have been better spent developing a superior design instead of maintaining multiple redundant brands.
I don’t agree with that date, I’d put it 1982 when the J cars came out.
Spring 1981 as 1982 models, similar to the X cars two years earlier.
I’d say Fall 1971 with the N-O-V-A quads….
I think that the Aleros taillights look like the eyes of a fly.
ha ha ha! Excellent. Now that you said it, I can’t not see it.
What a mess that poor Olds is…
For so,e reason, I always thought that the Alero reminded me of the creature from ‘War Of The Worlds’ the 1953 version.
Whenever the BOP Divisions had been successful in the past, it was because they were small and nimble, well run by people who knew their niche and did it well. Buick in the 50s, Pontiac in the 60s and Olds in the 70s each hit pay dirt with an image that it watched closely and burnished constantly.
Beginning in the early 1960s, any successes that the Divisions had was in spite of central management on the 14th floor of the old GM building, not because of it. By the 1980s, though, it was central management calling most of the shots while the individual divisions were there mainly to sell what a centralized GM designed and built.
That makes me think of DeLorean’s experience at Pontiac, where corporate high-handedness was characteristic of the go-go ’60s. Why should the top suits (Ed Cole) care whether Pontiac chose to offer discs & radials, so long as the profits flowed in? No wonder GM became homogenized.
It was the same sort of micromanagement which helped lose the Vietnam War (leaving aside whether it was worthwhile in the 1st place).
DeLorean certainly came along at the right time. Imagine him trying to pull off that success at Pontiac ten years earlier, or later.
Exactly. If the divisions could have been more autonomous there is no telling what kinds of wonderful products they could have come up with.
Agree. There was nothing that made Olds stand ahead of any other manufacturer. At least for me. Just good it come under Government Motors years ago, otherwise the brand would have died long, long ago on their own. Problem was the GM bunch didn’t do Olds any favours either. Like an unwanted half brother that’s part of your family….but not wholy included in family events. Certainly not allowed to flourish on any of its own ideas. Pity. Death did come, eventually, for a once prominent, up and comming auto manufacturer.
Interestingly the people I knew with Aleros really freaking loved them. Loved them like, “Oh know I totaled my Alero and they’ve been out of production for 5 years but I’m going to search high and low for another one.”
That’s devotion.
Several years ago we were in Michigan for a family wedding, and right next to our hotel one morning there was a meetup of an Alero Club. Dozens of Aleros and their owners were there — I never would have thought!
Well we did recently read about a Tempo club here, something I never considered, but was interesting nonetheless.
Yep, and that goes to show any invisible lump can generate a cult following for reasons known only to the devotees.
Perhaps it’s a memory of a great first date, or a fondly-remembered family vacation, or recapturing the feeling of that first drive on your own with the new license. Even the blandest-appearing car can generate good feelings under the right circumstances. Somewhere out there today somebody’s sowing the seeds for the future Versa or Mirage club, I’ll bet. 🙂
Oh, I guarantee it.
I got nostalgic seeing a new Taurus in brown because my first car was a 1st generation Taurus m-in brown.
The car itself was ok, nothing spectacular, but the memories are what make it.
The Alero was an N body Grand Am without cladding, and the acclaimed 1st gen Aurora was gone by fall 2000 when cancellation notice came out. These rental car badge jobs were a far cry from the hey days of Cutlass Supremes, 442’s and 98’s.
Pontiac, Saturn, and Olds were overlapping each other, going for the ‘import minded’ customer. The last 88 had a Pontiac grille for goodness sake. All the Proctor & Gamble marketing speak explaining the brands roles didn’t do much good compared to Honda and Toyota products.
And the last Cutlass was a huge joke. Chicago Auto Show had a debut of it in ’99 and was all smoke and mirrors for a Chevy Malibu clone.
The 1998 Cutlass was pitiful in that they literally fitted a different grille and taillights to a Malibu. At least it was V6 only and had a bit different interior. The best option as mentioned would have been to make the Alero the Cutlass but it would have missed by a few model years as it was introduced in 1999. The Malibu/Cutlass came out in 1997 sold alongside the W-body Cutlass Supreme which was in it’s last year.
There was no point for Oldsmobile to exist if it could not fill a factory selling at a higher price point than Chevy. Olds was trying desperately to Achieve this with the Alero. The Malibu was made larger and less sporty. The Alero was not head to head with any import. The Skylark was gone. Olds had gone to no haggle no rebate Saturn style. But over at Pontiac, rebates and deals were still to be had and they got most of the volume. The more expressive styling also didn’t reflect the defensiveness and embarrassment that pervaded Olds. It should be no surprise the Grand Am succeeded enough to warrant another generation.
These cars actually have a sort of following along with the Intrigue and Aurora at my buddies dealership. Yes some folks still come in and ask if we still get these cars in because they loved there such and such model from years back. We do still find many Alero’s and a few Intrigues here and there but the Aurora’s are harder to find in good low miles condition for some reason. Perhaps they sold far fewer of them in the last couple of years compared to the other two.
From my experience the Alero was a decent car but not a standout in any catagory but the Intrigue was the best of the W-bodies in most ways. I owned two, the folks had a 1999 and several friends owned various 1999-2002 model years and aside from the expected ISS issue, the occasional wheel bearing and maybe a window regulator at high miles they were very reliable cars.
To my eyes, this was a much more interesting and better looking car at the time than its Asian counterparts.
Can’t say much about under the skin though.
We rented one years ago when they were still new and drove from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, Taos and other parts of New Mexico with it. I didn’t (and don’t) find it unattractive (save for the too-large taillights), and it was…fine. It struggled a bit with the altitude from what I recall but once on an even stretch of freeway without elevation changes it just purred along in that typical GM rental car way.
I do recall the driver’s seat being very uncomfortable, it seemed to be bowed out as if there was way too much lumbar support built in, as a result it seemed like it was trying to kick me out of it.
Oh, and it was white. Those are my enduring memories of it. I think the most remarkable thing about the featured car are the Vienna plates on it. It’s probably a (former?) service member’s car.
Back when the rental lots were full of Aleros, I must have heard three different people complain about the uncomfortable seats and resulting backaches. I’m sure GM was even more apathetic than usual designing this car.
I didn’t realize that I was in such a small minority, but I actually liked the styling of the Alero. I thought it was a much more clean looking overall design than the “Look at Me, I’m Sporty” Grand Am, for sure. I particularly liked the coupe. To me it looked like the slightly more upscale and tasteful cousin to the over-styled, plastic-clad, cheesy-Christmas-sweater-wearing Grand Am.
I agree. I have always liked the looks of these. They are much cleaner looking than the Grand Am.
These must have a phenomenal survival rate. I still see them a lot more than other GM cars of the same vintage here in the Midwest. Most appear to be in pretty good shape considering their age.
You aren’t alone. After favorable rental car experiences with both a V6 Grand Am 4-door and an Ecotec-powered Alero coupe – along with the ridiculous incentives available to help credit-challenged buyers – I looked seriously at a loaded leftover 2003 Alero GL3 2-door that was a really sharp little car: navy blue with tan leather, sunroof, the works.
I still occasionally wish that I’d pulled the trigger on the Alero; instead, a few weeks later I purchased a 2004 4-cylinder/5-speed Grand Am SE1 in the same exterior color, but with black cloth inside, and the sunroof/Monsoon stereo package. That was the year that Pontiac finally stripped off the plastic door cladding, so while the front and rear fascias remained as overdone as the interior treatment, at least from the side it looked nearly identical to the Alero (because it was.) I think the final out-the-door price was less than $20K.
I owned the GA two years, and it was generally a decent car (and even rather fun to drive) but various trim items began showing wear inside of 15,000 miles. My “favorite” was all the bubbles that had formed in the soft plastic dash and door panels. Of course the same maladies would have happened with the Alero, too.
I bought one new in 2002 (the 2001s were all sold out) Loaded to the hilt w/ the v6 + leather. Got a killer deal on it too with the post-9/11 incentives. Great car – I loved it….until…the sunroof started to leak and the leak would take out the anti-theft system and leave me repeatedly stranded. No one could find the leak or fix it. I traded it in – 2 1/2 years old w/ 18K on the clock. Damn shame. It was a really nice car. I wish I could have turned back time and ordered it without the sunroof! It turned me off of the GM dealership repair experience completely.
As for Olds going under, I visited four Olds dealers before I could find a dealer with inventory. One dealer couldn’t be bothered getting up from his game of Freecell! No wonder!
That’s interesting…I had an ’01 Alero, with a Sunroof, that would repeatedly leave me stranded. The dealer said it was an issue with the anti-theft, but couldn’t trace it because it was intermittent…after the third tow to the dealership, I traded it in…they never did solve the problem.
Notice the front end emblem on this one, obviously these were marketed as Chevrolets in countries outside the USA…
I’m in that minority who thinks the Alero is/was an okay car, let down by lackluster assembly quality and 2nd rate mechanicals. It was definitely better looking that the equivalent Buick or Pontiac.
I never understood the brand philosophy(?) behind the existence of the Oldsmobile line. By the mid 60s Pontiac and Buick were both biting into Oldsmobile’s market niche with fast, sporty, and sometimes luxurious cars. At the upper price levels, Buick, Pontiac and Chevrolet with its new Caprice were eating into Oldsmobile’s niche.
To GM’s credit, they did try to make Oldsmobile GM’s “advanced technology” brand, but only took the idea so far. Imagine if Oldsmobile had gotten the Wankel engine instead of Chevy being designated to get it? Or if Oldsmobile had developed a true Subaru or Audi competitor with AWD….after all, Oldsmobile “pioneered” FWD at GM.
That was the point. During the years when the five GM brands were individual entities (with enough space between them that in the late 1920’s GM added an additional four brands in between the five – which was only killed off by the onset of The Depression), there was no question as to what was a Pontiac, a Buick, or an Oldsmobile.
Then the divisions started getting greedy: Pontiac just had to steal sales from Chevrolet, and made a lesser effort at nicking a few from Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile, wanting to move a lot more metal, not only started impinging on Pontiac AND Chevrolet, but pushing a bit on the Buick level.
And by 1980’s with the X-bodies and shortly thereafter the A-bodies, there weren’t five GM divisions anymore. There were two or three GM cars with different nameplates. Commodities, not divisions anymore. That Forbes cover of the A-bodies lined side by side should have sent the warning bells off long and loud in GM headquarters. But under Roger Smith’s GM, that was as it was supposed to be.
And it wasn’t helped by your being able to get your Chevolet Caprice equipped the same as a mid-level Oldsmobile. For less money.
Just wondering – as much as people bash Roger Smith for his part in killing GM, what’s he achieved since he left? Anything successful?
I think he achieved obscurity, his greatest feat!
You folks *do* realize Mr. Smith passed away about 9 years ago, yes? He was no young man when tapped to be CEO of GM.
He was 56 in 1981 when he started as CEO, retired at 65.
Are you trying to make us feel sorry for him? I personally hope there is a special place in hell for people like him.
My favorite GM cars are the old RWD B/C/D bodies, mostly the senior ones though. I liked the subtle yet real distinctions between the Buick, Olds, and Cadillac flagships and second tier offerings. It even makes some sense for Pontiac and Chevy to make senior flagships for their lines-to some degree. What was really a turn off to me was the dilution of the marques by turning out rebadged Chevys as Buicks and Olds. Soon, how are they really any different than Chevy? Even the distinction between Cadillac and Chevy came too close for comfort. Mercury suffered the same indignity with all the rebadged Ford econoboxes.
By the time these Aleros came out, I think everyone was pretty confused as to what was the point of Olds anymore. Pontiac was supposed to be the “sporty” ones, Saturn the “Generic GM Japanese Import Fighter”, Cadillac the luxury, Buick the near-luxury (sorta, or at least just the one that geriatric cheapskates go for when they can’t pull the trigger on a Cadillac) but Olds sorta was luxury/near with the Aurora and its Caddy based engine but then kind of a mix of all the rest of them.
Partly, I think GM needed to reform the way their dealerships work. Too much clamoring for volume or hot niches that didn’t really fit the given division helped water down the divisions to amorphous lumps of generic GM. Now they have what they should have probably had earlier, though I think Olds could have worked had they not irreversibly watered them down and tried to over modernize and distance themselves from well deserved laurels.
Mopar seems (though one never can tell) to be doing what GM could have done earlier with all those brands-make them dedicated.
Dodge should be volume with an SRT subset for brash American muscle. Chrysler should be near luxury/American comfort cruising. Jeep, obviously the dedicated SUV brand. RAM takes care of the pickup/work market. It makes no sense to try to remake Chrysler into Cadillac which in turn is a BMW chaser. Kick folks up to the parent company’s Alfa Romeo and Maserati as they are the obvious import sporty luxury market.
It would make more sense to look at it as Mopar (or more precisely, FCA) making money on JEEP’s SUV sales overall rather than letting Chrysler dealers bitch that they need a full SUV line or JEEP bitch that they need a van or RAM that they need an econobox.
I don’t know if that is what they are doing, but it makes sense. GM could have done the same.
Another side to this; we had relatives in the midwest of various financial situations, centered in a formerly thriving small town subverting under the WalMart tectonic plate.
As long as they could, they bought new cars from their local GM dealer.
We’d see them maybe once a year, sometimes driving those awful space-minivans, and towards the end of my visits there, Aleros and Auroras. I’d sort of wonder what they were doing, they were always having troubles with them. But now I understand, they were investing in their town and living with the results.
Looking back, I’m sure they looked at my continuum of foreign cars with the same wonderment. Must have wondered what I was thinking when I bought them.
Drove one of the first year models as a rental. I was impressed how much nicer it was than my 93 Achieva. I know the bar was set pretty low and I still see plenty on the road but not many Achievas. Styling is very pleasing and they were offered in some nice colors. My buddy the Old service manager looked down on these as very watered down copies of the “senior cars”. Saw very few on the rack for major warranty work but many Auroras with engine/transaxles being swapped.
I’ve known people with these and they were all unreliable junk. Every part was cheap bargain basement crap. It just felt and looked like a cheap Honda accord knockoff. That’s another sad part to the alero that people don’t see though cuz these were fun cars to drive. The steering and handing were great in the ones I drove. It goes to show there was talent back then in gm but it just got hamstrung by the fiance dept who turned good designs into cheap shit.
Sounds like the styling and marketing guys were writing checks for the buyers that the engineering and assembly guys couldn’t cash.
Makes the saying “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick” relevant since Buick was where the Old Oldsmobile people went.
The Saturn expiriment killed Oldsmobile. Funding could’ve been spent to develop a once successful brand. Now both are history.
I never understood Saturn and thought it was a huge boondoggle from the start. “A different kind of car, a different kind of car company” went the slogan. Who cares? They were junk, just like most of the other cars GM churned out during this period. Why not spend the money wasted on Saturn to improve the small cars you’re already building ie. the J cars?
As for this Olds, well the styling is ok I guess for the period, but the interior looks as crap-tastic as most everything else the General was putting out at the time. Nothing special here, which is why Olds was finally put to rest.
GM were humiliated by the Japanese out-competing them with better small cars. It was inevitable that an arrogant corporation like GM would plough bulldozers of money toward assuaging the damage to their ego with an “import fighter”, whether or not it made financial sense.
And equally predictable because it was GM that the resulting product would be cut-corners mediocre and unsuccessful at defeating the Asian competition.
They didn’t seem to learn a thing from their joint venture with Toyota in California, either. GM parochialism and bad habits die hard.
I wanted one of these very much back about Y2K. Our Dakota Club Cab was becoming far too small to haul around our rapidly growing kids, I thought an N-body would do the trick. My wife wanted an Aztek. Guess who won?
I like the styling of these a great deal, I thought the interior styling was just average. I drove the V6/auto version of these cars at different times, I thought they were rather snappy drives. Not Ferrari killers by any means, but just fine for the car’s mission.
A former co-worker had one of the later ones, a V6 GLS model with the leather and all the toys. As she only drove about 5K miles a year, it really didn’t have many miles on it. I still keep in touch with her, just to see if she will ever sell it. Not so far…
I always thought it was sad that the Alero was never available with the 3.5 Liter Short-Star V-6 that was offered in the Intrigue and the 2nd generation Alero. it had a bit more horsepower and was quite a bit smoother.
During the last few years Oldsmobiles were sold to exactly the kind of people that the Proctor and Gamble marketing people had targeted. There just weren’t that many people in the target market who actually bought Oldsmobiles.
The Alero was all right, but it paled in comparison to the beautiful concept car, and to the Aurora flagship, the first generation of which IMHO was the most refreshing and gorgeous automobile that GM made in the last two decades of the 20th century. GM ruined the Alero’s transition from concept to showroom in the manner they were accustomed to back then, which in this case was to say, “We made a great looking concept that people love. Now stretch some of that stuff out onto a Grand Am body and call it a day.” I was thoroughly disappointed when the production version was unveiled. Truly sad how Oldsmobile devolved in its last couple of decades.
My mom had a first year V6 coupe. Great styling, good initial material quality inside and out to start, and good driving dynamics. The 3400 had eaten an intake gasket set and the ignition switch went out on it before she got rid of it around 110k, and there was some flaking paint on the B pillars. Chrome wheels constantly leaked air. Light tan interior got dirty very easily. I thought about buying it from her, but figured it was a bad idea with the 3400 and the iffy electronics. These were also the automatics (4T45E?) that didn’t have a dipstick to check the fluid level.
As for the badge engineering discussions above, I think the best way to explain the differences are trim, dealership and price. When the first two are not compelling, cars will sell on the third, which is increasingly what is happening now and is leading to the disappearance of various marques. Even the least popular FWD A body sold pretty well back in the day, and I’d say GM offered the most variation between divisions of any of the big 3. Tempo vs. Topaz? Different grill. Aries vs. Reliant? Only a different badge. At least GM, with very few exceptions, gave each division unique front and rear clips and dashes. Other companies with seemingly greater autonomy between divisions seem to largely stem from differences in domestic vs. export models. The only exception I can think of is Jeep, and even they are being forced into more platform sharing every year.
I rented a 2001 Alero for a trip down to Kings Dominion…National Rent-a-Car. A beautiful shade of hunter green that seemed to be unique only to Oldsmobile. It was powered by a Quad4 good for about 160 horses, IIRC. It seemed pleasant enough, but maybe the shocks were out, because it had the bounciest, floatiest ride, nothing at all like the similar Grand Am I had rented a couple of years earlier for the same trip. The Grand Am was a fine handling FWD car, quite “tossable” as they say in some of those annoyingly snarky automotive mags. I was pleasantly surprised by the fit and finish, which was nicer than the more expensive Cutlass Supreme and Regal. My take is similar to the author’s – it simply wasn’t different enough from its corporate cousins in any way. But GM had been doing that s**t for years, from the 60s on. And to some degree, they still are. A Cadillac XTS should not be sharing a platform with a Chevy Impala. Don’t think that they’ll ever really learn.
I spent a week with one of these on rental in the late ’90s. It was a very nice car, drove very well.
Seeing the sedan, I’d forgotten it was a good looking car. Shame the experiment in making Oldsmobiles into sport sedans didn’t work out.
(Can I just pitch in here: The Olds Aurora Mk I deserves to be collected.)
A good-looking and good-driving car that, ultimately, was let down by the crappy GM quality of the era. This sharp blue one must have been *extremely* well taken care of to still look so good (and that dash cover is almost certainly because the pad underneath has delaminated and started to curl). I told the story of my wife’s ’00 Alero in a COAL entry–it suffered a variety of problems to say the least.
One minor factual quibble–the 2.2 Ecotec and 2.4 Twin Cam I4 engines were not available at the same time. The car debuted with the 2.4 as its 4-cyl option, and then in ’02 that engine was replaced by the newer but less powerful 2.2. The 3400 was available as and upgrade over the entire run.
In 2000, I rented an Alero in Las Vegas and came away impressed. It was a 2.4, looked sharp, handled well, and was good on gas. When it came time to trade in my 98 G.Am at home, I went to the local Olds dealer. There was a special deal that GM was running that those trading in a GM car would get an extra $500 (or so) extra bucks towards a new car. I saw a very pretty dark red 2.4 and made my inquiry. The Olds salesman was such a prick and wrongly said I didn’t qualify since my car was a lease turn in???? They wouldn’t budge. So I left and went to the local Chevy dealer and leased an even better equipped 3.1 dark red Malibu LS with leather and a sunroof for a better price including the extra offered cash! The Olds salesman had the gall to call me 2 weeks later and ask if I was still interested in the Alero. I gave him the number for my Chevy salesman.
Aleros were just Grand Am’s without cladding, and cheap cars for rental fleets, GM lifers and their ‘friends/family’. No conquest sales from imports.
Car fans say “Olds should have lived”, but it would just be rebadged GMC SUVs, like Buick today.
Well, it did win the “biggest tail lights” award several years running, so there is that…
I thought that Oldsmobile was on a roll at this time. The original Aurora was a really good looking car, the Intrigue, was actually, intriguing. The Alero wasn’t that outstanding. My experience with an Alero was for a weekend rental. I rented it to go to a car show in Anaheim. It was a V6 sedan with unlimited mileage. My Son and I took off for So Cal and I cruised at 75-80 mph. The car ran great and the overall fuel economy was 28 mpg. It was comfortable, the a/c was great, and so was the C/D player. When I returned it, the guy at the desk had a raised eyebrow when he saw that the total mileage was 750+ miles. “Hey, it was unlimited mileage, wasn’t it?”
Oldsmobile was pretty much doomed after the Japanese onslaught of the seventies. It wasn’t all that dissimilar from the demise of the independent Studebaker and AMC. GM threw the typical GM-think at Oldsmobile with predictable results.
Oldsmobile did have one shot, though, and it can be said in one acronym: NUMMI. The NUMMI cars were Toyotas disguised as GM cars and to the cognoscenti, they were bargains. But compared to the big incentives GM was throwing at their other, craptacular cars, they were a hard sell.
There was one chance, but it was a long-shot (especially from GM). If GM had went with a Fremont-built Oldsmobile when the Toyota Matrix-based Pontiac Vibe went out of production, something in a larger, Camry-size sedan, they might have been able to get away with a higher, no incentive price. IOW, a Toyota-engineered Alero.
The biggest issue would have been the time it would have taken for the buying public to realize how much better a NUMMI Oldsmobile would have been and that it was, indeed, worth the few extra sheckels iy would have cost over a car from one of GM’s other, lesser divisions.
Oldsmobile’s decline started around 1985 when interest in personal luxury cars and conservative full-size sedans started to decline. From 1976 to 1985, Oldsmobile, sold a million cars a year almost every year. I recall the FWD C/H bodies sold well the year they debuted, but decline steadily every subsequent year. Cutlass Supreme sold well until 1984, then gradually drifted lower in subsequent years, and the W body program was a waste of money. By 1992, Automotive News had articles about the possibility of discontinuing Oldsmobile, with John Rock’s plans for revitalizing the brand starting with the Aurora being Oldsmobile’s last chance. Alero and Intrigue were too little, too late.
But they said John Rock and a new logo were going to save the brand!
As it’s got side marker lights, this is probably an original Euro Chevrolet Alero. I also had a 2000 model and it didn’t yet have the (very ugly ‘bowtie against a black oval background’) Chevrolet logos, only the word ‘Chevrolet’ on the back. All Chevrolet Aleros had the Oldsmobile steering wheel. I really have to wonder who bought these cars new, they probably had a lot of amenities for an attractive price, but it must always have seemed like a bit of a cynical exercise.
I bought mine used at 18 years and 100k miles, because it was something different here in the Netherlands, and cheap. Well to buy, not to own (fuel and taxes). Although they had originally been sold here, parts weren’t available. Issues I had in the time I owned it were various leaky AC parts, water ingress past the windshield, rear brake calipers that didn’t work quite well, failing speakers, and a failing start relay. The interior was still in OK shape, though the dash cover started to wrinkle a bit. Oh, and rust. It was starting to rust quite badly under the rockers. All in all I got the impression that it was made to last 100k miles and I was trying to keep it alive longer than it should have been.
Compared to Euro cars of the same vintage it really did have a lot of features though, not just stuff like AC and electric windows, but auto dimming headlights, remote trunk opening, electric driver’s seat, etc. Things like that weren’t that common here back then.
In the end I sold it to someone who wanted to turbo charge the Quad4 and put it in a rally car…
Since the article was first posted in 2016, I’ll fast forward to 2022. I’m in the Army, and have been stationed in Salt Lake City since 2021. Since arriving, I have seen at least 2-dozen Aleros on the streets of the Beehive State. Some a little worse for wear, but most in decent condition. I’m surprised that a GM vehicle that most recently rolled down the assembly line in 2004, is in great abundance here. In any case, it’s good to see them, and their styling seems to have held up well.
I, too see quite a few Aleros here in the Chicagoland area. I always liked these in the black or dark red higher trim lines. By 2000, I thought Oldsmobile has a solid line up…Just wished the 2004 Bravada debuted back in 2000 as they sold pretty well in 2003 when they were released. The 99-04 Olds corporate look was quite cohesive if you ask me. You had the Olds Alero compact, the midsize Intrigue, the fullsize Aurora and fullsize departing Eighty Eight, minivan Silohuette, and Bravada.