Regularly seeing the same car for almost 40 years is uncommon, but it’s an experience I have enjoyed with this 1974-75 Oldsmobile Cutlass Vista Cruiser wagon. The house where I spent most of my childhood starting in December 1975 is within walking distance, which I still drive by this Olds each time I visit my parents four decades later. Once common and easy to ignore, this wagon has become a distinctive part of the scenery that will be missed when it eventually goes away.
The Colonnade-body Vista Cruiser of 1973-77 was a sad ending to a classic nameplate, a Vista Cruiser in name only. Instead of the elevated roof with panoramic skylight windows that gave the original Vista Cruiser its name, the new “Colonnade” Cruiser was no more than a higher trim version of the Cutlass Supreme wagon with a narrow pop-up glass window over the front seat that gave hardly any light or ventilation.
How hard would it have been to install a full-width sliding panel, as pioneered by Nash in 1937?
Both versions shared the inherent drawbacks of the Colonnade A-Body wagon design, whose liftgate was less versatile than a three-way tailgate, heavy and difficult to open as its struts became weaker with age, and which sacrificed cargo space with its steep forward slope. This particular Vista Cruiser, however, evades any criticism of its design by surviving for so long in drivable condition.
It is appropriate that my latest sightings of this Olds wagon have occurred in the 1986 Custom Cruiser that I bought for my drive to Gambia, which has now also become an indispensable aid in helping my mother to move out of the house that we moved into in 1975. During each trip, its cargo area, laid out during the 1970s to hold standard 4×8 sheets of plywood, has hauled away small pieces of furniture, crates full of family heirlooms, and old junk that is worthless but which I cannot bear to throw away. The two wagons are long-separated cousins from Lansing, born off of similar platforms just over a decade apart, one a constant presence in my childhood and the other very much a part of my life today.
Related reading: 1969 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser & 1975 Cutlass Supreme Colonnade Sedan
I had never noticed the cheesy little popup sunroof on these wagons. My mom had a 76 Olds Cutlass S sedan, cream with buckskin top and vinyl interior, which was a good car for many years. I don’t recall seeing many of the Colonnade wagons, but the 2 doors were everywhwere. The local Olds dealers had the RMO edition (reliable men of Olds) that included chromed sport mirrors instead of body color, super stock wheels and RMO badges, and some other trim tweaks, but I think they only did that on coupes.
Ugh. Pop-up sunroofs. They’re hideous enough as dealer installed options on VW Rabbits and Datsun 310s, where they made some amount of sense, but on a Vista Cruiser, they look especially out of place.
Its funny that as a kid in the ’80s, I was envious of kids whose parents drove B-body wagons like yours, while the Colonnade wagons just looked cheap and awful to me. While by that time, they were so rusty that their door skins would hang off a few inches away from (dissolving) rocker panels, it was more their styling, with that bizarre crease on the lower half of the doors, which disgusted me.
It doesn’t look like you live in a salt-free state from the looks of the scenery, so this Olds’s continued existence is even more impressive.
The lower body on my mom’s 76 picked up an amazing number of stone chips too…I don’t know if it was bad paint or bad design, but I spent a lot of time touching up the chips on the lower body of that car. I think the Supremes had a straight line by 76, but the el-cheapo S models still had the curved lower body lines.
I think most car bodies of that era which had a lot of ‘tuck-under” (don’t know the proper name) of the lower body sides suffered from road rash.
I think of my 96 Roadmaster wagon as a latter day version of the original Vista Cruiser. I was just talking to a fellow today before reading this who liked my wagon and remembers fondly his friend’s roof windowed Vista Cruiser. I said those were really cool cars until they quit making the real ones in 73. Then this article pops up! I agree that any car that survives to still drive 40 years later is immune from criticism of it’s design. That is cool it has been there since 1975, and outside even. Impressive!
According to my 68 Jargonaut chart as supplied by CC, the term is ‘turnunder’. That beautiful piece of documentation is my desktop wallpaper.
Like CincyDavid, I somehow missed the glass poptop on these. We have to credit Oldsmobile Division for at least trying to keep the spirit of the Vista Cruiser alive.
I always considered these Olds Colonnade wagons to have the worst di-noc job ever. There was nothing about this that could even remotely look like real wood. Just a thin stainless molding to cover the edge of the contact paper on the lower half. My much older eyes do have to admire the poor bastards who had to try to spread that di-noc over that exaggerated body sculpting on the doors without getting bubbles/wrinkles in it. Looks like a nasty job.
It is always a little traumatic moving your parents out of your childhood home. I did it myself back in the late 90s. Now that I think of it, I had an Oldsmobile to help me through the process as well, which was fitting in that there was an Olds in the garage for many years of my childhood there. 🙂
Oooh. I spent more time than I care to remember in that rear-facing third seat. My friend’s mom had one, and being the youngest kids, we always got stuffed in the wayback, which I remember feeling very low with high sills, like sitting in a bucket.
Something about that giant tailgate being closed on you used to creep me out, like being trapped in the barf box! No thanks!
When I was growing up, I’ve seen cars like this. At the time, I thought they were the ugliest looking cars on four wheels. Now, 30 yrs later, I’m still not a fan of their appearance. My least favourite of them are the colonnade body Vista Cruiser. I prefer the Vista Cruiser of before, with the windows above the middle row seating and the windows on the side of the roof.
My parents had the Buick version of this when I was growing up, with the 3rd seat. It was a decent car.
I don’t think the one-piece tailgate was so bad. It didn’t have any issues that a modern minivan hatch doesn’t have. Not that I prefer them, but they were and are quite common. It’s not like the 3-way tailgates were engineering marvels. I had experiences with two of those as well, one a B-body, the other a Panther.
As a kid I liked the tail lights in the bumper. Only as an adult did I realize how difficult they were to notice from behind.
I knew a guy who traded in a boattail Rivera on one of these. He’d buy a new Buick every two or three years, but for some reason he switched to Oldsmobile for ’74. It was a pretty good-looking car, except for that low-grade di-noc. I rode in it a few times, and that little pop-up sunroof leaked pretty much constantly, which is not a good thing in western Washington!
I am impressed that Robert’s ’86 Custom Cruiser can carry a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood which is something most of the pickup trucks sold today cannot do.
Actually most pickups can easily carry 4×8 plywood. Only ones I can think of that can’t are the Tacoma and Frontier, but even they can with a few 2x4s.
Sure, the tailgate may need to be down on short beds, but they also don’t compromise passenger space like this wagon does.
It would be interesting to see sheets of drywall hanging out 3 to 4 feet.
Crew cab beds are 8′ with the tailgate dropped. Longer drywall can be supported with 2x4s easily enough. I literally hauled my basement home in my crew cab. It wouldn’t be my first choice to do that every day, but I’d always choose it over a wagon.
My dad was a woodworker, so that was an essential criteria when we replaced our ’72 Coronet Crestwood with a ’78 Estate Wagon. I’m pretty sure all the 70s and 80s full and mid-sized wagons could take a 4×8, and also I guess the final GM “full-size” wagons, since they were only a reskin.
Back to the Cutlass – that DiNoc wouldn’t have been much of a contrast to the body color before it faded; and I agree with the comment upstream that it looks particularly unfortunate with the lower fender swoops.
Outside of Ford, the designers really lost all pretense of mimicking a woody in the 70s. Besides this hapless result, you had the Monaco with wood on the upper third of the body (albeit with “framing” in the DiNoc), and the Satellite Regent with wood on the lower third of the body! Our Crestwood was surprisingly simple, just a broad flank of DiNoc – but, like the Cutlass, edged with only chrome trim.
There’s a lot of cars that I disliked as a young’en but I’ve warmed up to now… Colonnades ain’t amongst them. Blech.
The brochure pics are a ’73 (blue) and ’74 (green), but your driveway find is a ’75. I’d always thought that the rear vent windows were standard on the Colonnade wagons, but the green one in the brochure pic doesn’t have them, and a little googling shows examples with and without through ’77.
I keep looking at the seats in the blue one above…is there anything more prototypically early-70s Oldsmobile than that seat pattern?
I wonder if the rear vents are tied to having a 3rd row seat or not, or if that was a separate option?
I think you are right when you said the rear vents are tied to the 3rd-seat option/model.
The fender flares on the doors sure are quirky and I usually never see warning diamonds for a sidewalk that is about to end.
I think if these wagons were equipped with the third seat then you got the rear vent windows. Not positive though.
I think these wagons were strange looking whereas the Cutlass Supreme coupes were so beautiful. The taillights were very odd being so low in the bumper. On the contrary, my Uncle had a green 1972 that had the real vista vent windows. He loved that car and had it for many years. That was the last year for the “real” Vista Cruiser – and one of the best looking years too!
Oddly enough, they kept those super-low lights in the bumper in the next generation as well. As a kid, that seemed dumb to me, as I was convinced that if you got the slightest tap to the bumper, the lights would be goners.
Like the picture of the ’73…..you can pretty easily visualize how great these would have been without the front 5 mph bumpers, had they come out first as ’72s, like originally planned.
They would have been better, but really, the Colon-aide cars were just awful looking. My sister was majorly pissed when she was given a ’73 Cutlass brochure and told to get ready to pick a car out the next day, and that I would be given her pretty much bulletproof, and much better looking ’71 Cutlass. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who was told they were getting a new car look so pissed off. Then about a month or so later, the ’71 was totaled, and I got Mom’s ’72 Cutlass, and Mom got a new ’73 which for some reason, even though it was built only days after my sister’s car, was pretty much perfect for the two years mom had it compared to my sister’s car, which got worse gas mileage, was slower, and was in the shop a lot. Sis’s Cutlass was also the first in a long series of very bad color choices, it was new penny bronze. A ’79 Shit brown Cutlass, a really bad car, would replace it, followed by a unknown model Nissan that was kind of like Mountain Dew green. Her present, but soon to be gone silver Mazda has finally broken the string of “WTF?” color choices.
I wonder if there is a reason that no wagons are offered with a tailgate any more? There are a few SUV’s with upper and lower tailgates, eg Land Rover LR4, Land Cruiser. I believe the Rav4 has now changed to top hinged rather than side hinged rear door.
Cost- for side hinging you need to tool for both RHD and LHD markets, plus the extra complexity of roll down windows and such, and it all adds up.
With wagons now fairly low volume variants, those sort of things are first for the chop when the cost cutters come through.
The parents drove the clam shell Buick Estate Wagon. A ’72 model.
I really like the last photo where you see the Oldsmobile hood ornament on the Custom Cruiser and you see the Cutlass Vista Cruiser in the driveway. Thank you.
My first car in 1982 was a ’73 cutlass cruiser wagon. It was cheap and not pretty. Woody with a bland pale yellow upper body. As a teenager I realized later it looked like I was driving my parents car. One evening while talking to a friend in a bar about our cars he mentioned the sun roof in his VW beetle. I did not have the sun roof option but I told him my wagon could fit several sun roofs. Well one thing lead to another and the next day I removed the rear side windows, welded the back doors shut and cut the roof off el camino style with my dads sawzall. Now it didn’t look like my parents car! I drove around Milwaukee like that for the summer but did not like having to remove snow off the front seat so the next modification was to build a taller roof. It was about 4′ by 8′, plywood, and a foot and a half taller than the original roof. I could fit 4 lawn chairs and a cooler up there at the drive-in. Those were the days!