The Aeroback Oldsmobile Cutlass and Buick Century, introduced in 1978, were unfortunately not as well received as GM had hoped. In fact, they were so unusual that GM had to stick a 1976 Seville roofline on them in 1980; then they sold like hotcakes.
Poor GM. They see that European cars are selling, so they make their successful Cutlass Supreme more European, which in turn gets shunned by the buying public. Oh well, at least most of those buyers stayed in the fold and bought Cutlass Supreme coupes.
Thanks to chrisgreencar, who shot this survivor and posted it to the Cohort!
I liked these when they were new and hoped they would take with the US carbuying public. I’ve often wondered if a Chevy version of this would have sold better. Then 30 years later Chevy tried the Malibu Maxx and I got my answer: nope.
Good call!
Nice find here. Fugly comes to mind.
I wouldn’t mind a 442 version just for the oddball factor though.
My neighbor while I was in high school had the 442 version, complete with 350SBC and a 4-speed manual transmission (Saginaw?). It was gutless, well under 200hp as I recall. It was also a lemon.
He replaced the engine (under 100K miles), I helped him rebuild the transmission (he didn’t abuse the car either, not that he could have with the little power that it did have), and when the rear end failed shortly thereafter, he threw in the towel and sold the thing for parts.
I really wanted to like it too.
Aeroback? Nah. How about “Roachback”? These were mostly duds, as I recall. I think the X cars did more to destroy GM’s reputation than anything else since that time.
I too always thought of these “aeroback” X cars as roaches. Absolutely hideous! The person who “styled” these must have been the world’s biggest idiot, next to whomever actually approved it for production. And then as if the style wasn’t ugly enough, they painted them all in the most dull, headache-inducing colors and gave them interiors made of recycled plastic milk jugs. Ugh!
These were not X bodies. They were A bodies. The X was front wheel drive, the A was conventional rear wheel drive.
Oh, shoot, you’re correct! My mistake. These WERE RWD! They were versions of the Malibu. They just LOOKED like the X cars – same big mistake, just got the platform backwards!
Man, I’m gettin’ old, but as I was not a fan of anything GM for a long time, especially then, I didn’t pay much attention to them except for the full-sizers, which I did like. That’s the best excuse I can come up with…
Apology accepted. At least you are man enough to apologize; General Motors needs to man up and apologize for the decades of shit they have rained down upon us, and then took our money to boot when we all told them we didn’t want their shit anymore. They will never learn.
Oh sorry, my mistake — but I honestly can’t tell them apart…
@ Zackman:
Maybe the “Proto-cockroach of the Road”?
Copyright it now!
😉
geozinger
Once again, I hate it, lol.
For a guy named Freeman you sure have a lot of hate.
Was it the aeroback styling or the Xcar underneath that put buyers off 5 door cars sell good everywhere but the X car seemed to be a lemon
There were larger than the X car, these sat on the rear drive A body, later changed to a G designation.
Sorry mate, it is not an X car underneath. It is an A car.
Technically it’s a G body. A and A “Special” died in 77.
Not true. The A designation continued through 81. In 82, with the intro of the new FWD mid sizers, the old RWD cars were now called G cars (ie: Bonneville Model G which, of course, was by this time a Broughamed-out Le Mans).
Now I see why they failed these look X car and no doubt all the GM quality was in them too that had put people into Toyotas already.
Between your lack of English skills and your obliviousness…..THESE ARE A-BODIES. REAR WHEEL DRIVE. No relation to the Citation or the FWD A-bodies. And of course they are lemons.
Kev Kalihur wrote: “Between your lack of English skills and your obliviousness…..THESE ARE A-BODIES. REAR WHEEL DRIVE. No relation to the Citation or the FWD A-bodies. And of course they are lemons.”
With all due respect, the aeroback A-bodies and the later
aeroback Xs do bear a strong resemblence. Put an A and
a X Aero side by side or bumper to bumper and the difference
becomes apparent.
I’m a maritime buff, really into ocean liners, and you would not
believe the field of on-line “experts” out there who confuse the
Mauretania class(Cunard) with the Olympic class(White Star)!
While less than 90 feet separated the two classes in overall
length, and less than 5 feet in overall beam, there were other
differences that set these classic steamers apart. LOL
A Nice Aeroback? Is there such a thing?
This was and is one of the ugliest things GM ever produced. GM was not an ugly car comany (that was usually Chrysler or AMC) but this one was ugly.
For awhile in the 80s, I had a girlfriend who inherited one of these from her grandfather. Light yellow with light brown interior. I don’t think these ever came in a less attractive color combo than that one. I think I may have replaced a starter or something for her in it. I have spent years trying to forget both the girlfriend and the car.
Well, I meant nice in that it isn’t a rustbucket. While no one would likely call these pretty, I think they are interesting.
Wow, that has got to be a bear to drive with only half a steering wheel!
Obviously, it has the Batmobile option.
I too love these for the oddball factor.
Your new car was announced recently Dan the new RWD Chevrolet SS will be landing on US shores soon and asvailable to the general public not just law enforcement, looks like someone in GM marketing woke up.
Still like these. One huge mistake IMO, is the fact that these were all (trunked) sedans. The body screams to be a hatch, and this car would have been five times as useful had they been.
One of the other posters mentioned the Malibu Maxx as the descendant of this car, I’d never thought of it that way before. Not a bad comparison in many ways, similar size and price class over the 25+ year difference. The Maxx has the missing ingredient the Aerobacks didn’t. I wish I had never given the Maxx back to GMAC, but there were many reasons not to buy out the lease. The car was handy and utilitarian two things I value for a car for myself.
The X-cars were the genesis of my now trademarked “Cockroach of the Road” sobriquet, these cars were generally better constructed and never suffered the same issues as the X-cars. Oddly, when I think about it now, the X-cars were only slightly smaller than the Aerobacks, had they been assembled & engineered better, they would have been the obvious choice to replace the Aeroback.
We know it didn’t transpire that way. When the ‘formal’ roofed Buicks and Oldsmobiles were released a few years after the Aerobacks, some wag at Car and Driver posited that someone should be brought up on formal charges for the severity of the roofline. It was a good call. I suspect that the roofline was a reaction to several trends materializing in the early 80’s; primarily a push back reaction to all of the ‘aero’ cars that had been released up until that time.
The push back pushed back the Aeros, until they became little Sevilles. In reality, probably a good strategy. GM could build RWD cars, and styling them like their last remarkable “small” car seems logical. And it appeared to work.
It just didn’t work on me.
These aren’t hatchbacks? I always thought they were! That’s the only excuse for its roofline. I was about to speculate the hatchback weatherstrip must have made for lots of stinky, sloshy, rusty Aerobacks after awhile. But they weren’t.
Funny thing is, that sloping back is probably bad for actual aerodynamics. The cutoff Kammback evolved into the sharp cutoff now seen on Priuses and other actually aerodynamic cars.
Nope. Look at one when you find it (they hardly exist these days, even here where rust forgot). They are literally slant backed sedans.
geozinger:
So you were a Maxx fan! Yeah, for every Epsilon Malibu
GM sold, they sold 2 of the longer wheelbase hatchbacked
Maxx. GM often didn’t know a good idea even if it rolled out
of their own plant.
I can just imagine how much that hatch squeaks going down the road. Intolerable! My folks had a 78 Century wagon, and the sounds from the rear window/tailgate would drive us nearly insane on longer trips. The build and material quality on these was horrible. But, like many a GM vehicle, it ran (badly) into the nineties.
I know they look like hatchbacks, but they are actually sedans, sadly.
I’ve never noticed any hatch squeaking, ever, not even on my dad’s once 83 Citation, which WAS a hatchback.
We just said they were trunked sedans.
After the Colonnade sedans underperformed compared to the coupes, in part because they were less Brougham-y than the coupes, the solution is to make the sedans…even less Brougham-y? Good job, GM.
If you were going to take a chance on a radical body style…why give it to Olds and Buick? Pontiac would have made more sense. Maybe Chevy – if a notchback was also offered, but certainly not Buick. I’m pretty sure the Century wagon actually outsold the Aeroback sedan in ’78-’79. Oddly enough, they flipped the order with the X-Cars: Buick and Olds got notchbacks and Chevy and Pontiac got real hatchbacks that looked like baby Aerobacks.
Olds certainly did try to pitch the Cutlass Salon (complete with those international flags below the badging) as a Euro-flavored sports coupe/sedan, with inevitably laughable results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW52WtR8Wa0
Funny that the Japanese flag was not included on any iteration of this “international” badging?
I hate the fact the back windows Dont go Down. A real Bad Bean cutter Nove. Saved How Much Exactly?
The Styling Was a Mix Of 1980 Bustleback Seville roof/tail… and fwd ciera
How you make that? The Ciera wasn’t born until 1982. As a rebadged Citation.
I thought these were cool just because they were different. I don’t find them ugly at all! I do think they tended to be meagerly optioned and boring. Folks who wanted more options seemed to go for the Cutlass Supreme Brougham and Regal Limited 2-doors. The Buick Century Limited (on this same fastback body) did offer a higher-level interior than this Olds, which even in “Brougham” trim didn’t get the loose-pillow plush interior that the Supreme 2-doors got. Anyway, at least they tried it and it makes an interesting conversation piece now. Obviously it was a failure and they retracted with a *bad* Seville copy two years later. The notchback versions of these have all the proportions wrong that made the original Seville so beautiful.
When GM debuted the “This is not your fathers Oldsmobile” marketing campaign, this was what they were referring to.
To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee:
“THAT’S not an Aeroback — THIS is an Aeroback!”
Take the oversized rims off this and the garish paint job and I think I would buy that car.
Yeah, those wagon-wheels ruined it! lmao!
THIS is a BUTT-UGLY aeroback. You have succeeded in making it look worse than the factory made it. Godawful.
I always wondered the thinking behind these, its like they were trying to bring back the fastback/streamliner styling from the 40’s but with blocky modern car styling, though if you look at one in profile and compare to 40’s fastback sedan they are close.
I imagine that these were on the drawing board 1975-1976 along with conventional roofed sedans like the 1980 versions, when someone from Cadillac held up a pic of the then new 75 Seville and said, no way that a cheaper sedan is going to look just like our new Seville, pick the ones with hunchback roof.
I made a low ball offer on a 2 door Cutlass Salon with bucket seats,console and Olds super stock II wheels, last year, but they didn’t bite, the owner kept telling me about how “low production” and “rare” these were, I finally had to tell them that the reason that they were rare was because people didn’t like the weird styling and that he wanted too much money for a car that had been a driveway ornament for the last 8 years.
That’s a shame about the Cutlass Salon, it sounds like a nice ride. I know I’m a strange duck, but I would like one of these cars.
If I were looking to do some bracket racing, these would be the cars I would look for. The RWD A-bodies can accept just about anything you would normally want to use in a drag car. All the Chevy guys have snapped up the Malibus from this era, so those are harder to find. These would be the next logical cars to use, but I think they weren’t particularly well loved or well kept, so these seem to be equally hard to find.
I guess I’d have to find a Fox body and stuff an LS motor into it instead…
A lot of people apparently don’t understand the difference between “rare” and “desirable.” The sales pitch for any GM diesel powered car on ebay always seems to be its “rarity.”
Well, Chevys and Pontiacs got notchbacks, so cant say that Caddy “ordered” Buick/Olds to be aerobacks. Malibu and LeMans were very Seville looking.
If anyone knows the true reason for Aeros debut, not just making something up, it would be great to hear.
Also, these were NOT ever badged as Cutlass Supremes. Fastbacks
Sigh….another expert.
Yes, the Chevrolet Malibu and the Pontiac LeMans did get notchback, but their sedans had a “six window” side glass, not the more formal 4 window Seville roof.
If you cant see what I mean from this picture then we have nothing else to talk about.
Gotta agree, these were decent looking then, and now and I’m NOT a sedan kind of guy.
Six windows, four of which would not move.
I took a test drive in a new Buick version of this body style. Pale green everywhere. 4-speed transmission, which was the main reason I even drove the car. But the tranny with its long stick felt in every way as though it had migrated from an S-10 pickup. No driving enjoyment there.
S-10 wasn’t out until 1982, and Aeros only lasted til 1980.
It felt like a shift lever from the shitty vehicles of yesterday’s tomorrow!
Well, my dad had one identical to that pictured, same two-tone and all. Non-opening rear windows seemed very cheap and the velour covered seats were cheap as well, the driver seat sagged within a year or two. Definitely inferior to the ’73 Chrysler New Yorker (Brougham, of course!!) which he traded in on the Olds. The Olds V-6 probably had half the torque of the 440 in the New Yorker. Thanks for the memories…..
I Have A Hot Wheel or Matchbox version of This Car. Same color IIRC.
That and a yellow J2000 are the rare downsized Models Immortalized with a 1;64 model die cast.
The original ’82 J2k fastback, in red was the shnizz for me back then – and now as it was one nice looking car, at least from the exterior anyway.
It’s that soft nosed front that looked like the ’76 Trans Am in style is what set it apart from the rest of the J’s that year.
I’ll take mine in the Buick Century Turbo Coupe variety please….My wife probably won’t let me park it in the driveway but thats a challenge for another day…
Good Luck, I have tried to find one for a while, for the oddball turbo Buick factor, they were low production new and now they have become very rare. Even the odd turbocharged LeSabre of 1978-1980 is easier to find than the Century Turbo Coupe.
My parents got the formal notchback GM A-body in 1980, a Buick Century sedan. I remember we were considering the new X-body Citation and others at the time, but an uncle who had a ’78 Regal coupe (with the plush pillow velour seats) suggested we look at the A-bodies instead. A good thing, too, considering that the X-bodies had a lot of problems, and my folks kept the car for over 10 years. Only problem I remember was that it had a tendency to get a little hot on hilly inclines…and my brother overheated the engine when he took the car north to go to Vancouver, BC’s Expo ’86….basically we had to buy a new engine, which cost a couple thousand bucks. then. After that, however, the car had no problems and lasted a long time (I guess after getting a new engine).
My dad bought the Cutlass Salon 4-door new in 1978, and he had to take it back to the dealer within a few months because the paint was flaking off. There were other issues with it too…the interior build quality was sloppy, the radio never worked properly, and it had no power. We called it the Gutless. Still, it rode and handled ok, and we kept it for 12 years with no mechanical problems. It wasn’t fast, but it always got you there.
Grandfather had a beige 78 Century Limited. Drove it til 1995 but definitely was the only one on the road in North Jersey by 1990! It replaced a 72 Impala to “save gas.” Had some rust issues towards the end. Uncle briefly had a well-kept pine green 81 in the mid-90’s.
It’s very rare that a fastback looks LESS sporty than a notchback. The sedan looks stubby and the coupe looks blobby. It doesn’t appeal to brougham or sporty car buyers.
The 442 version is interesting at least, in that odd clinging to the scraps of a legendary name kind of way.
Of these cars, I think I will go back to the colonnade era and buy a red-on-red, 1973 Pontiac Grand Am coupe with the ram air hood, HO 400, and 4-speed manual, sans vinyl roof! The Aerobacks are that bad!
I remember these, not so much when new even though I was in Jr High when they came out, but later when I’d run into one every now and then.
Hadn’t seen one of these in the wilds of Seattle in years I don’t think.
This one’s definitely a survivor, a rough one at that! Gotta wonder about the build quality of some of the parts when the steering wheel is cracked beyond belief and partly missing too.
Re: the top by Jim in which he compares the Oldsmobuick Aerobacks to the Malibu MAXX: My first and favorite car was my $500 two-tone creamish/regurgitated pea soup green 1979 Century Aerosedan (wasn’t it called?). Almost 15 years after scrapping this (now I know!) GM gem, we’re buying a Malibu MAXX, this very week, as a desperate attempt to avoid getting the stereotypical family car. Dammit, Jim! It’s an extended hatchback sedan, not a Chevy Areoback!
…is it? Oh god it is, isn’t it? I’m replacing my weird fastbackish GM oddball car of my youth with another. At least this one’s an actual hatchback. and hey! ALMOST all the windows open LOL (silly skylight window). Yup. Poor man’s midlife crisis/desperate grasp at his youth. I miss my Buick.
:'(