Image from www.automobile-catalog.com
Dreaming of Freedom
Your first car. Your first car. The dreaming and anticipation – later you realize it’s the freedom that we’re dreaming for, or at least I was. I was hotly anticipating my 17th birthday in 1999 when I would FINALLY find out what my keys to freedom would start.
We were lucky – neither my sister nor I were required to pay for our cars, only the gas. My sister was blessed with a 1982 Toyota Tercel six years earlier. That departed after two short years for a 1985 Jeep Cherokee. The Tercel intrigued me with its basic but infallible engineering, but the Jeep excited me. The XJ was a cool set of wheels and the sound of a straight six revving up still makes me smile.
Not the exact Tercel but just like it. You couldn’t kill this thing
Image courtesy of Bring a Trailer – my sister kept her Jeep until the repairs became just too frequent and expensive.
Both of those cars just appeared and she was told that “this” was what she would be driving. Period. So I expected the same. A free car isn’t exactly a punishment, but who wants our parents picking out our wheels? But on to the car…
The morning of my 17th birthday my mother told me I had a choice. If I was willing to take her car, she and my father would combine what they paid for my sister’s two cars to get me a nicer car for college. I hated my mother’s car. It had replaced a truly awful 1985 Firenza and her current one was only marginally better. The main computer was replaced at least 5 times and was 10 years old. However, I was no dummy. I had watched plenty of Price is Rite and Let’s Make a Deal, so I took the offer. That’s how my first car became a 10 year old 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme International with just about 50 thousand miles on the clock.
Image courtesy of eightiescars.com – My mom’s previous before the Cutlass. This car suffered from every J car problem you’ve heard of.
Image courtesy of OriginalAutoAds on etsy – you know what? They weren’t wrong, I had it until 2001!
“Can I use your tools to work on it?” I asked my father. A question that shouldn’t have been a surprise since I was very vocal about my desire to be a mechanic.
“Absolutely not!” He bellowed “Do not TOUCH that car!” And that was that. Working on the car was out, but I had a car.
A Taste of Freedom
Freedom in all of its 2 door, 3.1 litre V6 glory and it still had the demonstration cassette tape with all manner of 1980’s hits, but the biggest hit with me and my friends was the opening Oldsmobile jingle “There Is A Special Feel in an Oldsmobile”.
The Cutlass was a relatively advanced car for 1989, since GM went Roger Smith wild on the GM10 program – so it was still pretty modern for 1999. The dash and center stack were fully digital, completely automatic climate control, and seats filled with multiple air bladders to adjust them to any comfort level possible.
Image courtesy of virtualparking.net – not my car but the same interior, except mine had fabric seats. A sea of red in every direction!
As you can imagine, none of this was reliable. I used to say to all of my friends, you couldn’t kill the drivetrain but everything else around it loved to fall apart. Let’s make a list:
- Glovebox didn’t open, unless you gave it a swift smack in the right spot.
- Ashtray didn’t close – that was ok, back then we smoked like chimneys.
- Gas gauge still read ¼ full when you were on empty – a common occurrence for a teenage driver.
- Seat air bladders leaked or popped bolsters out of their housing.
- HVAC occasionally went haywire – blasting hot air in the middle of summer or no heat in the dead of winter.
- Parking brake, rear brake calipers, super fragile alloy wheels and I swear to god that car ATE alternators.
But it was freedom.
My friends and I went cruising all through the rolling hills of Hunterdon County, NJ – a lush landscape of farms, forests and small towns. We did all the typical things that teenagers do – blast music, drive around, smoke endless packs of cigarettes. It did mean a little something extra to me.
Image courtesy of hunterdonbeertrail.com – NJ is more than the opening of the Soprano’s
An Escape
My hometown was (and still is) a very conservative bastion. Not really ideal for a young gay man just coming to terms (and confusion) with who he is – the freedom this car represented was huge. I could escape with my queer friends, away from our homes, away from our town – just for a chance to get that brief moment where we felt we could just breathe. And not be afraid.
That car served me through plenty of after school and summer jobs, but not without embarrassment.
One summer while working as a mailroom clerk at the big Exxon building in town I heard a call go over the radio “there’s a big old white Oldsmobile with its horns going off.”
I knew it had to be my car, so I went out and sure enough – the horns were blaring. A few slams of my hand on the wheel and it stopped – back to work I went. Unfortunately, as I drove home it started again. My father had to disconnect the battery – later our mechanic said the wires melted in the sun so he simply clipped them.
From 1999 until the summer of 2001, that car served me well and safely. But by summer of 2001 she now had over 150,000 miles and several accidents under the belt. I had wrecked several front passenger tires and a rim on curbs – I got changing a tire down to a 20 minute job that I could do while wearing white.
Image courtesy of spannerhead.com – I swear those stupid alloy rims would crack and snap with one wrong glance.
A friend and I spun out on a freshly oil & chipped road, being stupid – I slammed into a curb and landed on someone’s front lawn now with a wrecked driver’s side rim and a bent tie rod. Later that month someone hit my car in a diner parking lot, denting the driver side fender.
Probably the worst, due to the hell I had to pay from my father, was catching the garage door track on my passenger side mirror. That was a noisy and messy situation. Then later, when changing out a CD I ended up knocking that mirror clean off and obliterating someone’s mailbox. I pulled over and made my friend, who was in the car with me, jump out and retrieve the mirror that had popped off. I already knew they were NLA.
One Last Big Trip
Lastly, on an ill fated convoy up to Auburn NY for St. Patrick’s Day 2001 we slid quietly off the road in the middle of a snowstorm to avoid our friend’s car, which had spun out in front of us and ended up landing in a ditch, facing the wrong way and having to be pulled out.
My own picture, a physical one, looking over my car to my friend’s BMW in the snowbank. A 3rd member of our crew had a Jeep that subsequently got stuck trying to pull out the BMW.
But the time had come; I was going to college. My parents made me another offer: keep the Olds through college and we will add more money to what we were already going to spend on your replacement.
This time I turned the deal down. Honestly, I was sick of the car. It was already difficult to repair the things that broke. The gas mileage wasn’t great and I wanted something shiny and new.
But, for my time with it, there definitely was a special feel in an Oldsmobile.
Fueling up on the way back from Auburn, NY St. Patrick’s Day Weekend 2001. Note the idiotic choice of fueling up while smoking.
Related CC reading:
CCCCC Part 13: 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – How The Mighty Have Fallen
Curbside Classic: 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – Rehabilitating The GM10 Cutlass
Cohort Pic(k) Of The Day: 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Convertible – Loop Handle
I’ve only been in a few of these early GM10 cars and only after they were maybe five years old or so, but every one was an absolute disaster on the inside. I was used to bad GM interiors, but these were another level of garbage. Trim falling off everywhere, things just not fitting where they were supposed to be, materials turning to dust right in front of you–it was truly wild. Certainly it was enough to make me wonder that if this was the condition of a car that just got paid off, what could the reliability of the stuff I couldn’t see be?
The thing was that they looked at first glance to be somewhat cool with modern styling and strong differentiation both inside and out. Probably not what the middle of the market wanted and definitely not something I’d want to compare to the contemporary Camry or Accord of that era (and certainly not to the 92 or 90 that came out after its launch), but they were interesting.
I can’t imagine having spent what they were asking for these and watching them disintegrate while still making payments on one.
100,000 miles put on the Olds in about 2 years? Wow.
My first was an Olds Cutlass Ciera, a 1991 in 1998. It was a blue-velour terminally uncool dinosaur even back then, but it was freedom. I loved-hated that car. The 3.3 V6 was a torque monster for the time, the cushy interior was truly lux for a teenager in the 90s, but it was a wallowing, sky-blue lace-wheeled embarrassment to be seen in.
Now? If I had the space, I’d gladly have it back as an occasional driver. Just for the nostalgia. It had its merits.
Thanks for the story.
We had the Pontiac equivalent of the GM10 platform as pool cars. All was OK as per engine, transmission, A/C, ride, etc. However, the interiors were odd to say the least. More button on the dash and steering than you care to count. Digital instruments gone wrong. Door handles that would rattle when shutting the door, etc.
I understand GM lost a bundle on this platform.
The GM-10 fiasco may well have been GM’s single Deadliest Sin, in terms of dollars lost on one program, at least $10 billion (back then dollars), although the Saturn program was right up there too in accumulated losses.
The goal was to build these GM-!0 (later W Body) cars in seven plants at 250,000 units per year per plant; in other words, a 21% share of the total US market. What were they smoking? Soon enough, GM would be fighting for a 21% market share for the whole company, never mind mid-sized cars.
When asked by Fortune why GM10 was such a catastrophe, CEO Roger Smith replied, “I don’t know. It’s a mysterious thing.”
Are there any in-depth analysis or books on the GM10 program? I’ve always wanted to learn more about the development and disaster that it was, but I can’t seem to find much.
Not to my knowledge. Old newspaper and business journals, perhaps. I should have written a proper in-depth fully researched book on GM’s Deadly Sins, but I don’t have the patience. And it’s getting to be old history.
There may be a book or two out there documenting GM’s decline.
Comeback by Paul Ingrassia has some good excerpts.
I should note that I have a shameful affinity for the styling of these Olds Cutlass Supremes, both coupe and sedan. They obviously didn’t connect very well with the buying public because sales were fairly tepid and they are all but gone from the roads now, but I thought the wraparound glass and narrow squinting front end was way cooler than a Camry, Accord, or even the Taurus everyone was so hot about.
I don’t think I ever noticed those wheels on a GM-10 Cutlass before.
When I started reading I had the thought – wonder if this kid had issues with the rear calipers – BINGO! I had a ’92 Supreme, albeit with the 3.4 L DOHC v6 ( the less said about that engine the better).
After having 3 sets of rear calipers freeze up and ruin rotors in very short order – a kindly independent mechanic told me the secret. GM used a ‘ratcheting’ mechanism on those rear calipers – remember when you set the parking brake you had to pump the pedal several times? Setting the parking brake adjusted the calipers, and kept them operational.
Well, if you didn’t use the parking brake DAILY, that mechanism would rust and freeze up. For us flatlanders (I lived in Chicago suburbs at the time), most of us never ever used the parking brake. Evidentially this issue was well known by GM. A kind thing to have done would be to advise any purchaser of one of these vehicles to use the parking brake daily to save your calipers. Oh well.
Not that you’ve got me started – that 3.4l engine ate coils like a kid would devour a bowl of Froot Loops cereal. Plus i think I must have replaced a couple dozen injectors. And accessing/changing rear spark plugs? Fuggetaboutit unless you have an engine hoist and can loosen engine mounts and rotate or remove the engine.
I also had a wierd electrical gremlin – door locks all of a sudden had a mind of their own – locking and unlocking intermittently. Then one day while driving I heard a ‘sizzling’ sound coming from under the back window dash. Removed it and determined the sound was coming from a module labeled ‘TRW’ (I worked for a different non-automotive division of the company at the time). I unplugged wire harness plugged into it – and the problem went away! Never could determine what other functions that module controlled.
Probably the most mechanically trouble ridden vehicle I have owned.
YES! I forgot about the doorlocks doing that! Man there was so much more with this car. Even with all of that, I was crushed to hear it had been parted out.
I’ve wanted to buy that exact car, including the color combo, for years. Preferably one of the ones equipped with the twin cam and 5 speed Getrag. Probably never going to find one with those specific options. But I’m always on the lookout.
So, basically what you’re telling us is you trashed “mom’s” car in a little over three years.
Not all of us had unblemished teenage years.
Had one of these as a lease car whilst working at GM in the Oldsmobile studio. They looked very fresh and modern when introduced and handled pretty well. I had a memorable drive on sheet ice back to Detroit from New York through parts of Canada – only 4x4s on the road apart from us, but the Olds handled it on the performance tires shown in the picture. The 3.4 in my “International” version was peppy, even with an auto trans, but I did manage to set the front brakes on fire during some “enthusistic” driving….
Thanks for a great story and taking me back in time. I was just a little ahead of you in this realm. I started driving in 1983 (legally) and had been driving trucks on our farm since age 10. My parents made a similar offer to my one brother after going through all the “car stuff” with 4 other brothers before him. This offer was a new Chevy Chevette Diesel to which my brother quickly said no and he went out and purchased his own set of wheels (used). He wanted something more sporty with a V8. The next was my sister (only girl of 7 kids) and she had zero interest in cars. So she accepted the deal and my parents picked up a one year old Toyota Corolla with 12,000 miles. Man that car was basic and simple which made it easy to work on and reliable. Then two years later it was my turn, but my offer was the highly used Corolla. I was like why didn’t I get the Chevette Diesel offer? haha. So I drove the Corolla for 2 more years at which point it was costing us too much to keep it. So the offer was made and my parents offered to get a brand new smaller car for the family that I could use. So dad and I went out and he got the bug for the new Renault Alliance. We went to the dealer and the sales guy wouldn’t even look at me although dad told him the car was really for me. So I walked across the street to the Chevy dealer and found the car I wanted. It was a 1985 Chevy Cavalier.
After test driving it, dad liked it better and we placed an order. Unfortunately, I didn’t win that one and we ended up with a gray CS Cavalier sedan with white wall tires when I wanted the sportier 2 door. But the car came in and we all loved it to the point where my parents would take the car and let me drive the 1979 Cadillac Deville. I felt like I won the lottery! Ah, the good old days.
“I swear those stupid alloy rims would crack and snap with one wrong glance.”
It’s hard to believe that these shitty looking things are supposed to be alloy wheels. I would have thought they were cheap hubcaps from some pensioner’s department store.
Creepy.
Nice write-up, T.A.
I had a 1990 Buick Regal Gran Sport (black) in 1992. It was in the garage more than out. Constant fuel injection problems (that was a 2.5 month ordeal). Your 3.1 must’ve been way better than mine. I let my 18 yo cousin borrow it on Xmas Eve. He was broad sided by a local yellow cab pushing the car across 2 lanes of traffic into a concrete post (but the cab wasn’t speeding… yeah). My young cousin unfortunately died in the crash . His passenger ended up with a broken back. My memories of the Regal aren’t as rosey as yours. And his Mom still refuses to buy a Buick. But yours was a good read
It’s stuff like the GM10 junk that was a clear indication that GM was on the skids. It tells you something that their only truly dependable ’90s cars were the ancient but solid (after the mid-80s) fwd A-body Cutlass Ciera/Buick Century twins, and to a lesser extent the larger fwd Electra/Lesabre/88/98 cars. Even GM must have gotten the message when the A line was kept despite original plans to replace them with the W-body disasters. Roger Smith has a lot to answer for. It was obvious by 1988 that he was poison to the company’s mission and reputation, and even though “Roger & Me” didn’t touch those aspects of his role at GM, it was hilarious to watch his discomfort. Too bad that wasn’t enough to force him out early on, GM might have at a least had a chance. (well…hmmm, probably not,)
Had an International. Had it’s quirks, but the car was very comfy and quick enough. Loved the digital dash, fully adjustable lumbar seats and the interior was very sporty with rear buckets. At the end of the day, I put over 350K on the odometer and sold it in running condition with no body rot.
Welcome, and thanks for reminding me of 1985, when it was just an expected fact that cars had theme songs, and that there’s be a complimentary tape of said song thrown in with every new car purchase.
I look forward to the next chapter. I can’t wait to see what comes next after smoking while pumping gas. 🙂