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.
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.