(first posted 8/9/2017) I often hear my twenty-something children and their friends talk about “adulting”. Adulting seems to be the practice of what we of an earlier generation called taking care of business. Adulting involves putting aside all of the crazy, fun things that you would rather (or could otherwise afford to) be doing and being a responsible grown-up. For today’s millennials adulting involves things like keeping your bills paid instead of going to concerts out of town and shopping for things like tires or car insurance. Or in the words of those a generation or two beyond me, vegetables before dessert.
Adulting can also involve buying a new car. It does not involve buying the wholly impractical (if not bat-shit crazy) cheap stuff that starry-eyed kids fall in love with, like the 1970s Dodge pickup truck with its roof sawn off that briefly served the teenage son of a family in my neighborhood. Or the yellow and purple twenty-year-old Nash sedan that showed up with an older brother of my childhood next door neighbor before disappearing just as suddenly. In my case it was the well-worn $400 ’63 Cadillac that had been sitting undriven in a garage for a year. “What a great car, nothing ever goes wrong with these.” No, adulting requires that one choose something normal and practical.
In the 1970s, there was nothing more normal and practical than the Oldsmobile Cutlass. The car’s size, price, looks, performance and quality hit a home run, making it the most popular single car in America for several years. Adulting in the 1970s very often involved the purchase of a new Cutlass.
My cousin Butch adulted in just this way. When he was young and carefree he showed up at our house in a yellow 1969 M.G. Midget. He may have moved to something more practical than the Midget (and what wasn’t?) but I don’t remember. But I do remember that day when he had reached that point in his mid 20s where he had a stable job and was engaged. We had heard that he was looking for a new car and one day he showed up in it – a pale yellow 1978 Cutlass Supreme 2 door trimmed with a burgundy vinyl roof and velour interior. In other words, a car very much like this one. I can’t recall if Butch went all out with the Brougham – but probably not as broughaming was not usally a part of adulting. Adulting involved choosing a more restrained trim level, which was just one more bit of practice in the lifelong art of not getting everything you want.
I was conflicted. I was happy to see Butch moving on in his life, plainly on the road to happiness and success. But . . . damn . . . a Cutlass? To translate my reaction to something more identifiable today, think of a kid buying his first Civic or Corolla. Or maybe a CR-V or Escape. A completely acceptable choice, one for which nobody will criticize you. Other than that it was so . . . adult.
I did not mean “adult” in a good way either, the way we usually thought of adulthood at the time. I was thinking of it in the modern context of “adulting”. Poor Butch. He thought he had bought a new car. I saw him fastening the shackle around his ankle, consigned to the purgatory of velour and an overmatched 260 cid V8 which also came with a hefty payment book. Poor bastard. Jeez, for a lot less money you could buy a ten year old Ford convertible with a 3 friggin’ 90 and have something fun and unique (when you were not wrenching on it). But that wasn’t adulting.
I would never succumb to the anesthesia that was a Cutlass, of course. I had gotten a whiff of adulting a year or two earlier when I found myself alone, piloting my stepmom’s ’74 Cutlass Supreme coupe. I will never forget the sensation of being surrounded by brilliant white vinyl and thinking “OK Jimmy, this is what real life is like. One of these times you are going to join the great herd by wearing a tie every day and doing all kinds of shit you don’t want to do. You are going to have to eventually make your peace with a Cutlass.” It was not a good feeling. Perhaps that Cutlass moment of clarity hit me particularly hard because I had been riding in the Cutlasses (and F-85s) of parents since I had been a wee tot. If the ’61, the ’64, the ’68, the ’72, and that ’74 in which I had spent nearly a lifetime had conditioned me to anything it was that fun cars may be for some people, but not for the adults that my family was likely to turn out. Because we bought Oldsmobiles. I knew that one day, my unavoidable Cutlass-moment would come. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.
But then a funny thing happened. Around the time I became an actual (as opposed to theoretical) adult, the Cutlass began to dissolve into irrelevance, at least as far as early-stage adulting was concerned. By 1985 the adulting concept involved a Honda Accord or a Toyota Celica instead of a Cutlass. Glory Hallelujah!
Some of us go into adulthood more easily than others, and as far as my automotive life went, adulthood did not get its claws fully into me for several years thereafter. The ’85 Volkswagen GTI was a thumb in the eye of adulthood and the ’66 Plymouth Fury III that followed it was a kick to adulthood’s groin. But grownupedness had the last laugh (as it always does) when I married a girl with . . . an ’88 Honda Accord. But thank the Good Lord it wasn’t a Cutlass.
As I got older and watched Oldsmobile swirl around and then flow down the drain I began to miss the Big O. Just a little. Then adulthood got its sweet revenge when I pulled up my big boy pants and sold my beloved ’68 Chrysler Newport for . . . an Oldsmobile. An ’84 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency, to be precise. It was the responsible choice, much newer and with fewer miles. Though this wasn’t so much adulting as it was pseudo-grandparenting. It was an OK car, but not anything that ever really got my juices flowing. How adult.
But now, nearly forty years on, I can say that I kind of like this little Oldsmobile. Except for the color. Egad, who can like that? I had to suck up wearing a tuxedo in that color when one of my cousins (was it Butch again?) got married around that time. It was the ’70s, that’s for sure. Today I can admire the clean lines of this car, particularly the way Oldsmobile’s stylists were able to capture the essence of Cutlass in the make-or-break stakes of the 1978 downsizing. The only thing the Cutlass lost in the translation to a smaller, slimmer version of itself was the smooth, torque-making 350 cid (5.7L) Rocket V8 with that signature Oldsmobile sound bubbling from the exhaust pipe. The wimpy little 260 (4.3L) V8 never possessed the ample, relaxed power of its big brother. Who knows, this alone may have begun the car’s fall from grace with those classes of matriculating adults whose field of view was wider than that of their parents. Or perhaps the car was doomed by parental popularity, which has been a killer of minivan and sedan sales in recent years.
Either way, it was a blast from the past to gaze upon this 79 Cutlass Supreme Brougham which, if not something that could pass for showroom new, is agonizingly close for a car going on forty. But if transported back to 1979 with a second chance, would I sign on the dotted line for a new Cutlass? Not a chance, Dude – after all, there was a white ’59 Plymouth Fury sedan that was delivered to its first owner on the day I was born, and calling my name from the used car lot of a Dodge dealer in Muncie, Indiana. Sometimes adulting just has to wait.
Beautifully written piece, thank you! Really made me think about some hard choices I’m facing. I know what the adult, responsible, option is but every fiber of my being is fighting it. Adulting indeed!
Regarding the featured car: I just love it. Looks wonderful. And that interior! Maybe because it’s so foreign to me.
My adulting moment was selling the ‘72 Holden HQ V8 Ute and getting into the first of a number of Holden Commodore wagons, the first was a ‘92 VP S, in white with the 3.8 V6, 4 speed auto, VN SS wheels and FE2 suspension.
So sorry, but I’ve never cared for this generation GM cars. They didn’t have the beauty of the first generation but were as expensive for a lot less car and engine.They never seemed to have been a good value. I was not in the car market and living in Colorado, this car just didn’t fit the Rocky Mountain lifestyle like a Jeep or a pick up would. No one I knew would have shown up in the Rockies at a Roosevelt National Forest trail head for a backpacking, overnight trip in a car like this. It was kind of a girl car for a secretary or a nurse living on the Front Range.
We were guys with beards that skiied, had magificent mountain boots, spend our money on outdoor backpacking and mountain climbing equipment, and dime bags. And Coors, naturally. We worked during the week so that we could leave Friday and not return until Sunday night. At least twice a month. This Cutlass had no place for our 80 pound backpacks filled with gear. Not in that trunk.
By the time I was in the market for new wheels, I got a new car that was a Ford Fairmont Futura, which took this generation of GM small car – and made it a Fox body ride that weighed even less and had even more interior space, (It seemed). By 1982, the personal luxury car was undergoing a change and losing market appeal. There were still millions buying them, but those were city folks with completely different lifestyles.
So sorry – never saw the appeal – even today.
This is what I wanted back then: Starting price $4400
Rural-living young male Canadian rednecks loved GM personal luxury cars from the late ’60s, through the late ’80s. When they made the switch to pickups, as the mid-sized PLC market died. Specifically the Monte Carlo, and especially, the Cutlass Supreme. Besides those, that already embraced pickups in the ’70s.
Lets ensure that the image is a jpg!
That’s one beautiful Olds! I love the color, and the body color rally wheels that Olds did for a long time. Those pillowback seats were amazing too. Only thing I’d do is get rid of the Buick floor mats and find some Olds ones, or just plain ones.
I painted the rally wheels on my Celebrity to match the body, with black around the wheel openings. Still had chrome center caps and trim rings. A guy said “who the heck paints rallys?” Inspired by Oldsmobile for sure.
I’ve always been a fan of the traditional Olds styling, how they used slats. Like here. And on the 66 Toro, and the Trofeo, and the stripes on the Silhouette. To me it helped define the high tech image that Olds was supposed to stand for.
The Buick Regal is very similar in silhouette but no where near as stodgy to me as the Cutlass Supreme. I believe more were sold with a fully slick top, too. Dad & I really wanted one, but he felt like he needed 4 doors, so he got the Aeroback with 305 4 bbl. The pale blue paint was the worst thing about it forward of the D pillar.
By some miracle, I escaped ever owning or having one of these as a company car. I don’t even recall ever getting one as a rental.
I do seem to recall a particularly disliked boss as owning one, so there is that unfortunate memory. Otherwise my past is thankfully free of malaise ere Cutlass memories.
If driving one of these is what it took to be an adult back in the day, I can only conclude that I got old without ever growing up.
I guess I have something to be thankful for.
I’ve never liked the droopiness these coupes had, the curves don’t work for me. I’ve never driven one, but there were still plenty around when I first started noticing cars, roughly 87-90. Someone on the next block had a Cutlass sedan in fact. Not sure what kind exactly but it was an early 80s one, it had the new rear but the old grill and lights. It was a burnt cooper color, very GM.
My sister’s ’79 Cutlass was by far the worst car she ever had. It was an awful (My Opinion) bronze with a turd brown vinyl top. If any of her cars wasn’t silver or blue, it was some awful shade of brown or bronze. I didn’t think a car could be much worse than her bronze ’73 Cutlass, but the ’79 was. She actually traded the ’73 in for the new one because of the unending electrical issues and weird stuff that constantly went sour in it. The ’79 had a ton of warranty repairs done to it, and the 36000 miles went by quickly, as her commute to work was about 35 miles each way. The ’79 would be around for at least 7 years, I drove it in 1986, with a steering wheel duct taped together. Yes, it was seeping adhesive with non-functional A/C and it was really sticky. This would be the car that ended her buying anything from the Big Three again. Next car was a Nissan of some kind, in that weird rose pink color. Then an Altima and then a move to Toyota for a Carrola and then the first of two Prius’s. She just got the second one, in the same boring silver as the last one.
I really loved my Cutlass Supreme Brougham .
But it was a 1977, was red over red with a white top, was a 4 door and I was 18!
The thing I liked was that it just didn’t break. And at 18, that was a big deal. At 133,000 miles I sold it on. I had purchased it from a traveling salesman a few years earlier with 98,000.
With regards to the replacement models, they just simply did nothing for me. A friend had a coupe Supreme Brougham that was very comfortable but the build quality was sorry. For example, the steering column was installed with a higher rake then was intended. Thankfully, it had the tilt option or the position would have been terrible. In fact, moving the wheel all the way down arched it just below what should have been the normal, non tilt position.
The paint faded within a year and half (white), the vinyl top shrunk, leaving a gaping opening between the vinyl and the molding. And the 231 was just a joke.
I already found it humorous; Gerald had the sportier two door, but would change cars with me often bc of my 350.
Great article as I’m watching my 30 year old daughter adult!!!