(first posted 3/3/2013) Despite its name, the Lumina failed to bring any light to those dark years at GM when it arrived. The Lumina was a desperate effort to play catch-up with Ford’s runaway hit Taurus as well as to parry with the Camry and Accord; the result was predictably dim. It instantly joined its smaller brother Corsica as the very icons of fleet queens, a title its W-Body successors defended right to the present. Did they have redeeming qualities? Undoubtedly; but I’m hardly the one to ask. Try Hertz.
On the West Coast, the only lots where one would see these was at Hertz and Avis; Chevy dealers didn’t even bother to stock them. And selling any Chevy with “Euro” plastered all over it to a Californian in the early nineties would have been a heroic feat indeed, after years of pushing the Eurosport Celebrity. Fool me once…
Chevrolet was obviously looking at the Taurus when it designed the Lumina, but if they’d taken a closer look, they might have noticed that Ford totally dispensed with any hokey marketing efforts to make the Taurus seem more “euro”. It was just “Taurus”, at least until the SHO came along, and its badging was notoriously stealthy.
Actually, Ford was probably more worried about the opposite: that folks would think the Taurus was genuinely too euro for conservative American tastes. In any case, it didn’t rely on pretense to badge and sell them, even in foreign-car besotted California. Or especially so.
GM’s W-Body started out as the GM10, which got off to miserable start with the 1988 Buick Regal, Olds Cutlass Supreme and Pontiac Grand Prix coupes. The whole GM10 program was quite likely the single biggest boondoggle of the Roger Smith era; their development cost a mind-boggling $7 billion ($13 billion adjusted), and the goal was to build these 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.
The enormous sunk costs and subsequent pathetic sales meant that GM was losing some $2000 per car on these at the time the Lumina made its belated appearance for 1990. The old saw that GM lost money on its small cars because it had to build them to meet CAFE targets isn’t nearly encompassing enough. When asked by Fortune why GM10 was such a catastrophe, Smith replied, “I don’t know. It’s a mysterious thing.” (wikipedia)
Meanwhile, Ford was probably making that much (or more) per Taurus, which they were cranking out around the clock at their very cost-efficient Atlanta plant. If the Taurus is considered the car that “saved” Ford; the Lumina and its ilk were the ones that destroyed GM’s critical high-volume mid-sized passenger car business. Oh well; there were plenty of Tahoes and Suburbans to keep the lights on in “the tubes” for a while longer.
It’s ironic that the W-Body has ended up being the most enduring of GM’s platforms, given its painful birth. The 2013 Impala is the last of the line, and its replacement is coming on line as we write this. Needless to say, GM found plenty of ways to improve the breed and wring out production efficiencies over its 25 year lifespan. In some ways, it almost hertz to see it go. What will the car rental experience be like without a GM W-Body awaiting one at every airport?
Before you leave a comment about how wonderful and reliable Aunt Mildred’s Lumina was, please remember the cardinal rule of GM’s Deadly Sins: it’s not about auntie’s car per se, but about the undeniable facts of the impact that each Deadly Sin had on the slow but steady erosion of GM’s market share, reputation, and contribution to its final demise. There’s no doubt that many Luminas gave good service to their owners; much more so than to its maker.
The one way that the Lumina was decidedly different from the Taurus was in offering a coupe body style. Well, Ford had the RWD Thunderbird, although it pulled off a rather GM-esque boner with the MN12 that arrived in 1989. After spending peanuts on the Fox-body aero-bird, Ford grossly overspent on its replacement, and struggled with its profitability. Nothing like success to breed expensive mistakes.
Typical for many (but hardly all) new GM cars, Lumina sedan sales started off reasonably well in its first year, with some 278k sold. That’s far off from the Taurus’ romp in the sales stats during its heyday, and it was to be the best Lumina year ever. If one were to break out retail sales, the numbers would be even less competitive. In its last gen1 year, 1994, sedan sales were down to a mere 76k. No breakout of “Euro” versions, but let’s just say that the gen2 Lumina was noticeably lacking that evocative name.
Lumina coupe sales were always much smaller, which perhaps explains why the gen2 version cynically was given the Monte Carlo name. That didn’t exactly set its sales on fire, but who would have thought otherwise? Presumably someone did.
Since we’re intimating at performance in all this heady Euro-talk, let’s spell out how the Lumina lived up to its Euro-ness under the hood. Standard engine through 1992 was the decidedly un-European Iron Duke 2.5 four, now called (low) Tech IV. It sported balance shafts, TBI injection, and 110 hp. Take that, Honda! Oops; wrong country/continent. The 3.1 liter 60 degree Chevy V6 was optional, rated at 135 or 140 hp. Thankfully, the notorious leaky V6 intake manifold gasket was still under development in GM Labs when these Luminas were built. No wonder there seem to be so many gen1 Luminas still on the streets. Have they earned Cockroach of the Road™ status?
image: wikipedia
Not the legendary Lumina Z34. An ambitious effort to turn the pedestrian pushrod V6 into a high-tech wonder with DOHC four-valve heads along with numerous other changes, turned it into a 210 hp snake pit. It quickly developed an iffy reputation; good luck finding one still running anymore. Even routine maintenance, like timing belts and spark plug changes were quite expensive. The Euro name finally means something, although not used on the Z34. The LQ1 ended up having a short six-year lifespan; 1997 was its last year. Another ambitious, expensive GM effort that fell short in the long run. GM was getting really good at that.
It may have said “Euro” on its flanks, but you’d never know it after opening the door. It was about as all-American as it got; that dash somehow even manages evoke the one in a ’63-’64 Chevy.
But the Euro did come with a firmer suspension and fatter tires, contributing to some of that genuine euro-feel behind the wheel. Like most GM cars of the era with upgraded suspension, its chassis tuning was optimized for best results (car magazine test skid pad numbers?) on relatively smooth pavement. Hustle one through some rough-and-tumble pavement, and things start to feel more American than European.
Door handles integrated into the B-pillar were hardly paragons of ergonomics. Some might just say plain awkward. Others, worse. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time. At least one hopes so.
We haven’t said a word so far about the Lumina’s styling. I suppose one should be charitable towards the low belt line, which at least gave it good visibility. It did make it look like the whole car had been chopped a bit, with the passenger compartment riding low in the saddle. But for the most part, it exuded lots of the GM innocuous smooth-flat-clean-dullness that was so much on display at the time. Forgettable.
Which pretty much sums up the Lumina. Who wants to dwell on the idea of it and its GM W-Body stablemates selling at the rate of 1.75 million units per year? The quicker forgotten, the better.
I bought a brand new Lumina Euro 3.1 in April 0f 1991 and I still have it today. This has been and still is a great car. My wife drives it every day and she says she gets a lot of compliments on it. I do not know where this guy says the Lumina has terrible gas mileage. For years we packed the luggage in the trunk, put the 2 kids in the back seat and drove 2000 miles one way to Houston, Texas. The first time I checked the mileage, I thought there had to be a mistake. Every time I checked it while on the road it came out the same. The mileage was 33 MPG.I have faithfully changed the oil and filter every 3000 miles, as I do all my vehicles. The only major problem with this car over the past22 years, was I had the transmission repaired twice. I love the styling and I believe the styling still looks great today. My verdict on the Chevy Lumina Euro 3.1 is a big thumbs up.
I have a 91 lumina I aquired. It is clean inside and out has some wear on tires. I think original white wall. It only has 83000 miles on it. Was sitting 2 years befor I picked it up. Anyone know what I could get for it ?
I eagerly awaited the z34 and bought a black one off the showroom floor as soon as they first came out. Now in many ways I loved it, it was plenty quick and comfortable. But the passenger door paint peeled quickly, the electronics completely failed at 30k, and then most awfully, that thing was NEVER aligned. Repeated trips to the dealer did nothing, until the right front axle assembly simply fell off while making a left turn. Can you imagine that?
Door mounted seat belts and no ABS either.
I liked the looks of the car and I wanted to love it so bad, but with GM in those days, no can do.
What a pleasant surprise to see a GM DS photo example be a car in good shape.
I remember the Lumina car. At the time, I thought it was more attractive than anything else offered by General Motors, certainly better than the Buick Regal. I found the 2 door more attractive than the Chevy Beretta.
We used to call the 3.1 “the cackler” and didn’t mean it as a compliment. In the small town in Minnesota where I went to highschool this was the h.s. car of choice circa 1998. I personally drove an ’88 Prelude Si with my nose in the air and a trail of rust behind me.
We used to call the 3.1 “the cackler” and didn’t mean it as a compliment. In the small town in Minnesota where I went to high school this was the h.s. car of choice circa 1998. I personally drove an ’88 Prelude Si with my nose in the air and a trail of rust behind me.
“Biggest boondoggle of the Roger Smith Era”. Boy , that’s got to be a l-o-n-g list! Smith lacked in all categories, personality , talent , you name it.
https://youtu.be/Fiyr91l0wao
This guy does a awesome jump in a Lumina and some people at comments get angry he destroyed a good 2 doors model.
I was thinking about whether or not I consider this car a deadly sin when I realized that it was probably the car being promoted when it became an odd thing in my world to drive a GM sedan. As bad as the X-cars, A-cars, J-cars, etc…were, lots of people of all walks of life drove them. It was the same with the H-body Bonnevilles and LeSabres. There wasn’t anything suspect about having one as your company car, or perhaps buying one out of loyalty to GM and a belief that everyone was wrong about Detroit inferiority. That was the end though. In my college town, anyone who put one of these in their driveway was definitely an outlier. They weren’t traditional enough to sell to the aging customer base, and they were abandoned by anyone likely to have a kid in their household. Ever since these came out, having a GM sedan in one’s driveway has been a dead giveaway of being a government employee with fleet car.
If you squint a little, it looks very much like a 5/4 Accord of that year. The problems with this car (and the other GM 10s) were not the exterior styling. They were sleek and modern without being too blobby like the Taurus/Camry.
We looked at these when they came out in ’89. To 13 year old GM loyalist me, this NEW car seemed elderly and tired. There was nothing that spoke of quality or luxury inside. The mouse fuzz upholstery seemed cheap, especially compared with an Accord of the same year. The Dashboard had a narrow slit for the gauges. The car seemed cheap and floppy, and the doors slammed cheaply . . . I could go on and on. Dad ended up buying a Plymouth Sundance, which despite the total lack of respect it garnered from the automotive press, was an excellent car. Chrysler’s use of the K car meant that in Iacocca form, Chrysler could put money into things the buyer would notice, like better upholstery, lighted vanity mirrors, sound deadening, etc, and sell a very plush little car for a very reasonable price. You could cram incredibly large objects in the hatchback while still hiding valuables. It was an inspired design, unlike the Lumina. Plus, the Sundance was reliable.
Dad ended up later buying a ’95 Olds Cutlass Supreme, which had much better styling inside and out than the Lumina and felt like a much better car.
Some of Paul’s selections as Deadly Sins like the Toronado or 1st and 2nd Generation Sevilles I disagree or can quibble with, but the Lumina and GM10s really were deadly Sins. Unlike the Citation, which was a good idea poorly executed, these were – well, a LACK of an idea and mediocrely executed. I can see why GM thought that they would get 21% of market share; when you combine the outgoing A bodies plus G body sales in peak years, that would make sense.
What should they have done instead? A more youthful styling of the H body would probably have been the best idea. That would have cut costs by eliminating a lot of platform duplication. Those were the roomiest, most efficient best built GM cars of that era after some of the initial bugs had been worked out and could be made to handle quite well in the T Type/Bonneville versions. The extra room and power afforded by the H body would have been a clear competitive advantage over the Taurus, Accord, and Camry, and with eliminating one platform and economies of scale, GM could have figured out how to lower the price point.
I agree that a more youthfully styled H body should have been substituted for the very expensive GM 10 program. Maybe not more youthfully styled, but more Germanically styled. Or more Italianately styled- take your pick. The dechromed T Type versions with taut suspensions would be the standard issue models. But the T Type aesthetic would be baked in, like on the Accord- not added on as some phony “Euro” package.
A co-worker had one of these with the front bumper falling off and the trunk held closed with a bungee cord. Its since been replaced with a 3rd genration escort with the hubcaps spray painted blue.
I remember car shopping with my high school friend during the mid 90’s. We went to several Chevy dealers and found one with a used 1989 T-Bird base model and a 1990 2 door Lumina Euro in silver with the optional alloys and 16″ tires. Because it was the Euro model it had the 3.1 std and the optional 4 speed automatic.
We test drive both cars and found the Lumina much more entertaining. The exhaust burble, the sharper steering and handling. The quicker 0-40 performance. It even had a full gauge cluster. The T-Bird in comparison felt old, slow, heavy and more ponderous. The shifter was on the steering column and gauges were sparse. It’s 3.8 V6 also left us cold with an engine that apparently was already leaking anti-freeze from the heads as it was low when we got back from the test drive and smelled very strong with A/C running. And that was with 53K miles. The Lumina had 62K if I remember and drive perfectly. We did agree however that the Ford was better looking of the two cars.
He ended up with the Lumina and drove that car for 5 years after which he sold it to his parents because there 1988 Dodge Omni was falling apart. They had that car well into the 00’s after which I lost track of them because they were base folks and our base was slowly closed down a year before.
I find these Euro Lumina Z34 interesting and wouldn’t mind having one to play with. I have never driven one but I did have a rental Celebrity Euro from the previous generation, for a week.
This was to be one of those bucket list items. I was taking the family on a one week California vacation. It was 1986, we were flying to LA, renting a car (I asked Enterprise for the Euro Celebrity) and immediately setting of for San Francisco on the I-5. Sundown caught us north of LA and at one point soon after darkness set in I noticed that the car was slowing down dramatically even with my foot deeper into the gas. I can’t remember the speed the car was traveling at this point but I broke out in a cold sweat thinking there was something wrong with the car. I did not know about the Grapevine and at that moment I was cresting it. The Euro Celebrity, I later found out had a four cylinder engine. The return route to LA was a leisurely ride down the legendary Pacific Coast Highway. This was to be the highlight of the trip (for me). I was going to drive down this famous road in a “sports sedan”. Well disappointment number two was on its way. PCH was crowded with tourists in RVs and other cumbersome contrivances making any effort at spirited driving futile.
I love my 1991 Euro 3.1.. I’ve owned it 3 years and it has never let me down. It has 161K on it. The only thing I hate is the door cylinder’s freeze up and my car has had keys sticking out of the locks for most of the 3 years ive owned it.
Wow. I’ve always thought these looked okay on the outside. Before today, though,, I have NEVER seen the dash board of one. OMG how hideous. The W platform is okay. My ex bvought the last new 2003 grand Prix at our local dealer. My daughter is driving it now, a little worse for the wear and weird GM things happening to it. I call them GM things, but all newer cars seem to develop weird little maladies that are hard to figure out exactly. Too many electronics? IDK. Just a thing.
What really caught my eye on the dashboard was how the long, plastic, horizontal lens covering the instrument cluster ‘looks’ like it’s for an old-school, pointer-and-scale type speedometer like a late sixties Dodge Dart.
But, yet, someone decided it would be better to use a smaller, round gauge set. It looks strange like whomever was in charge of the interior design team wanted to cover all bases.
Having not experienced the Lumina but a few other GM10’s through my lifetime, this Deadly Sin may not have been the craptastic abysmal POS that others were, but the idea of sales projections that high to justify the investment? The forecasts were high and apparently so were the forecasters.
But it seems a constant issue for GM. “We didn’t sell as many as we were expecting.” Fiero. GTO. G8. SS. SSR. Reatta. Allante. XLR.
Yeah! What kind of loser car company puts door handles integrated into the pillar?
Thankfully, Nissan would never stoop to such lows.
Thirty years ago I owned a Lumina Z34, and rented a V6 Taurus while on vacation. I preferred the Lumina. The Taurus made a lot of noise and did little when pressing the accelerator pedal.
Based on the recycling of articles, this site is really embracing iron age myths for metaphors. I hope they are metaphors.
About those door handles integrated into the B-pillar. Another great idea for the GM lines!
My son had a 90 Cutlass with the same ‘pot metal’ handles. Had to scrounge eBay many times for replacements, they snapped off at an alarming rate, so I kept spares around.
I broke one on my Lumina Z34 over eight years and 100,000 miles.
This seems to be one of those rare examples where the sedan looks better than the coupe. I’ve been trying to figure out just how GM managed that…
I’ll put out a few good words for these. The have nice low betlines ( though the pillars are thich. The car doesn’t look like either the sedan version of the car non other GM products that share the platform, a welcome improvement over the priveus decide. The A/C still plows colder than any Bimmer or Benz from the Eithgties; on heat-drenthed humid DC
days you want GM Fridigaire or Harisson airconditioning, and you won’t dare one bit thet the a 320i has more road feel. The floors were almost floot seemlessly left to right, making them more roommy than a Taurus. The beer-tap door opener on coupes were cool. They were reasonably quiet and smooth. Ingress and egress were good, save for thie silly B-pillar-mounted shoulder belts. Buick W10s are my favorite, but these are… nice.
W body might have succeeded if the updated versions that debuted 1997 through 2000 had been the cars that came out in 1988. The third and fourth updates that came out 2004 through 2006 were outdated and should have been replaced with LWB Epsilons.
I guess I’m another outlier here since I actually like the looks of the coupe. The 4-door looks pretty good though too…for a 4-door anyway. 🙂
From what I have seen in rental car lots these days, hardly a GM car is to be found. Maybe these Luminas helped cement that legacy.
I still have a 1991 Chevy Lumina Sedan and it still runs. It has been a great car! Bought it used from a Dealer. Had over 55,000 miles on it. Take a wild guess how many miles is on it now?? Almost 300,000! And it still runs. Never had any problems with it. No broken door handles and all the other problems that has been mentioned on this post. Of course now it is what? 32 years old. Can’t say that for a lot of cars on the road these days. She is vintage now!!
The hinge on gas lid has come loose, needs a new exhaust, the interior is definitely showing age and there is rust, paint is fading. We drove it on quite a few long trips through the years. Daughter had it as her first car, she tried to blow it up and cracked the block trying to race someone, by the way she won. I repaired it.
I worked for over 40 years as a ASE Mechanic for two Chevy dealerships, never saw a lot of problems with them, I knew they were a good car. I only buy cars that I know are good running cars without a lot of crap problems, unlike today’s choices.
Kudos to our good old ’91 Lumina Euro sedan!