(first posted 12/5/2016) It blows my mind that ten years separate the dates in which these car were brand new, as they are essentially the exact same car, save for a few unique trim details. Even more astounding is that a grand total of 14 years (1982-1996) separates the model years of the very first GM A-bodies with the very last. In essence, someone could’ve bought a new GM A-body the year their child was born, and another brand new, yet very little changed one the same year that child was entering high school.
Wagons did not arrive until 1984, continuing through the A-body’s final 1996 model year, making them GM’s last midsize three-row station wagons sold in North America.
Lacking neither exceptional strengths nor glaring flaws, the GM A-bodies received their fair share of criticism upon launch for their very homogeneous looks and only minimal detailing to separate a Chevrolet from Pontiac from Oldsmobile from Buick version. The wagon bodystyle was even less distinctive among divisions, as there was no unique rear clip to provide any further distinguishing characteristics.
Although they weren’t horrible looking cars for their time, so long as you don’t mind their Malaise Era boxy genericism, even by the late-1980s and especially the 1990s, the A-bodies were looking incredibly outdated and archaic. Just imagine if Chrysler was still pushing fuselage New Yorkers in 1983, or if Ford was selling the vintage-1996 oval Taurus in 2010? Pretty remarkable.
The buying demographic of the A-bodies definitely skewed older as time went on, something evidenced by GM’s decision to keep the Oldsmobile and Buick versions around, even after more modern W-body sedans arrived in 1990. Of course, only the A-bodies offered a wagon, and one that could seat up to 8 at that.
(Coincidentally, exactly like our featured car)
With only 92 horsepower and 135 lb-ft torque coming from its 2.5L Iron Duke inline-4, I can only how much of a struggle hauling eight passengers around in this Cutlass Cruiser was, even considering that the average person was generally a bit leaner in the 1980s.
By the time this 1996 Century Special Edition (all Century’s carried the “Special Edition” moniker for the car’s swansong season) rolled off the assembly line, a 3.1L V6 producing a much healthier 160 horsepower and 185 lb-ft torque was available, and is present in this particular vehicle.
Apart from a few engine upgrades and the simplification of trim and equipment levels, not much else went into the A-body Century and Cutlass Ciera over the many years. Offering little in the way of new or noteworthy features, final year cars were about as exciting as first year cars, just with less mileage and rust.
Quality did improve over the years, as it does with most cars. Practice makes perfect I guess, although that’s not to say that late-model A-bodies weren’t without imperfections. Common trouble spots included oil leaks, engine misfires, and transmission issues including dropping out of drive and erratic shifting.
Organizations such as JD Power gave them high marks, though in all seriousness, JD Power’s initial quality rankings are based on surveys sent out to owners that primarily ask questions along the lines of “are the controls easy to use”. Well, if you’re on your fifth of the exact same car, of course you’d know how to use the controls by now!
Now I’m just going to dodge this bullet early, because there will undoubtedly be an A-body fan here or there who’ll argue that these are the greatest cars of all time and they still should be making them. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but my response to this claim is that the money which would have been required to modernize the A-body up to competitive standards would’ve been astronomical to the point of not being worth it at all, and in the end, you’d still be stuck with the A-body’s fundamental limitations.
Sure, these were adequate cars for the early 1980s, but by the 1990s, they were horribly outdated and uncompetitive. Styling and features aside, the A-bodies lacked most of the safety features and crash-worthiness of their more modern stablemates and competitors.
Furthermore, the decade-and-a-half old X-car based platform was really showing its age in inferior ride quality and everyday handling compared to nearly every other midsize sedans, all of which were substantially newer and stiffer. With an unforgiving chassis and poor grip from narrow tires giving to a bouncy, floaty ride, the A-bodies just couldn’t compete with more modern competitors.
In many ways, the most crucial deficiency was that by utilizing the same platform and body shell, the A-bodies did not allow for any increases in interior space — something increasingly becoming a losing battle for the A-bodies in the face of the ever growing midsize competitor, both in-house and among other automakers.
Legally, the A-body sedans could seat 6, and the wagons 8 with the optional 3rd row rear-facing seat. But let’s face it, unless you were hauling a carload of skinny cross country runners, fitting three abreast was not a comfortable situation in a car with a width less than that of a modern Corolla. For what it’s worth, I did ride with five other cross country teammates to meet in high school in a ’96 Ciera, and we did fit somewhat comfortably, but of course, that’s a very unique situation.
Ultimately, 1996 was the end of the line for the A-body, and it was finally replaced in full by the W-body, seven years after the sedans first arrived. Certainly outliving their original purpose and more, the A-bodies were nonetheless a successful vehicle as far as sales went, even if they were somewhat of a dirty little secret by their demise.
However, the fact that GM was still selling an early-1980s car in the mid-1990s is somewhat embarrassing. It’s even more embarrassing that the A-bodies were probably better vehicles than many of their newer stablemates. You wouldn’t want to buy the same mobile phone, computer, or TV that came out 14 years ago, would you?
Photographed: Hanover, MA – November 2016
Heck, AMC used the same Hornet body from 1970 up to the end, with the AMC Eagle utilizing that same body. I thought AMC did good with the updates to that 70 body.
I highly doubt the Eagle would have been as successful if it didn’t have 4WD. If it was just a regular RWD Concord with a nip-and-tuck, it would have been dead in the water by 1983, let alone 1988. Its niche appeal, thanks to 4WD, was what got it moving off of dealer lots.
Exactly what happened with the Concord, William.
“A nip and a tuck, cuck. Here’s the 1983 Concord”.
They did and it was. It’s best selling and best looking year was 1978.
Thats my cutlass i worked at dicks sporting goods, great car unfortunately had to let her go seats felt like i was sitting on a couch
Yep, even sadder to know, the even uglier Gremlin was reincarnated into the Eagle model, as the weird Eagle Kammback.
Talk about wearing out a pair of “hand-me-downs”.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: GM made a huge mistake selling these into the mid-1990s. They cannibalized W-Body sales – remember, that much ballyhooed $7 billion project? – and they corroded their respective marque’s images.
GM was trying to tie a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from all of their poor decisions in the Roger Smith era, and the amortized tooling and profit potential of these probably kept them around. Sure, they had regular customers and they were likely profitable to GM (although heavy fleet sales and incentives undoubtedly undermined that) but they sabotaged the W-Body.
In theory, GM could have rebodied them and made some mechanical tweaks, like they did the N-Bodies, but what would have been the point? They had the Skylark/Achieva as compacts and the Regal/Cutlass Supreme as mid-sizers. It’s like making a meal between brunch and lunch. You just end up bloated.
They weren’t bad cars in the early 1980s, especially with their advantage in size and available powertrains compared to the imports. But they lived for about 6-8 years too long. Imagine if you just spent $30k on a beautiful new Aurora and told the pretty receptionist at work you just bought a new Oldsmobile. Chances are, she would think you were talking about a Ciera. That was the effect the A-Body’s continued presence had on the already undesirable Buick image and the rapidly diminishing Oldsmobile reputation.
How was Buick undesirable in the 80’s? I don’t think that is a factual statement, rather than one based on personal opinion. Buick’s lineup was pretty respectable, and offered comfortable, albeit, somewhat bland automobiles.
The Electra Park Avenue, Le Sabre, Regal and Riviera reached a certain demographic that found loyal buyers, who wanted a luxurious, more comfortable vehicle…Mostly the over 60 crowd. Unless, you wanted performance, then the Grand National and GNX, were more than willing to satisfy that appetite.
The FWD Skyhawk, Skylark and Century looked obsolete compared to(and they were) the Toyota Corolla/Camry, Honda Civic/Accord, VW Golf/Jetta… But, I hardly think Buick was known as undesirable in the 80’s or in the early 90’s, as a matter of fact.
I do agree, once the RWD best seller Cutlass Supreme coupe was put out to pasture, Oldsmobile didn’t have a success since, and became an “Also Ran”.
Buick’s image had been slowly evolving from “respectable doctor’s car” to “old man’s car”, and ditching the turbocharged Buicks and changing direction to making “premium American motorcars” in the late 1980s hardly stopped that. Should I have added a qualifier? Undesirable image to younger people?
Buick may have made some nice cars in the 1980s but you can factually argue their image suffered. Look at the average buyer age and how it trended throughout the 1990s. It took cars like the Rendezvous and then later the Enclave to help bring that down.
Ok, now that you clarified that, I agree 100%.
Once, car brands like Buick and Lincoln started selling SUVs, no one took their regular passenger cars seriously, anymore.
What were they thinking?
The new Buick commercials are so corny, when they ask,… “That’s a Buick?” or have these idiots state,… “That’s not a Buick!”
Uh, yes it is…It’s still bland, boring and invisible compared to a Lexus, Acura or Mercedes.
Those ads make me cringe. A modern version of “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile”.
If you want to p.o. the proud owner of a new SUV you say, “What a nice STATION WAGON!”
It’s like that car your mom had, what was it called, a Country Squirrel? No, it was a Colony Ark!
Show me a Lexus or Acura sedan that is not bland and boring and you would be showing me a car that was not made by either of those two brands!
Pre-Rendezvous, Buick was proudly anti-SUV/minivan. I recall in a brochure or ad something along the lines of “no folding seats, no sliding doors” and a mission statement that Buick made comfortable sedans.
Reminds me of Chrysler saying they would never build a small car…
Or this ironic Volvo ad…
Last, I checked, Volvo doesn’t have one RWD offering in their whole lineup.
Funny you should post that Volvo ad in a thread about a GM car that was produced for too many years. Granted, I didn’t like these A body cars from day one. I hated the generic looks, and the x car underpinnings. But, that Volvo dated back to 1967 and was produced well into the 80’s. And of course, what about the “all new” Toyota Tacoma that is nothing more than a fifteen year old truck with some even uglier front and rear sheet metal tacked on the existing structure. But of course Toyota would NEVER have a deadly sin! Or would they? Seems to me more than one of these deadly sin articles mentioned GM watering down their higher end cars by making the lower end cars look just like them . Would it not be a deadly sin that Toyota Redesigned the lower priced Corolla, and then turned around and applied that same look to the more expensive Camry a year or so later? Seriously, at least starting out at the top and working down so that buyers of the lower priced cars feel they are getting a little bit of the high end style sort of makes sense. But to start out at your lower end and then apply that to your more expensive car? That spells cheapening to me…
Sarcasmo: Doubly so since there’s a GM car (the Corvette) in there!
I think you are absolutely correct that Buick became undesirable to its core audience during the 1980s. In the case of Buick, “younger” was always a relative term–the cars were targeted to prosperous buyers from their 30s to 50s, the core of the premium market. Buick had almost exactly the same image/appeal as Lexus does today: very nice, comfortable, quality products that represented a safe, smart choice (albeit boring), not cheap but not over the top either.
The 10-year Turbo escapade starting in 1978 did not do much to attract younger buyers–the blown motors were really an oddball footnote for Buick and did not sell in large volumes. The core of Buick were nicely trimmed sedans and coupes, some of which–like the Regal–had very nice styling, along with plush interiors and respectable power. Through the early 1980s, Buicks were still “in-style” with the core audience, but that changed with the FWD cars, which were seen as less attractive and chintzier than the cars they replaced. Once Acura and Lexus arrived, Buick was really left in the dust.
The Rendezvous absolutely did not change Buick’s image or increase its appeal–it was an ugly, subpar vehicle, better only in comparison to its hideous companion, the Pontiac Aztek. The Enclave is the first Buick in decades that seems to be finding the desired buyers once again–that vehicle has become popular with affluent suburban buyers in the 30-something to 50-something age range. I think the Enclave has become a substitute for the Lexus RX, and offers the benefit of an added row of seats. So yes, finally, Buick once again has an offering with appeal in a lucrative, upscale segment, and it only took them 30 years to figure it out…
Jim, which generation of Camry and Corolla are you referring to?
If that is an allusion to the Deadly Sin article on the 1986 E-Bodies, that’s a bit different considering their doppelgangers were mainstream compacts while they were supposed to be personal luxury coupes, a very high-style segment.
Calling a Volvo 144/240/etc a Deadly Sin would be an interesting argument and one I haven’t heard before. I love to hear fresh perspectives on things, so I would be interested in reading such an article. You could argue the Volvo (and the Saab 99/900, and others) get a pass because of their sturdy build, strong niche appeal and excellent reputation.
I think saying the Enclave is popular in the 30-something to 50-something age range is quite a stretch. It’s a good vehicle, and competes well with other premium SUVs (and offers 3 rows for 2-row money). But I have never seen, and cannot see, someone under 40 buying an Enclave. I’d say late 40’s is probably the entry age for that vehicle.
Buick may be making headway into getting younger buyers back into the brand, but I’d say the Encore is doing the heavy lifting there, with a possible assist from the Cascada. Remains to be seen whether the Envision will be able to make inroads against the likes of Terrain/CX-5 on the lower end or X3/XC60/GLA on the higher end.
“It’s like making a meal between brunch and lunch. You just end up bloated”
– Line of the day 🙂
William,
While I understand your concerns and respect your thought on this, I disagree that keeping the A body around till 1996 starved sales of the W body. They did not. If the A body had been killed off in 1990 when the sedan W body came to Oldsmobile and Buick, the W body would still not see a real uptick in sales. Folks would have simply opted for the Lesabre(especially in 1992 when the new design came out) or the 88.
The first gen W body was a shitty car and in build quality and comfort the A body ran rings around the W body. My folks bought a new 1996 Buick Century in mid 1996. They test drove a W body Buick Regal and pronounced it rubbish. Had the A body century not been made, they would have bought the Lesabre. My folks were in their mid 40’s at the time so they were a bit younger then the Buick demographic of the time. Before my father test drove that car in mid 1996, the worst car he had driven or owned was a 1974 Mustang II that he owned for 1 year(74-75)
I suspect that most folks that test drove the W body felt that way and passed on by the W body in favor of another car. For instance take the Lumina and the Grand Prix. Chevy and Pontiac killed off their A body car and yet their W body did not sell well ether.
Face it the first Gen W body was rubbish and despite all that money being spent on its development was still crude. Heck it is the only car I know where replacing rear brake calipers was considered routine maintenance.
When I was working at the Chevy/Buick dealership, a lot of these W body cars came in and it was quite common to see the owner bitching about how much of a POS the car was. By contrast most folks that I talked to who brought in a A body loved the car and did not know what to do when they had to get a new car.
I’m not here to defend the W-Body and say it was anywhere near as good as it should have been. However, I don’t agree the W-Body’s sales figures would have remained the same if the A-Body was removed. I don’t necessarily think buyers would have migrated up and paid more money for a LeSabre/88.
Ok, but by 1996, lets realize that most people had given up on your parents old-fashioned brand-loyalty conundrum of “We buy Buicks. Which is the best Buick?”
Even in the midwest, people were buying Camrys en-masse at this point. If the Regal didn’t cut it, the Century was only there to sell people on the price tag.
I wonder if they knew the implications of the also new for 84 Chrysler minivan and Jeep Cherokee, if they would even have bothered with this small on the outside, big on the inside wagon? I mean who would ever want something like that. When only a handful of the Pontiac versions offered AWD.
I better stop before someone feels a deadly sin come on.
Pontiac? Deadly sin?
Hmmmmm, why does this guy, suddenly come to mind?
That thing is too silly to be deadly. The deadly sins were later with foreign platforms and letter/ number names.
At the end proposed Pontiac slogan.
We don’t build them and they ain’t exciting.
Imagine that, truth in advertising.
John, I’m not sure I understand your comment other than your true assertion that these were quite well-packaged for their dimensions. It’s worth noting though that wagon sales were on the decline as SUVs and minivans roared up the sales charts.
This was my point. It was a well designed, versatile wagon in a period when offering a wagon was pointless.
Not really. The wagons arrived in 1984, and nobody was expecting the Chrysler vans. And after the vans arrived, there was a year or so before the market believe that the idea was a success, then another year or two before it became apparent that minivans were the current thing and station wagons were on their way out.
If the wagons arrived in 1984, then the design process was probably started in 1982 at the latest. And there were no minivans on the horizon at that time.
One actually has to wonder “what if” GM took a similar route as Chrysler, and made a competitor minivan based on the A-body. In typical GM fashion, it undoubtably would’ve been larger and heavier, but just hypothetically, what if GM was able to produce a package very similar to the original Chrysler S-minivans? Food for thought.
Wasn’t the 1990 Dustbuster essentially an A-Body with a weird body?
Well, the whole structure of those minivans was not the same a sedan since it was built like a Saturn. GM brilliantly never sold a Saturn version. Since the W came out in 1988 my guess is that the front suspension and drivetrain and the rear suspension were from the W. Anyone know? Did the W’s also have a beam rear suspension?
I think the Chrysler minivans and the 1986 Ford Taurus are special cases which came out of nowhere to shake up the auto industry. The Jeep? Well it was popular from the get go but really did not explode in popularity until the late 1980’s- early 1990’s. I saw way more minivans and Tauruses on the road and in front of houses in those years then Jeep Cherokees.
There is a lot to be said for a wagon of this size. Certainly, something like the T115 Chrysler minivans were more versatile as kid-haulers, which has made wagons a niche item in the U.S. market, but I’ve known a fair number of people who have been frustrated at the steadily shrinking number of affordable choices. Most were not people with kids, but the same sort of buyers who ended up buying Honda Elements: people who like camping, need to haul stuff for a small business, end up carrying a lot of home renovation stuff, etc, but who want something that gets car-like gas mileage. Obviously, that’s now a small minority of buyers — it’s not unlike the market for compact pickup trucks, which I think it overlaps quite a bit.
I think the equivalent of these today are cars like the RAV4 and Rogue. Some of those compact crossovers are available with third-row seating that is about as comfortable as the third-rows in these probably were.
The third gen RAV4 (2006-12) and the current X-Trail-based Rogue are the only compact CUVs that have an available third row, IIRC. Slightly puzzling in the Rogue’s case, since the larger Murano doesn’t have a third row. And yes, they’re about as comfortable as you might expect. The back of the seat is almost right up against the rear window.
The Mitsubishi Outlander seats seven as well, and so did both generations of Suzuki XL-7 (based on the Vitara/Tracker and VUE/Equinox, respectively). Some Chevy Captivas outside the US did as well.
The second-gen XL-7 was definitely a midsize CUV. The Outlander is a bit of a weird size; its outside dimensions aren’t as large as other midsize CUVs, but it’s still bigger than the definitely-compact Outlander Sport.
I’m not talking about third-row seating, but actually using these sorts of wagons as light cargo haulers in the ways I mentioned. (None of the people I’m thinking of would have considered a RAV4 or Rogue a viable replacement, in part because of poorer highway mileage.)
I have a hard time getting my head around the size growth of crossovers like the RAV4 — the current one looks almost as big as the earlier-generation Highlander, although I haven’t compared the dimensions.
Even though they may not have been advertised as such, the first two gens of RAV4 were subcompact CUVs by modern standards; less than 100″ WB and not even 170″ OAL. The first-gen Highlander was just about the smallest “mid-size” CUV ever made, but is still larger than the newest RAV4 in every dimension except width (1″ difference). Newer versions have just gotten bulkier.
Meanwhile, the RAV4’s perennial competitor, the CR-V, didn’t change any dimensions appreciably in its first four generations.
The Mk1 Highlander was on the contemporary U.S. Camry platform, yes?
See, while they aren’t my thing, the early RAV4 and the CR-V at least make sense to me: upright commuter vehicles with easier entry/exit for older people and a bit more ground clearance than a conventional car without a catastrophic sacrifice of gas mileage.
For similar reasons, a wagon like this could have appealed to me or my wife back in the 80’s. We don’t have kids, but might at some point in the not-too-distant future. We also own a house but do not own a truck, so when we purchase something too big to fit in a sedan (a ladder, a piece of furniture, a TV) we have to either rely on the kindness of friends with appropriate vehicles, rent a van, or pay for delivery. These are the reasons that our next “good” car will probably be a CUV–the “Utility” part of the equation. That and the fact that there are almost no affordable wagons left, and my wife doesn’t want to drive one anyway. Carlike gas mileage is also a necessity, as she drives for work purposes and gets reimbursed at a fixed mileage rate. 25-30 years ago, before the mass existence of CUVs and before the wagon became totally uncool, a sensibly sized example like one of these might have been just the ticket.
There’s a lot to be said for the station wagon bodystyle.
Since I now live in the snowbelt and since my street has been reassigned to low-priority snow plowing, there are a couple of weeks every year where I can’t get my car out of the driveway. I’m looking at an all-wheel drive crossover like a RAV4, CR-V, Forester or maybe a 4-cylinder Outback as my next set of wheels.
However, if I still lived in southern California I’d feel slightly ridiculous driving something with all-wheel drive as my regular set of wheels.
I’ll never forget the 1986 Buick Century Estate Wagon that I owned: The best car I’ve ever hated.
(Forcibly) inherited it after the death of my mother, I’ll always called the car “Mom’s final revenge”. I’m 36 years old, reasonably hip, happily driving a Ford Escort GT that been given a bit of a tuner workover when dad announces that mom wanted me to have the car and pretty much forced me to trade cars with him.
The full blown senior citizen package, burgundy, fake wire wheel covers, wood, velour interior, and pretty much every option available including power windows, seats, AM/FM/cassette stereo. I hated the car, was embarrassed to be seen in it . . . . and up to that time it turned out to be the best, most reliable car I ever owned. Only my wife was happy that I had it, because it certainly cut down the looks I was getting from the college girls.
Kept it for four years (the minimum I could and still keep family relations happy – and at this point I was doing a lot of relationship patching with my father) before trading it in on a new Ford Festiva LX. Which I liked a lot better.
That’s the first time I ever heard someone use the phrase “liked a lot better” to describe a Festiva. You must have really hated driving that Century 🙂
A Festiva would be a fun little runabout. Sometimes it’s more fun to drive a slow little car fast…
With the Festiva’s Mazda underpinnings and derived engine, and city ergonomics and frugal gas mileage, and add in the fun to drive quotient…
That Century is like driving a floaty, unwieldy pirate ship.
Heck, even Jay Leno has a Festiva in his car collection… Except his is twin turbo and RWD. 😀
Jay Leno’s Festiva
I had a friend who’s family had a Festiva. It actually gave them good service. I rode in it. It was ok. Of course you have to temper that knowledge with the fact I was driving this at the time. Still own it too.
What’s usually missed when I mention that I had a Festiva is that it was an LX (or was it GT that year?), not the base model L that was the low price, catch-them-with-the-Saturday-ads, car that most people naturally assume the Festiva line consisted of.
Tach, alloy wheels, air conditioning, better interior, a nice five speed, it was a neat little package hurt only by the Yokohama tires that came standard. I swear they were made out of bakelite, and were absolutely terrifying on wet roads.
Otherwise, it came very close to the ’79 Fiesta S I had owned two cars before the Century.
Ahh, Syke. Another memo I didn’t get. I’ve never been ashamed to be seen in any car. But then I am absolutely shameless.
Anyone who would, as a 16 year old kid, purchase a set of 2″ port-a-walls and walk back from the auto parts store with them around his neck, in public, has no shame.
My older brother calls me eccentric. My niece claims I’m “Sooo random”, but shameless is good too.
I have no shame either. This was my ride in 85.
Front.
LOL!!!
Keep on motoring.
I truly admire both of you “shamelessness” regarding cars. Being fully honest, there are a lot of cars I’d be embarrassed to be seen driving or riding in. Judge me all you want, but I’m not ashamed to say it 🙂
You’re lucky to be able to have that attitude. Not judging, just sayin’. 🙂
I’ve never been truly poor, and I’m grateful for that, but I’ve definitely been in the situation as a younger fellow where driving a beater was better than no car at all. My surface-rust-over-light-blue ’82 Malibu, purchased for $800 in 2002, being a case in point. Though even that one ended up getting an inexpensive respray in short order to cover up the ugly, since my Mom (who shares a similar viewpoint to yours) decided it was worth it to pay for a paint job in order to save me the embarrassment of driving an eyesore, and herself the embarrassment of having it parked at the house when I came back to visit!
My wife feels the same way about my current car. But in my old age (36, LOL) I’ve simply become used to it, and my desire to not spend money outweighs my embarrassment at driving an elderly full-size Ford.
Before I read the article, based on the first 2 pictures, I assumed that the Olds was the newer one.
Wait, there are two cars here? ?
In retrospect, it is amazing how well sales of these held up after the Taurus came along in 1986. Buyers really had a choice during the decade of 86-96 if looking for a domestic mid sizer.
It’s kind of sad that the best we can say about these is that GM finally figured out how to update and perfect the Dodge Dart.
My uncle. Had an 86 Ciera wagon. I once drove it with 7 passengers. It felt very anemic. My uncle claimed that it was powered by the V6, but in retrospect it probably had the Iron Duke. I remember flooring it a few times to merge or keep up with traffic.
It was a nice car otherwise.
In the mid 1990’s my maternal grandmother had a 1986 Cutlass Ciera 4 door sedan, white with a padded white vinyl top and good old 1980’s whorehouse red interior.
At age 12, (1997-ish) it was the first car I ever drove on my own. She lives down a very rural road (we often joke that we go over the river and through the woods to grandmothers house)
Anyway, she would let me drive to her house from the end of that road.
Not a particularly great car but when I see one that’s what I think of.
Wow, these take me back… Spent my teens in a 1986 Pontiac 6000 wagon. My dad bought it in late ’87 when we were living in the US, and he bought it back to France when we moved back in 1990. It must have been the only one in the country! He had a bitch of a time getting it “legalized” for the French roads. And with the V6, it was something of a gas guzzler, though no worse than the Peugeot 604 he had before.
The big problem was finding parts for it: we had to go to Switzerland if anything needed to be replaced, as a few Olds and Buick versions were imported there. It started to develop a distinctive shimmy at highway speeds. Then it began stalling, especially at idle. And one day in 1995, at about 100,000 miles, the transmission died and that was the end of the Pontiac wagon.
As I remember it, that car had no rust and its trim, both exterior and interior, was remarkably durable. All in all, a good car. But I did not realize until today that they built those for so long, which strikes me as rather odd. And having the same car across four brands was also a poor decision, just like the X car. It diluted the brand identity and caused Olds and Pontiac to be seen as warmed-up Chevies, which they were.
These cars, and the decade that separates them, epitomizes everything that was wrong with GM at the time. Arguably, the Ciera and Century lived for 16 1/2 years, since the A-Body wasn’t much more than a stretched X-Body with the bugs worked out (as they should have been when the X-Cars launched). The FWD A-Body was decent but not spectacular when new–with very boxy, undifferentiated styling and the Iron Duke standard. Had they been replaced by all-new cars after 6 years–the FWD A-Bodies would have just faded away from our collective memory as boring, functional early 80s cars. Instead, they became the rolling embodiment of the rot at General Motors. How on earth could they be sold for so long? These cars utterly destroyed the remnants of brand equity at Buick and Olds, becoming horribly dated cars for cheap and/or old people. Disgraceful. Even though Roger Smith and some of his minions were gone, GM management in the 1990s was just as clueless and inept as they had been in the 1980s.
What a nice wagon the 1986 Oldsmobile and 1986 Buick wagon. I think it is time to bring back the wood style again.
Y’know that off-black Rubbermaid cladding on every crossover? That’s the new fake wood.
These were by far the most common three-row kid haulers around when I was in middle and high school (class of ’92) in those prime getting driven around in groups by friends’ parents (and later by freinds in their parents’ cars) years. Colt Vistas (!) were a distant second followed by Taurus wagons. There were a lot of older RWD A/G and Foxbody wagons still around but those were never three-row. For some reason B-body and Panther wagons just weren’t around in the ’80s, and minivans crept in very slowly.
I’ve long suspected that minivan intenders ended up in A-body wagons unless the Mopar dealer sold them on a Colt Vista once they learned that 1) Chrysler minivans were in high demand nationally, wait and pay list price; and 2) Unlike the T115, the Vista and A were properly ventilated (opening second-row windows and in the A’s case those pop-out vents for the third) so you didn’t have to buy and use A/C,
Seems to be a lot of made in America hatred on Curbside Classics.
Maybe Paul should take a survey of your favorite only made in USA automobiles.
Say from 1970 to 2016……….
Wife and I only owned two foreign made cars out of about 50 total, 34 were new GM models, all were Pont and Buick// my wife worked for GM for 31 years.
The rest were various American made cars bought used.
Now own purchased new, a 2013 Ford Escape 1.6 turbo “sporty” and a 2016 Subaru Outback Premium 2.5 “comfortable/roomy” Both made in USA.
Us both being seniors….. With age comes wisdom…sometimes!
Dependable, Practical, Comfortable, has surpassed our need for speed and style.
Really? I see a lot of love for American cars on this site. I am one of them. But since we are talking about GM here, just look at their trajectory in the years you point out – 1970-2016. Are we both seeing the pattern?
GM was the among the greatest industrial companies in the world in 1970. To nothing within 40 years. It wasn’t just CC readers who didn’t love their stuff in order to make this happen. They went from a company that made some of the best vehicles in the entire world to a company who would have gone under without massive governmental help, mostly due to a sustained inability to build cars and trucks that appealed to the American market.
I kind of like these A bodies. But then I liked Dodge Darts and Studebaker Larks. All three were good cars in their day (with some weaknesses) but all three were woefully out of date by the time they stopped production. Chrysler in 1977 and Studebaker in 1963 were in awful shape. GM in 1996? What was their excuse for building a design so long (even if it was a sound design)? Even worse, why was so little of their other stuff as good as these? These are the questions that make so many of us here pull our hair out.
I’ve never owned a car with a foreign nameplate, probably because Michigan is a fairly insular place automotively. It’s always a bit of a shock to see so many foreign brands whenever I leave the state, because in almost any parking lot in Michigan, you’ll still see a preponderance of General Motors products. I’ve owned many newer GMs and I’ll buy more as long as they’re around (Fords, too), because they support a lot of people in my state.
So there are a lot of us who still love American cars, even though we don’t always agree with the corporations who made them and their cost-cutting rationale.
The same, JP. I’ve owned a couple of GM DS and have a potential one as my “new” car.
I know of their faults and the mucked up thinking that went behind their development and will be the first to drop my dime on their faults.
But I loved them and still do. There’s just no connection for me in foreign branded cars. It’s emotional and irrational, yes. I have always been entertained and engaged by the vehicles I’ve owned, regardless of their Isle Of Misfit Toys status.
Larks, Darts, Valiants, Ramblers: I’m all in. And all of them long running designs. Like Checker. And Volvo. And VW. And an asset in my book.
Planned obsolescence was BS in the 50s and 60s and it still is in my shack.
Also, as needs to be said frequently, made in America doesn’t mean what it used to. I’ve owned four Ford products, and three of them were made in Canada. (Windsor, Ontario produced Panthers.) One Honda, which was made in Ohio. The argument that the profits go to the home base has merit, but there are very tangible benefits to the local economy too.
And then there’s the Volvo, which was made in Italy, but that one is something of a special case.
A survey of my favorite made in USA automobiles, 1970 to 2016, would have *way* too many things on it to list!
Ive owned 4 GM A-body wagons in the past (3 Buicks with the 3300 and a Celebrity with an iron duke.)
I’m probably biased, but these were the best overall cars I’ve ever owned. All of them I owned went close to 200K miles with minimal repairs. Even in the salt-laden roads of the north, they held up fairly well. Sure they had a few problem points (early ones had steering rack issues,) but with reasonable care were reliable.
I hated the fake wood grain so all mine were without it. They would seat 8 if you needed them to, and had a flat load floor all the way up to the back of the front seats (check out how many SUV’s have a totally flat load floor these days.) They got reasonably good MPG since they were a car and actually fit in an average size garage with room to spare, and they were decent looking to my eye.
If any manufacturer made a new vehicle with the same reliability and usefulness of an A-body wagon (at their equivalent nowadays price point) I’d definitely check them out.
The A body cars appealed to me when they were introduced. But that quickly ended when the game changing Taurus arrived in 1986. Not updating their cars shows how inept GM management was. You saw that carry into the nineties with the introduction of the Lumina.
I don’t care if they’re bland or unexciting or outdated – I’d take a Cutlass or Century woody wagon in a heartbeat.
These cars spanned the period when owning a new GM car went from being as ordinary as can be for anyone from any walk of life to being something that marked one as being old or a government employee.
I love the brochure pic of the father and son getting ready to bring home the family’s first computer in the family’s last landau-topped coupe. It’s strange now, even being in the same age cohort as the kid, to think that Apple products (if not the ‘Apple aesthetic’) and Broughams overlapped like that, kind of like learning that Anne Frank and Martin Luther King were born the same year.
That photo really brought back memories for me- I still remember riding in my dad’s 1985 Buick to pick up our first Apple ][ from the Chicago suburbs.
These are such quixotic beasts! The cars themselves were competent and actually pretty damned good at what they did. They were one of the few things that saved GM from bankruptcy in 1991/2. And their continuing sales success, even if the demographics skewed a bit older, showed there was still very much a market for these sorts of cars.
But, I also tend to agree with the notion that selling these in the 1990s was a mistake in the end. They hampered GM’s efforts to reestablish brand identities, as these were literally the cars Fortune called out for being look-alikes. They undercut all the new work GM was doing with the W cars while cannibalizing sales from other stuff on the GM showroom floors. And, they cemented GM’s reputation as being little more than purveyors of cheap cheerful motoring-an American version of Kia (until a few years ago).
Like I say, I get why they stuck around-they were one of the few things that weren’t losing GM money in the early ’90s. But, for whatever help they gave 1991 GM in dodging the bankruptcy bullet, I’d assert they came back to collect in the late 2000s.
When I was buying my first car in 1998, I still had a bit of that old-time GM religion, what with my parents owning 2 Buicks since time immemorial. I test drove a few Pontiacs and was shocked how cheap and shoddy they felt compared to the older GMs I was used to.
I was amongst that lot, actually. I still carry a flame for the 6000 STE, especially post-1987 after they got the composite headlights. Someday when I have a barn on acreage and expand the fleet into the 1980s, a 6000 will be one of the first to come home. I actually almost ended up with a 1996 Ciera in 1999 as my late high-school/college car. It was a less-equipped model, with crank windows even and in an odd brown interior/powder blue exterior combo, but the price was right and I knew it had good bits in it. Frankly, had my mom not spotted the ’89 Bonneville further afield, I’d have bought the Ciera. Once I drove the Bonneville, though, there was no going back.
And definitely agree on the late ’90s Pontiacs re: cheapness. I’ve mentioned before that my mom bought a ’96 Grand Am new (well, a demonstrator, but whatever). By 1999, the paint and font had worn off all the stereo buttons. Hers had the 3.1 V6 and, aside from an episode in 1998 when it tried to burn itself to the ground, gave her 120,000 miles of excellent service. But, it was very much cheap and cheerful all the way around-like I said, the American version of Kia.
I agree – there’s nothing terrible or wrong about these cars, that I know about anyhow, but they just remind me that GM was in the business of selling car loans and not cars during this era. The vehicles just seem so
‘K-Mart store brand’ with nothing but trim and gimmicks to differentiate between the brands
– which was okay because all sales lead to GMAC financing.
The answer to the question of “Why buy one of these cars”? almost always came down to:
A. It was cheap
B. The dealership is nearby
C. I could get financing
D. I or my family work for GM
E. Some combination or all of the above.
I wouldn’t say it’s just those. After about 1990? Sure, maybe with “I trust cars that are simple and have been in production long enough for the bugs to be worked out” as an additional choice.
But back when these came out, they were thoroughly modern vehicles, a larger X-car with many of the most glaring flaws corrected. Let’s pick 1985, for example. What were your other options for a midsize wagon? Ford LTD? Not a bad car, but it was essentially a modern nose on a ’78 Fairmont wagon body. Showing its age, RWD back when that wasn’t considered a virtue, due for replacement soon. Chrysler didn’t have a dog in that particular race; even the LeBaron T&C was a rather small affair during the “everything’s a K-variant” era. There were Maxima and Cressida wagons, both solid choices, but I imagine those occupied a higher price point, as did the Volvo 245 and 745. And the VW Quantum wasn’t for everyone, plus probably in a slightly higher price bracket as well.
Even after the Taurus/Sable came out and changed the game, and then the Camry wagon came online in ’87, there were still good reasons to pick an A-body. Traditionalists who still clung to their dinoc could find it here, those who wanted a little bit of a sport appearance might like the Celebrity Eurosport variant, or perhaps it was a consumer who already had and liked an A-body sedan. One could do far worse.
A-body wagons are sort of The Invisible CC — they’re still seen with enough regularity that we forget they have an interesting story, and the 14-year model run was amazing.
Incidentally, in last Friday’s QOTD (What mid-’80s GM car would you buy?), 18 commenters mentioned that they would buy an A-car, and 9 specifically called out the wagons. A lot of folks appreciate these cars for their sensibility.
” Just imagine if Chrysler was still pushing fuselage New Yorkers in 1983, or if Ford was selling the vintage-1996 oval Taurus in 2010? Pretty remarkable.”
Just imagine if Ford was selling the vintage-1998 Crown Victoria in 2011? Oh wait, they were. And the change from the previous generation was evolutionary enough that the 1992 and 2011 models were visibly quite similar, even more so on the Grand Marquis in that it never had the six-window roofline that the ’92-’97 ‘Vic did. (Yes, they did extensively rework the chassis and front subframe/suspension in 2003, but honestly, very few people noticed other than police officers and Marauder buyers.)
Perhaps a special case, but it can be looked at both ways–a dinosaur in some regards, but one that was still selling in others. Keeping them going was something of a sin in that they never had to actually try to build a viable replacement, but on the other side of the coin, if something is still selling well enough, the profit is pure gravy after a certain point. Unfortunate that they were losing so much money in other endeavors that those profits got redirected down several black holes.
I suspect that the last Crown Vics and Town Cars were evolutions of the 1965 frame and suspension architecture. Well, 1949-51, 1952-54, and 1955-56 were all on the same basics, as were the 1957-58, 1959, 1960-1964’s. Note: body styles did not last as long back then and were routinely facelifted every year.
GM really pushed it with these though, as (learned here) these even had the same internal body structure as the previous X cars (shown by exactly the same windshield and door window frames). Different sort of Audi Avant rear on the station wagon though.
Had a 96 Cierra wagon and it was likable, despite it’s many flaws – great for hauling kids and stuff, had a roof rack so I could attach a clamshell luggage carrier, would get 27 mpg on the highway fully loaded, plus I just like boxy old-school station wagons so I thought it was cool. But it was a pretty terrible car otherwise, in terms of reliability and build quality.
“poor grip from narrow tires”
I’d imagine those narrow tires might be why this was one of the best cars for driving though deep snow that I’ve ever owned.
Back in the day, I knew quite a few small contractors in the construction trades that picked up cheap, used A-body wagons in place of, say, an S-10 with a camper shell. At that moment in time, the A-wagons were cheaper and worked just as well (maybe better) than a mini-truck with a shell.
I still see that with ’90s Escorts around here-Painters especially seem to really love them.
How about an Article on Chrysler and the 2 bankruptcies they faced and all the deadly sins they produced. The 1976 Volare/Aspen is a good place to start and note that this same basic chassis and engine lasted up until 1989 as the M-body with the same basic 2BBl lean burn 318 and 3 speed Torque flite transmission that was behind what Ford and GM were doing by that point with fuel injection and 4 speed over drive automatics. The fact that the majority of 1980 -1989 M-body Dodge and Plymouth cars were sold to fleets and law enforcement was telling. Hmm sound familiar.
And now here we are with Chrysler killing off there one remaining mid size sedan and compact due to poor management decisions in the past and present and a general decline in sales of those cars. The K-car everything chassis that lasted from 1981 to the mid 90’s certainly didn’t help matters and these cars were horribly outdated by this point. But I would be willing to bet you would never ever hear something like that here.
Yep, you’d never see anything like that here.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classics-1976-plymouth-volare-and-dodge-aspen-from-an-a-to-an-f-chryslers-deadly-sin-1/
Joe, if you feel that a topic is misrepresented here or that we are lacking coverage of a specific topic at CC, and would like to write an article of your own, you’re always welcome to, we take submissions 🙂
The 1976-80 Aspen-Volare is an F body. The M is different. I think the Aspen-Volare had crosswise torsion bars(?). I think the M’s were more like K cars.
Everything I know, as well as Allpar and a couple other pages I checked, state that the M-body and the F-body are virtually identical under the skin. Makes sense, since the M was brought out in ’77 with the LeBaron and Diplomat, just one year after the Aspen/Volare. Wouldn’t have made sense to use an entirely different front suspension, especially one like the FWD K-cars. (“Torsion Bars” are listed as interchanging across all F, M, and J-bodies, all years, on one of the references.)
My dad had an early ’90’s all silver Buick Century wagon, work car, silver grey interior, no faux wood crap. I was predesposed against this car when I started to drive it, but boy was I converted. That car could haul. Repeatedly drove it well over 110mph(est.) on a seldom patrolled part of a highway commute from high school, burying the needle past 85mph so it came out the bottom by the odometer. Fun to watch it peak out. Radially estimated the speed. Was so impressed at how smooth the car rode when floored. Very solid and safe feeling at autobahn speeds..
Silver color neutrallized it so I felt unstigmatized driving it as a teenager. Updated shark-nose front end grew on me over time.
Good looking di-noc on the sides of both those cars. They must have been garaged most of their lives.
I still have lust for the very few model years that you could get a Century wagon with either the 3300 V6 or the 3800 V6.
I take it the vent window in the rear side windows was only available on wagons with a third row seat? I always thought it was a nifty feature on these A-body wagons. The Buick Century wagon was popular for a time in Japan, where it was called a Regal and sported rear tail lights from a Celebrity with amber turn signals. The exhaust pipe curiously stretched to the rear of the car and was not curved to the passenger’s side like in the domestic models.
Wouldn’t surprise me about the vent window. Apparently that was the case going back a ways–the colonnade wagons had rear vent windows on the 9-passenger models, none on the 6.
Say what you will about the A body Century and Ciera, it was a big seller each year it was sold even in 1996 it was a big seller.
In 1997 the local Enterprise had 17 1996 Century sedans for sale at a Enterprise sales event. Those were all sold in the first 2 hours. In fact there was a long line at the door of Enterprise before it opened up for the day. You can bet they were not standing in line for a Lumina or Regal.
It is very interesting that we smack GM around for having the A body Century and Cutlass Ciera hang around for 14 years with minor refinements and yet CC praises VW for keeping the Beetle (a 1930’s era car) in production until the early 2000’s (yes it got new engines and interiors but the car used the same looking body panels as the original did in those Nazi propaganda posters)
Or whacks Ford for keeping the Fox Body Mustang around for 14 years(79-93) or the 1980-1997 Ford F150 (yes Ford considers 3 generations to have taken place for the F150 from 80-97 but in reality the other then a new front clip it still is the same truck)
(Please don’t think I am bad mouthing the 79-97 era F150, I actually love the classic look of those Ford pickup tricks and it is my second favorite pickup style after the GM Advance Design trucks. However I have to call a spade a spade and the F150 hung around with a 17 year old look in 1997 (its last year) )
The A body did not steal sales from W body, the truth is that if the A body was not sold along side the W body, the W body would have not really picked up much sales. Folks would have bought a Lesabre or gone to another car maker. The first Gen W body really was not a good car and most had the same rattles that a 10 year old Pinto would have.
Don’t forget the Jeep Grand Wagoneer (1963-1991) and Volvo 240 (1975-1993, though as someone else mentioned, it really dated back to 1967!).
911’s had a long production life starting in 1963 and ending in the 80s’
I’d argue with you on the ’80-’96 F-150s (’97 saw the 9th-gen F-150, ’98 saw the old chassis 250s and 350s be replaced by the new Super Duty). Yeah, the chassis remained the same, and one that’s looking can definitely see 1980 in the cab of the 9th-gen trucks. But, the chassis, especially after the 1984 tweaks, was damned solid (solid enough to serve, with nothing more than additional suspension bits, under the 250s and 350s as well as the 150s). No reason to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
And, each generation got a substantially different interior and noticably revised exterior. The motors were revamped and given fuel injection for the 8th-gen (1987). The newer transmissions found their way into them as time progressed (my ’95 has the 4R70W in it, still shifting smooth after 197,000 miles).
That’s the big difference between these and the A-bodies. Aside from composite lights in the late 1980s, there was little that changed over that 14 years. That’s something completely different than using the same platform for subsequent generations. That’s the point-even Toyota, for using the Corolla platform and innards that date back to the 1990s, has changed the sheetmetal, the interiors, and generally kept it in line with the times. Ford kept the F-150 in line with the times while using a lot of the bits from the 1980 truck.
GM did none of that. And to your point, imagine if GM had thrown $7 Billion into upgrading the As to keep them in line with the times while maintaining and upgrading them and the bits that drove ’em. The platform had enough life to run 14 years (actually more if you count the X-Body as the starting point) and still have high demand. Imagine if they’d put a few bucks into new sheetmetal and interiors reflecting the 1990s instead of 1982. Imagine if GM had, in 1982, started working on a refresh and upgrade of the A cars for 1987, ala the Toyota method, instead of pissing away $7 Billion on the Ws.
That’s why we’re calling them out for running the As too long. It’s not a question of the platform running too long. It’s a question of the cars being practically unchanged from 1982 to 1996.
Makes sense. It’s also what the independents tried to do as well as VW and Volvo and the stated purpose of Studebaker in the end: running changes and continual improvements without regard to cosmetic fads and planned obsolescence.
Leon, I don’t recall any article here praising the Beetle for sticking around so long or blasting the Fox Mustang for doing the same?
I don’t care about its iconic status, I certainly wouldn’t defend the 1970s-onwards Beetle. By the ’70s it was woefully out-of-date, I don’t care how well it was made. By then, the Japanese were making serious inroads and that was the beginning of the end for the Bug anyway.
As for other cited examples in this thread like the Porsche 911, supercars and sports cars tend to have much, much longer lives than mainstream offerings. I don’t criticize the ’80s Ciera/Century but I do the ’90s one because that was an extremely competitive segment of the market and I don’t think GM did a good job keeping the car up-to-date.
You can say these were reliable and well-built – although they weren’t always – but can you honestly say that you would have walked into a showroom in 1996 and bought one? And, to further complicate things, would you have bought one without massive incentives on the hood? Because these really sold on price, especially towards the end.
As I said, these cars have their good attributes but they were very out-of-date by the end.
Leon, cars like the Beetle and 911 are iconic, nearly one of a kinds, not cars in one of the most important domestic segments. True, the Beetle was in an important segment, but VW showed us that it could produce a much more advanced and popular successor in the Golf.
Cars like the 1979-1993 Mustang get no mercy from me. I totally agree that it was produced for way too long. The reason I have not written about it is that I just have so little interest in it. If you’re a GM A-body fan, consider it flattering I took the time to write about it, because I do have a serious interest in it.
To dig deeper, cars such as the Volvo 240 were also produced for an insanely long time. I don’t such practice, but I must be a little less angered at Volvo, as they were a far smaller automaker with far fewer resources to develop all new cars. GM on the other hand, was the largest automaker in the world.
Also, Volkswagen DID suffer from how long it took them to come up with a real modern replacement for the Beetle. As Paul has previously written about, Volkswagen spent a while trying to repackage Beetle mechanicals and losing ground because of it. That VW didn’t suffer worse for it was due in no small part to the fact that Americans had embraced it as sort of a counterculture symbol, which was fortuitous, but not the sort of thing you can really plan.
I’m not a Fox Mustang fan either, but the distinction there is that for 1979, it was a pretty good car, hampered principally by Ford’s struggles with CAFE and resultant weird early engine lineup. It was old-fashioned for 1990, but it had started from a somewhat stronger position.
The FWD A-body started off being more or less where the X-body probably should have been from the start, which was … okay. And by the ’90s, it was polished and reliable to the point that it should have been in the mid-80s. Which is fine for a used car, but not a compelling argument for buying one new.
Fox Mustangs really don’t have any real correlations to even compare to the A-cars.
First off, The Mustang ushered in a very clean, aerodynamic, and almost European aesthetic no other American car approximated in the fall of 1978. They were a huge departure in this regard to the II. And they sold like crazy at first. They brought back respectable performance with the 1982 GT 5.0. This was followed by the 1984 SVO. And more importantly, even in the early 1990’s, people still aspired to own a “Five point O”
None of this applies to the A-body cars. Different demographics, certainly, but absolutely nothing those cars brought to the table were truly unique or vastly superior after their initial introduction. The 1986 Taurus made that perfectly clear in short order.
That was exactly my point: The A-body was ho-hum even at launch, whereas the Fox platform was initially very competitive and the early Fox Mustangs were well-considered products. The Mustang eventually became very dated in some respects — its brakes lagged behind engine performance, for instance –but it started in a much stronger position relative to its market than the FWD A-body did in its niche.
That really is the big story here: The As were playing in the absolute heart of the 1980s and 1990s markets, and GM went to 1996 with the A-body almost completely unchanged from 1982. In that time, Ford went from the Fairmont and LTD to the Taurus to the second-gen Taurus, and the bubble Taurus was in showrooms at the same time as A-body Cieras and Centuries! Imagine if Ford was still selling the Fairmont, but with fuel injection and composite headlights, in 1996! I mean come on, the 1996 Ciera’s dash was the same as the 1982 Ciera’s dash (oh, except for the refaced gauges that came around in 1988 or so)!
The Mustangs, while important products, were not nearly as important to Ford as was the family truckster segment stuff. Ford let the Mustang linger a bit, but if we’re being fair GM let Camaro linger damned near as late (1992 for Camaro, 1993 for Mustang). Same for the trucks-it wasn’t really until the early-mid 1990s that pickups came into their own as lifestyle choices as opposed to work choices, and yet Ford gave the F-Series so much more love than GM did to the C/K trucks during that same time.
As to your Enterprise example–that makes perfect sense, as the later versions of these were one of the safest bets you could make on a used car. If you’re looking for something that will get you where you want to go, reliably, comfortably, and on a budget, it was really hard to go wrong with a late-run A-body. All the bugs had been worked out long ago, nothing surprising, nothing leading edge, just a good, solid car for not a lot of money since the desirability factor wasn’t there.
Don’t forget, at some point the A Body, at least the sedan, replaced the Iron Duke/Tech 4 with the 2.2 used in the Cavalier [and not the 2.2 OHC used in the Pontiac Sunbird].
Having owned three A-bodies over the years, I can honestly say I have a true love for them. My first – an ’84 Century Limited Coupe with the carbureted V-6 was my first experience with them. I loved the way that car drove, handled and rode. Those Limited seats were so comfy, and the ergonomics were just right (it was the 80’s remember LOL). It was the reliability that was a total nightmare. We all know the horror of the 3.0 V-6 with its infamous rod knock and premature failure. Heck, I had three – yes three – rebuilds in 70k miles! Then it was over for me with that car.
I always remembered my ’84 and how much I enjoyed driving that car. I needed a car in the mid 90’s as I was completing a college degree and didn’t want a huge car payment. A neighbor was selling their 1987 Century Limited with the ‘T’ package – loaded with every option imaginable and yes – the SFI 3.8 V-6! One of the best cars I ever owned. I put nearly 200k miles on that car with hardly a problem. It was starting to rust badly so I decided it was time and I sold it.
My last experience with an A-body was in 2007. My elderly neighbor was sent to a nursing home and her family was selling all of her items in an estate sale. I knew she had a mint condition 1989 Cutlass Ciera hiding in her garage. It hardly ever left that garage as a matter of fact! Sure enough, one day the family was outside having a yard sale so I walked over to her house and there it was – waiting for me. It only had 60k miles on it and was in mint condition. It had the sporty alloy wheels on it so I was praying it had the big V-6 too, but alas it was only the 2.8 MFI 6-cylinder. It was decent enough, but I was so used to my old Century with the 3.8 SFI that it always felt underpowered to me. I kept it for about a year and decided to sell it. I only paid $500 for it, but it needed a ton of things because of such little use by the elderly original owner. In fact for almost two years it sat without any use at all. It seemed like every week I was fixing something, whether it be a blown fuse or a hose that would let go. I replaced the alternator, the brakes, the battery, the power steering rack, front struts and other parts I can’t even remember. The icing on the cake was when the rear brakes froze on me and I did a complete 360 in the middle of the highway! I never trusted that car after that and refused to put another dime into it. I broke even when I sold it which was fine, but it was a lesson learned about buying a low mileage, elderly owned vehicle. I still really enjoyed that Ciera for the year that I owned it, even though it was a money pit. And in the car’s defense, lack of use was the main reason it cost me so much. Granted I only paid a little for it but I learned a lot!
The worst cars that I have owned have been old, low mileage cars. Not running them is harder on them than regular use.
When I was an intern during my summer year after high school (1997), I spent a lot of time driving a 1994 Olds Ciera. I spent some time helping a friend who was form another and trying to get a driver’s license practice driving. He loved the Ciera as compared to the car he normally practiced in (forgot the model) because he said it was so easy to see out of and the parallel parking was so easy. Let him take his road test in it and he passed, so there is at least one person who was happy GM kept building them for so long.
I think there’s another point to be made here: how the existence of cars like the Ciera and Century in showrooms in the 1990s has influenced younger buyers. For example, Brendan, when was the last time you put a GM vehicle on your shopping list?
GM may have had pickup trucks and SUVs that appealed to younger buyers but what else of GM’s 1990s passenger car lineup appealed to younger buyers? And what appealed to those too young to drive but who would eventually go on to purchase a car? Cars like this fuelled a perception that GM was some kind of budget automaker, selling heavily incentivised, low-tech, outdated cars.
On a related note, I wouldn’t ever consider something like a ’99 Grand Am a deadly sin. Some of us may dislike the styling (I don’t mind it), but it was appealing to younger buyers and had some style inside and out. It may have used an old platform but it followed the Camry model more than the Ciera model, with meaningful enhancements and a fresh look. It sold well and initial reviews were fairly positive too. Hell, I think I may have to write it up.
Will, you’re spot on with that observation.
Cars like this, and most other GMs of the period solidified the view in my mind that GMs were for three types of people: the elderly that always bought GMs, the very budget conscious consumer who only saw the monthly payment number and was oblivious to things such as resale value, and of course, fleets!
I’ve honestly never truly aspired to any GM car over my lifetime, and that is why I may be a bit biased against the world’s once largest and most respected automaker.
My late grandparents had an A-body Buick Century, which I believe was their last new car. If I’m recalling correctly, it had the Buick 3.3 and four-speed automatic. They were very happy with it — floaty big-car ride, good power, capable of almost 30 mpg on the highway. However, they were coming from a background of aged ’70s full-size domestic wagons, downsized early-80s RWD cars, and a full-size conversion van. So, while their reactions were legit, it reinforced the impression that these were not cars relevant to me in any way except perhaps as a rental car.
Exactly. The two A-bodies I saw most frequently as a child were later model Centurys owned by the two elderly (in their 80s) sisters that each lived in their own part of the two-family house two doors down (or up, as it was up the hill) from me. They kept those cars until their respective passings in the mid-00s, and they pretty much summed up the typical A-body owner for me.
Just about anyone I knew that owned a GM and wasn’t elderly owned a truck, SUV, or minivan, or in the very slight chance, a compact Grand Am or similar because it was cheap. And the weird thing is that I currently have a handful of relative who all drive GMs (SUVs and trucks, of course) because “they’re union”.
The wagon is by far my favorite body style of this generation A-Body partly because the sloped rear window reminded me of the Audi 100 Avant/5000 Wagon from the 1980’s that I liked so much. It’s also the one I could justify building until 1996 since it was unlikely to cannibalize sales from other GM cars since the W’s didn’t have a wagon and for many people it was a Goldilocks just right size between the small J-Wagons and the full size whales from the 1990’s.
I think that Mr. Stopford’s comment that these cars stepped on the fortunes of the W body, as well as GM’s future is quite apt.
Mr. Cavanaugh’s comment that these became the Dodge Dart of their time is also quite apt. That GM thought that Chrysler’s product, which to this day is sometimes stuck in the past due to poverty, poor planning or neglect, was an example to follow, is truly mind boggling. GM was the company that until these cars usually led the marketplace.
I’ve long maintained these were the cars that in conjunction with the surviving G cars, (nee A cars) that launched GM’s platform proliferation, which morphed into brand proliferation. Appropriate I guess, that cars that started in the shame of doubt from their predecessors, would become themselves a source of doubt and competition to a variety of future GM cars.
All that said, these probably fall into the category of “honest cars.” They became competent and cost effective appliances for many. Several of my older co-workers in the early ’90s bought these cars as they transitioned toward retirement.
The Chrysler Sebring sort of became that car for my dad a decade later. And, while such cars may be poison for an auto brand, they certainly provide a legitimate, reliable, and emotionally, financially and physically comfortable service to their base. For this reason, I’m torn about cars like these – it’s unfortunate that their virtues and vices intersect.
Looking back, it’s sort of surprising that these wagon didn’t sell better – sort of an ’80s CUV. With the modest trunks of the era that were suddenly replacing their 20 cubic foot forbearers, these wagons look very versatile. The third row seats were dangerous and useless, but the tall cargo area and ability to fold down the second row makes for a much better vehicle. But, I too was part of the group that thought a trunk was necessary for stowing valuables out of sight, a worry that does not seems bother modern buyers, including myself.
My parents had two of these. First a short lived Pontiac 6000 wagon which got totaled then a Buick A wagon that lasted forever. For years they carted the family of 6 around in it. I hated it. There wasno rear legroom for my adolescent body…it was always cramped and hot with no ac. Finally it got hit and was declared totaled. The Taurus wagon that replaced it felt like a luxury car in comparison to the little century wagon.
I also always wanted my dad to get a minivan but he refused. He wanted to have plenty of cargo room in the back and in the old minivans you had a Chrysler withlittle storage behind the 3rd row and you had to use it since the first row was not a bench. On the a wagons and Taurus wagons you could seat 3 in the front. This was before child car seat laws. Old school …cramped with no ac lol
My favorite part of the movie “Sixteen Candles”? Watching Molly Ringwald’s father, brother, and all four grandparents trying to figure out how they’ll all fit in her father’s Buick Century, to the glorious sounds of Bowie’s “Young Americans.”
It’s funny to see the author impressed with how lasting-long was the production of the A-body in America. On the other hand, in third-world countries, where safety and pollution regulations are way loosened, companies feel comfortable to keep their platforms running through decades. GM again is a great example. In 1968 they introduced the Chevrolet Opala (a tropical variant of the Opel Rekord) as a full-size luxury car and production continued through a sequence of facelifts until its ending in April 1992, because the car was too antiquated to meet the new emission requirements. The early 90s Opala still seems very familiar and normal for Brazilian nationals but it might look pretty weird to an American or European petrolhead because it’s basically a car from the 60s that has been heavily masked to look like a modern car. Can you just imagine the round-shaped Dodge Neon from late 1993 still in production these days?? Well, another great example is the VW Type-2 which was produced for 65 years. The last Type-2 vehicles left the plant in early 2014. Where? In Brazil, of course…
There’s some other countries who are a good cotenders, Argentina who made the early 1960s Ford Falcon until 1990 or 1991 depending of the sources and the Peugeot 505 in Argentina until 1999 and Nigeria until 2005.
https://www.carjager.com/blog/article/peugeot-504-el-yeyo-a-la-conquete-de-largentine.html
and let’s add to the list local companies who built some models under licence like Paykan in Iran derived from the Hillman Minx and the Hindustan Ambassador derived from the Morris Oxford III until 2014.
Some Japanese carmakers did the same, Nissan sold the 1200 (later 1400) bakkie from 1971 to 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_1400
An A-body wagon is an amazingly low car by modern standards; it is hard to find in a parking lot because it is lower than the bed sides of a current F-150 or Silverado. Yet it swallows up an incredibly huge amount of stuff. Such as an entire apartment’s worth of Ikea furniture, including the mattress, ask me how I know.
Consumer Reports used to rate wagons on ease of loading, including the dimensions of the rear opening as well as liftover height. The A wagons take full advantage of their FWD design in having a very low liftover height. There’s no crossover or SUV that will ever come close.
For a brief period of time about 12-13 years ago, I actually owned a ’93 Cutlass Cruiser and a Mercedes W123 wagon simultaneously. The W123 was a grey market gas engined model. I would pick another A-body over another W123 any day. The Olds was quieter, rode more smoothly, got better gas mileage, and was way easier to get in and out of (like a Beetle, the M-B leaves minimal foot room between the seat and the door opening when the seat is adjusted forward for a shorter driver). And don’t even get me started on comparative parts/repair costs.
Well I must say I have a soft spot for A-Bodies because my ride home from being born was in an ’84 Cutlass Ciera (Iron Duke powered lol). I prefer the last ’90’s freshening although the wagon’s years are much harder to tell apart. And my parents made pretty much the linear progression after this-’88 Taurus Wagon-’96 JGC. The ’90s ones I see more than any other 25+ car except the ’92 style Camry. I have only seen a couple of pre-jellybean Tauri in the past 15 years.
There are so many what ifs and whys with these as they lasted from the deep post-2nd Gas Crisis/Inflation recession to the ’90s tech boom. Why did GM keep the larger rear-drive midsizers for almost another half-decade? Then they did odd things in launching the W and I guess initially kept at least the Century/Ciera to fill in gaps. (I never understood why the H/W didn’t offer wagons to replace the B/A wagons and also why Chevy didn’t get an H body). Moreover, especially later on these definitely suffocated the also-ran Skylark and Achieva. It seems at this time GM was very cautious about retiring platforms but this probably contributed to the newer models not paying off development costs.
What would have happened if GM had saved the
money on the W and did a full redesign on these in 1987 for a lot less money?
With the bean counters running General Motors during this period, the result was generic looking cookie cutter cars. Having said this that, the A Body cars despite the fact they were derived from the X-car platform were good cars that appealed to a certain demographic population who wanted basically transportation, not excitement.
My mother purchased a 1985 Pontiac 6000, and it suited her needs perfectly. The fit and finish on the interior and exterior was quite good, certainly far better than my 1980 Buick Skylark. I drove it on several occasions, it performed perfectly well in the point A to B transportation mode. Speaking of a 14-year production run, the 2d gen Camaro and Firebird were in production basically unchanged except for federal requirements from 1970 until 1983, and I believe the C3 Corvettes were produced from 1968 until about 1985 or so.
My mother drove the car from 1985 until 1989 when unfortunately she fell an broke a hip, she never drove again after that.
Was ’96 the last year GM made any traditional station wagons?
I don’t consider the Malibu Maxx to be a wagon, since its tail is bobbed.
I can’t remember if the Opel Insignia/Buick Regal TourX wagon was made in Canada with the sedans or just imported from Germany. Saturn may have had L and Ion wagons after ’96, too.
It would be very odd if Cadillac’s first and only factory wagon, the CTS, was GM’s last to be made in the US. It wasn’t a terribly roomy hauler with 25 cu ft behind the seat, but the sedan’s trunk was a dinky 13.8.
Regardless of all the back & forth above, and there are many good points, the fact is that the A cars were decently competent and reasonably priced cars for a significant market that wanted just that: folks mostly over 50, or families that wanted a mid-sized domestic wagon at a price point they could afford, all of which was made possible BECAUSE of their long production, refinement and tooling amortization. These people were not looking for cutting edge, but for economical and safe transportation. We knew a ton of older folks who bought them, drove them for years, and were extremely satisfied with them.
That said, the real GM sin was not in making the A cars for so long, it was that with their resources they should have been able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The fact that GM spent huge amounts of money and yet did not produce proper cars for those who were looking for a more competitive and modern vehicle (ie younger buyers, generally), was their true failing. The W and other models could have been those cars, developed properly and targeted to that market, and good enough to actually attract and keep them. Their other core market, the former B & C body loyalists, could have been better served by continuing not only their existing versions (3800 and other standard GM technology) for price sensitive older large-car buyers, but by offering upgraded premium versions incorporating true modern technology in those bigger cars: irs, superior ohc engines, advanced FI, &c &c, for those who wanted it, all of these being upmarket of the inexpensive A cars and appealing to differing expectations. Meantime the Ciera/Century served a large and important middle-American market. JPC remarked above that in essence the Ciera/Century were the modern versions of a Dart… what’s so wrong with that?
I should further add that those mentioned above hypothetically incorporating-more-modern-technology large cars, should have included better developed RWD versions as well: I’m looking at you Roadmaster and Caprice, both dropped the at the very same time as the Ciera/Century. Those kind of cars had been GM’s core competency for over 60 years by that time, and they should have remained a mainstay.
As with many things, I think it would have come down to timing. The late ’70s RWD B-body and G-body cars also lingered for a very long time, in a way that made them difficult to directly replace.
If GM had come out with a more modern RWD B-body in let’s say 1983–84, they might have managed to retain more of their previous momentum, but they went on through 1990, by which point they had become deeply entrenched as cop car/taxi/fleet vehicle and lost much of their relevancy as anything else. The 1991 Great White Whale restyle managed to really cement their status as oddballs, but the much more palatable-looking 1992 Ford Crown Victoria also ended up feeling far removed from the zeitgeist. They weren’t mainstream family cars anymore, and the need to mollify stingy fleet buyers limited how much the basic technology could be updated. The performance-oriented models (the Impala SS, Mercury Marauder, etc.) were fun, but they still felt like nostalgia items — Chubby Checker on CD rather than modern music.
I’m not sure by that point that there would have been any way to modernize them further that would have made them relevant again. At some earlier point, maybe — the example of the JDM Toyota Crown and Nissan Cedric/Gloria, also conservative, Brougham-ish RWD cars that managed to become more modern than the B-body ever did suggests “perhaps.”