When this car was new, it already represented somewhat of a culture clash, mixing traditional, soggy suspension tuning and Brougham aesthetics with then-exotic transverse front-drive and a unit body (just like a Fiat 128, Ethel). That’s not particularly new information, but this example, with driving lights and a ski-rack really drives the point home. Isn’t this how one would expect to see a Jetta dressed up?
As with other X-bodies, there was a “sporty” version, available with a high-output 2.8 liter V6 (in the Omega’s case, called ES 2800). With its black-out trim, it would make a better match (maybe) for the bike rack and driving lights; Olds even tried to make it very clear with this ad. See? It’s the cyclist’s Omega. Anyone who finds one of these now very uncommon cars is urged to snap some pictures and post them to the cohort.
In the meantime, let’s just imagine what this little oxblood Olds would look like after a clay bar treatment and some polishing. Even in British Columbia, there can’t be too many of these around, and now that they’ve recently ended their emissions testing scheme (which expires after this year), we can only hope its owner keeps it around for days when his or her active lifestyle is too exhausting to sustain.
Related: 1981 Oldsmobile Omega – X Marks The Spot
I think I’ve seen about one of these in my life. Never seen the Pontiac version in person, ever.
Oddly, I do see the occasional Citation and Buick Skylark – I think the Olds/Pontiac versions didn’t sell as well. It seems people who wanted a “cheap” one went straight for the Chevy, and people who wanted a “nice” one went straight for the Buick. Kind of foreshadowed the fate of all four brands…
It’s interesting how the mirrors seem to have migrated from the doors to the windows between ’82 (the ad) and ’83 (the feature car) or was that a trim level change?
And now with lower-slung wind shields, many cars are going back to the door-mounted mirrors.
Omega ES must be a very rare bird. I wonder what the interior was like? Bolstered buckets and floor shift?
Almost like seeing the FE3 suspension badges on Oldsmobiles of the late 80s early 90s – something rare that always made me sit up and take notice.
I remember reading somewhere that there were, at most, a few hundred made per year. Some were just called ES, but there was also the ES2800, ES2500 (Iron Duke) and SportOmega, all with unique and totally insane tape stripe packages.
There was also the Omega SX coupe for ’80 and ’81.
With nothing in common with the previous Nova-based Omega SX. Which I do recall seeing on the road. Unlike the X-car Omega SX.
The SX Bumblebee Package with those rally wheels is sweet!
And now I want an ’81 Omega SX coupe.
How about a nice Sport Omega?
Though I would wager its easier to find a virgin in a maternity ward than it is to find one of these buggers, but I’ll bet that there is at least one good one out there somewhere.
Tonight on Chasing Worthless Cars……..
Granted, I am biased, because I had a Skylark Coupe, but I like the body styling of the Coupe X Bodies. Sure, the cars were pretty much crap, but I did love my 84 Skylark Coupe.
The double grille and hood bulge almost make it look like a boxy 67/68 Cougar. I think I’m in love.
DAMN. I really like those SX’s. With the handling suspension, 2.8 and 5spd these would have been a blast. Say what you want, but this tape/blackout/rally wheel combo is typical of the look that really makes boxy 80s era cars actually look decent. Sure its more show than go, but Id be proud to rock it. Of course, if that were mine, it’d have a worked up turbo Ecotec under the hood….
I’m not a fan of these X-cars–see my post farther down–but when I look at this SX, I clearly see the ties to the Cutlass Supreme. I think this is one of the few angles from which the design really works.
Every division at one point or another had a “sport themed” X-car, the X11 is the most famous and most produced by far, but there are the mentioned Omegas, the Skylark Sport Coupe and Sedan with black out trim and the Phoenix SJ.
I do want to add an X-car to my collection, but I don’t know which kind, the sporty themed ones or a full mini-brougham like a Skylark Limited. I guess with X-cars, its whatever you can find, there seems to be a high survivor count in the Skylarks, probably because of the owner age.
I forgot that the Skylark made it to the T-type era for Buicks, there was a clean T-type coupe I remember seeing in the mid 90’s, that was owned by an old lady that ran a day care/summer camp center, I remember looking at it in the parking lot and getting chased away by the old lady.
“Can I help you?”
The early Skylark Sport models had a grille similar to the 1976-77 Century coupe and later Century Turbo coupe and SportWagon. It’s been years since I’ve seen a 1978-79 SportWagon. I’d like to have one someday!
They did, they had a body colored grille that was different from the regular Skylark, they also had black “camera case” finish on the dash with back gauges instead of the wood grain and silver faced regular Buick gauges.
You know whats a real trip?
Oldsmobile sponsored a professional rally team that used 2 specially prepped Omegas as rally cars, one was totaled in a wreck, but I think one survives, I wonder why Oldsmobile got out of it.
See! This explains the fog lights on the feature car! Say it with me…
Oldsmobile Omega Brougham WRC Championship Limited Edition.
Wow! That is AWESOME! What did they race in?
Not sure what class, but here are some links to it in actual competition.
http://vintagenwmotorsport.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/norwester-1985/comment-page-1/
http://vintagenwmotorsport.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/1985-olympus-rally-part-2/
http://vintagenwmotorsport.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/olympus-rally-1983/
What is this emissions testing scheme that is ending? My knee jerk reaction would be take this Omega over a Jetta, but that is just me. The driving lights sure are clever, there is a lot of countryside in Canada and the I bet the roof rack can be used for things other than skis.
http://www.aircare.ca
Wow, they are getting rid of emissions testing, dang.
I think I’d choose a Jetta over this quite easily, but there is a horrible little part of me which actually likes it a lot.
This reminds me something! A fishing trip with friends of mine in 1996. One of them had a 1984 Omega Brougham he got from his grandfather a few months before and we were pulling my 1968 tent-trailer at the back. The low-mileage Chevy 2.8 engine started to knock at around 11:30 PM on our way back home while I was driving the car and my friend didn’t want me to stop… He didn’t want to drive his own car either as he was tired!
I told him I wouldn’t be responsible for what was about to happen to his car and I had to drive the car until the engine exploded (that took about an hour). We still didn’t have mobile phones back then but we were lucky enough to have the engine self-destruct just as we were approaching a policeman helping an old man to change a flat tire on the side of the road. The policeman heard the explosion and I managed to stop the car (which had lost it’s power assist) about 15 feet behind the police car… The policeman called the local junkyard owner (who was asleep) and we got the car and my trailer towed to the junkyard at about 1:30 AM. Then we left in my other friend’s 1986 Nova (who was pulling my 14′ fishing boat) we arrived home at 6AM and went back to get my trailer with his father’s 1990 Cherokee immediately after.
We left the Omega at the junkyard with barely 134,000 kms (83,000 miles) and my friend got $64 for his car…
I had never been previously (or after!) in the small village where the junkyard was but this place happened to be where both of my grandparents grew up on my mother’s side. My great grandfather was the smith of the village back in the 1920’s!
This picture shows the car (and it’s not-so-happy previous owner who hadn’t slept the night betore!) in the same angle as the featured car.
What a story thanks for sharing. The worst cars tend be older and low mileage.
Ah yes, the little X car!
For those that are wondering, the interiors on the sportier models were the same as the regular models, just usually had a console between the front seats.
If GM had allowed these to fully bake before releasing them, they would have had a real winner. For such a small car (104.9 wheelbase with 181 inch total length) they had a lot of interior room. I really think I could have laid down in the back seat floorboard of my old Skylark!
One last thing, the grille on this one tells me it’s a 1984 model, the last year for the Omega. 🙂
“the grille on this one tells me it’s a 1984 model, the last year for the Omega”
So this is the omega Omega?
Those were pretty dismal. Never a big seller, but Olds was unloading so many Cutlass Supremes and 88’s I think it took them some time to realize the Omega and Cutlass Salon Aero coupe/sedan were languishing on their dealer’s lots. Didn’t those Omegas have some sort of composite front fenders on them? Can you imagine one with the 2.5L?
I had a 1990 Cutlass Calais sedan with the 3.3L, and it was the car the X body Omega should have been.
I think I read somewhere that the SportOmega that had composite fenders. Don’t know about the non-Sports.
This must have been a common Omega colour, I captured a two door version in the same shade in the Cohort a while ago:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/47912141@N04/11787770244/
My family bought a 1980 Omega during the initial excitement over the X-cars, and fitting its name, it ended up being the last American car that our family ever bought after a decade of only domestics (2 Oldsmobile Cutlasses and 1 Chevrolet Nova). It was that bad. We struggled with it for two or three years, so I remember it well. Sadly, as Richard expressed earlier, the design was actually quite good in terms of space and comfort, so it seemed great in the showroom and in a test drive, but it was fatally flawed with detail problems that made it a reliability and drivability nightmare. Another year of working out the problems before release may have saved GM a lot of lost customers.
Here’s the story of an Omega that nearly killed its owner:
http://www.joesherlock.com/BadOmega.html
Interesting story, thank you for the link. I am surprised the owner held on to it for so long.
I test drove one of these for my mother. She had made up her mind to buy an Omni or Horizon (she was looking for a “small but plush” car.) Mopar fanboi that I was at the time, I really hoped she didn’t buy it and carried an animus towards the Omega. Truthfully, I don’t really remember anything bad about it, and it seemed to present fairly well.
In time, I would learn that my animus was wasted, as the X car crapped all over itself without my help. Mom never even went to look at it, I think she was put off by the higher price.
Hell! Even as a 10 year old kid back in 83′ when I saw this Oldsmobile Ωmega I thought it was the most boring car. Now being older, the most boring car of the entire 1980’s!
In the same era Around early 1984, I saw my first Pontiac Fiero and thought it was the coolest car! LOL!
I was a bit older than you, an early teenager, but largely felt the same way. The early 80s proliferation of the X-Cars, K-Cars and the Escort/Lynx, amongst domestics, had me fearful for the future of fun/interesting mainstream cars. I was so relieved to see the aero styling direction Ford was soon headed in. Even the quirky EXP, seemed to have more character than any X-Car. I’ll never forget the sound of so many underpowered and buzzy Citations and Skylarks (as they were the most popular models). Painful, to hear them under load. And the sight of their easily bottomed out rear suspensions. The Citation and Phoenix hatchbacks truly reminded me of shelled insects, at the time. I could see why the hatches weren’t common in greens or brown. They may have forwarded space utilization in small cars, but the ones I rode in, and drove, felt inexpensive. Thank God the domestic industry came back somewhat, from this low point in time.
Speaking of that time, I always thought that if “A Christmas Story”‘s period setting were scotched and it was told as a (then) present-day story, the Old Man’s Olds would’ve been a FWD X Omega sedan…maybe even in that color…
I really like these mini-luxury cars with great room inside. Just avoid the Pontiac 2.5L 4 cyl engine.
My brothers Skylark with the 2.5 went almost 300.000 miles.
Living in a time and place where putting “Oldsmobile” on a car meant it would sell, these were a fairly common sight. I gave credit to Olds for putting styling cues on this box that made it an Olds, but I found the blunt front to be sort of odd looking. Certain years had grills that made it seem a bit odder than this car.
I now realize the reason for the oddness of its proportions. It is very much a ’77-’79 Delta 88 that has been chopped with a cleaver in even dimension. A modern Studebaker Lark.
I thought JPC would be more into this one!
I always thought it was interesting how the 1980 X-cars were all sort of styled like baby intermediates to sort of sooth and comfort buyers that might be apprehensive about these new fangled FWD compacts. The Omega has lots of Cutlass styling elements, and why not, the Cutlass was one of the best selling cars in the US, the Skylark is Regal inspired, the Phoenix is LeMans/Grand Prix-esque, too LeMans-ish, which might have hurt it, since the downsized 78 A-LeMans wasn’t a big seller, and the Citation had Malibu themes all over it.
Yep. And at that, I think the hatchback X’s looked a lot better than the formal coupes and sedans.
Very true how these were styled to look like mini A-bodies, but the themes which worked so well on the A/G body cars (which I am an unabashed fan of) just didn’t work so well in this smaller size. The Citation looked Malibu-esque but in a way that eliminated most of the details, the Skylark’s Regal-inspired details turned out awkward (the bend in the lower grille didn’t fit the design at all), the Phoenix looked a bit cartoonish, and the Omega – probably the best-looking X-body IMO – still looked a bit odd.
Part of the problem was also that, to me, these cars looked disproportionate, like they were too wide for their length. Probably an optical illusion but they always looked almost Pacer-esque in their proportions. I think the effect was most marked on the Skylarks.
Also, maybe it’s just me, but on the rare occasion I see an X-body anymore it usually seems to be an Omega or a Skylark. The last of the Citations seem to have hit the junkyard 5 to 10 years ago and Phoenixes were never common, that I remember.
Love the obvious aftermarket CHMSL sticking up so high! Wasn’t around then, but I’ve been told loads of people fitted their pre-1986 cars with them so others couldn’t easily tell their car was “old”.
That and that CHMSL’s lowered chances into getting into an accident, thought I like to think it was mostly for the former.
That reminds me that my father’s 1986 Volks Jetta GL Turbo Diesel didn’t have one. I always wondered why. Maybe it’s because it was an early-production model.
Was this in Canada? Canada market VWs didn’t get the CHMSL until 1987, and yes it was a popular retrofit at the time. I wanted one for my 1985 Jetta but the dealer price was outrageous, so I found a close lookalike from a wrecked Festiva.
You’re right, it was in Canada.
That paint is far too gone for a clay and polish. More like a sand and respray.
I don’t know, those old GM Lacquers would surprise you with some heavy TLC. I’ve seen some stunning turnarounds on cars that I thought for sure were resprayed.
A good friend of mine had a Sport Omega in college in the early 90s. This friend had a succession of beaters that his dad would take in on trade at his dealership, and give the ‘$1’ trades to his kids for college. We just called it Sport Omega and it could take a beating and keep on ticking. It had a wierd steering thing where it would lock up at times (!) But it was still faster than walking. My favorite X-car would be the rare Skylark T-Type coupe. I loved how Buick creatively crammed a gauge package into a space that they didn’t intend for one to go. And with a 135 hp HO V6, it had some decent power for the time. If Buick had morphed into the Euro division earlier with refinements and enhancements to its T-Type models, if could have evolved into the American BMW earlier. Instead, it was the division with old in its name.
My aunt Kathy actually owned an Omega similar to this one between her late-’70s Starfire and late-’80s Cutlass Ciera coupe. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures.
My Mother In Law had a 83 Buick Skylark bought new .
That car did a great job of driving her(pun intended) to the nearest Toyota dealership
My father had an ’81 Skylark. Often said it was the worst car he ever owned. Bought it to save on gas. Replaced it 2 years later with an ’83 K-based New Yorker 2.2 non-turbo. Not a good run of cars..
The ad with the bicycles is a nice touch. The car should have come with bikes as standard equipment so you could get home after it broke down.
What a remember about the 60 degree 2.8L V6 is that it was installed rotated to fit in the engine bay, one of those horrible GM compromises too typical of the time. For one bank of cylinders the spark plugs were so far down in the back in the engine bay you needed a mechanic to change them for you — no small deal in an era when spark plug replacement was a regular event.
Once GM fully baked the X cars and added bigger trunks to make the A cars, then they sold well and lasted longer.
Too bad.
One other thing I remember about X car mania was dealers were encouraged to order tilt steering wheels, so the portly middle aged buyers would fit better, after trading in their 1974 tanks.
The rally Omega is interesting! It might have inspired Majorette to do this version of the Omega casting. Do you know if it existed in this exact livery? It just know comes to my mind that the Seiko ad on an Omega might have just been a watch joke.
I’d totally forgotten that existed–very topical. Majorette did a good job of offering models of everyday cars that other manufacturers ignored…Omega, Honda Accord, Tercel SR5 wagon…