(first posted 11/26/2016) The introduction of an all-new car typically elicits a reasonable degree of praise from the press. Even if reviews aren’t completely glowing, writers usually try to serve up at least a small dose of compliments, simply to keep advertisers happy if nothing else. But a GM Deadly Sin rightfully earns a deadly write-up, as was the case with the 1985 Oldsmobile Calais Supreme. In the November 1984 issue of Car and Driver, Jean Lindamood ended her Calais review as follows: “…won’t it be embarrassing if, twenty years hence, the division goes under because all its customers have died?” Little did Lindamood know how prophetic her words would turn out to be, or how much damage the Calais would do to the Oldsmobile brand.
Of course, when Car and Driver published the review, no one would have dreamed that Oldsmobile was actually already in deep trouble. For starters, the division typically earned the number three spot for U.S. car sales just behind Chevrolet and Ford, and had been routinely selling 1 million+ units most years since the late-1970s. The Cutlass Supreme in particular was America’s sweetheart, happily residing in the top-ten sellers annually. Olds models also sold at a premium price relative to Chevrolets, so the high volume had the added advantage of spinning lots of cash for General Motors. Surely the corporation would invest to keep that Cutlass cash cow going strong…
After all, Oldsmobile had perfected the formula to appeal to aspirational Americans seeking a solid all-around performer with upscale flair. While the Supreme name had first graced the Cutlass/F-85 mid-size line in 1966 as a top trim level, it wasn’t until the introduction of the Cutlass Supreme hardtop coupe with the new, more formal roofline that the magic Cutlass spell was cast on countless Americans.
The 1970 Cutlass Supreme hardtop coupe married the roofline from the GM G-Body (Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo) with the regular Cutlass A-Body front- and rear-ends. The resulting car was a “just right” blend of attributes: the handsome styling was slightly sporty and slightly formal, the interior and ride were very comfortable, the standard Olds-built 350 V8 was smooth and powerful. The Cutlass Supreme was pitched to upwardly-mobile Americans seeking an “Escape Machine.” These buyers took the bait in droves: the two-door Supreme sold hundreds of thousands of units annually throughout the 1970s.
In fact, after the Arab Oil Embargo sales for the Cutlass Supreme climbed higher than ever, as buyers found the comfort of a full-size Oldsmobile in a more convenient, mid-size package. For 1976, the Oldsmobile Cutlass was the best selling car in America. For 1977, 424,343 Cutlass Supreme Coupes were sold, quite a feat given that the newly downsized full-sized B-Body Delta 88 models matched the Cutlass on exterior dimensions while being substantially roomier inside. But of course the Delta 88 was just a “nice” big car, while the Cutlass Supreme was a “looker” by the standards of the 1970s—perfect for image conscious buyers seeking to make a bit of a style statement.
Typically, Olds fashioned one of the best looking packages on the market for its mid-sized personal luxury coupes. For the 1978 downsized A-Special coupes, Oldsmobile offered a handsome “waterfall” grille, nicely contoured flanks and a rakish rear-end. Styling continuity was good, as looks were always fresh but still recognizably Oldsmobile. Resulting resale values were also strong, as used car buyers happily snapped up attractive late model Cutlass Supremes.
The GM A-Specials got an “aerodynamic” freshening for 1981, making the cars a bit sleeker and smoother with a slightly improved coefficient-of-drag. Per usual, Olds made the most of the new design direction, with a well-designed “shovel nose” that looked contemporary but still very Oldsmobile. Per the typical GM schedule of the day, this refresh was expected to be good for 2 to 3 years until an all-new successor could appear. Buff books and car preview guides were anticipating new front-wheel-drive replacements for the A-Specials would arrive for 1984.
And that all-new Cutlass Supreme was originally going to have been this car, part of the GM20 N-Body program.
That’s right, when conceived in the late 1970s, the N-body was envisioned to be the replacement for the A-Special personal luxury coupes. Given the mandates for higher fuel efficiency dictated by the U.S. government’s CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, the N-Bodies would be FWD compacts. Dropping down a size class and targeting buyers seeking stylish, efficient coupes was actually a smart move, given that younger buyers were flocking to the compact size segment in droves. A big key to success for these image-conscious small car buyers was contemporary style. Surely GM’s industry leading Design Studios would crank out a masterpiece for the new N-Bodies…
For decades, much of GM’s success could be attributed to excellent styling. While all talented designers have their highs and lows, legendary design bosses Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell were masters of automotive sculpture and most of the work they oversaw was good to great. Both men also had the bravado to fight hard for strong designs, aggressively pushing back against timid divisional bosses, grumpy manufacturing chiefs and flinty finance executives in order to sell their vision.
That design leadership came to a screeching halt when Mitchell retired in 1977. His legitimate successor, in both taste and temperament, should have been Chuck Jordan. But GM, seeking manufacturing efficiency and perpetual cost cutting, decreed that design no longer mattered. Thus Jordan was passed over for Irv Rybicki, a “go-along to get-along” studio head whose main qualification was that he wouldn’t make waves in the GM executive suite. Rybicki kept the manufacturing and finance teams happy with uninspired, easy-to-build, low cost designs. Who cared if they were ugly and undifferentiated? It was GM, after all, the world’s automotive leader. They could sell anything to anyone, right? You, know, with that famous “Mark of Excellence.”
Rybicki’s ascension ushered in a disastrous era for GM design, as the once-wondrous styling studios were only permitted to send forth boxy, cookie-cutter cars. The J-cars were bland and undifferentiated. The front-wheel-drive A-Bodies were sleep-inducing, with rigidly square greenhouses and minimal divisional identities. Awkward proportions were the hallmark of the front-wheel-drive C-Bodies, making the GM flagships look small and cheap. But the winner of the ugly pageant for GM’s 1985 line-up was the stumpy N-Body.
Looking as though they were drawn by a five-year-old, the N-bodies featured “old-school” formal styling cues forced onto a small platform. The resulting malformed runts were sexy and stylish to basically no one. Arguably, the ugliest of the bunch was from Oldsmobile, the former leader of GM’s mid-sized glamour coupes.
Such a styling disaster would have been bad for any car targeting any segment, but the frumpy Calais was particularly lethal since it was aimed at the enormous Baby Boomer market. Prime years for consumers to buy new cars—and more expensive cars—are when the buyers reach their 30s and 40s. Earlier generations of buyers in this age range had gleefully snapped-up Cutlass Supremes, since they were stylish and functional for the times. But now things were different.
The 1980s were the decade when the leading-edge of the Baby Boom Generation, with people born in 1946 through the 1950s, were “growing up.” Jobs, families and responsibilities took center stage, and Baby Boomers—like every generation of car buyers before (and after)—were looking for relevant, up-to-date products that reflected their style and values.
Detroit lore has it that Baby Boomers rejected American cars to “rebel” against their parent’s choices, deliberately picking imports just to spite patriotic older generations. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, domestics also made the list, if they were innovative and well designed. Boomers happily bought anything that represented a smart solution to meet their needs—for example, the Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager were enormously popular with young families, as the Chrysler minivans were a great combination of efficiency and practicality that were far more useful for many buyers than full-size wagons.
The Jeep Cherokee was another example of an innovative domestic that had huge appeal to boomers, and largely paved the way for the SUV boom to fallow.
For rolling image statements in the 1980s, however, many of the best choices did in fact come from overseas. Well-packaged compact cars with refined, fuel-efficient engines and tasteful, subdued international styling were all the rage. The BMW 3 Series was the favorite of “Yuppies” (young, upwardly mobile professionals) who had the means to indulge in a more expensive car.
Japanese sports coupes and compact sedans were also very popular with Baby Boomers. And these cars hit the demographic sweet spot for a huge cohort of buyers: the average age of a BMW 3 Series buyers was 38, a Toyota Supra buyer was 35. GM was swimming into some fiercely competitive waters in the quest for the Boomer buyers. Or any buyers, for that matter—most Cutlass Supreme buyers, regardless of their generation, would have been turned off by a new car that looked like an unattractive, shrunken version of an 8-year-old design…
Perhaps sensing that the GM20 N-Bodies might be a styling bust, GM got cold feet and decided not to make the new N-bodies the replacements for the still strong selling G-Special (né A-Special) coupes. So in a marketing twist that would do Houdini proud, the N-bodies were squeezed in between the compact FWD J-Body and midsize FWD A-Body, roughly in the market segment previously occupied by the much maligned FWD X-Body cars. So the N-Bodies that were meant to be the Buick Regal, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Pontiac Grand Prix needed new names, since their RWD G-Special forbears would remain on the market a bit longer. (Note: Chevrolet opted out of the GM20 N-Body program, which was a smart move–the idea of shrunken Monte Carlo styling cues on an N-Body is nightmare-inducing. However, Chevrolet did ultimately offer an N-Body derived car: the L-Body Beretta/Corsica (aka GM25) that arrived in 1987 was basically a better looking GM20 with a far more attractive roofline.)
What to call the cars, then, since the originally planned names couldn’t be used? Well, Buick simply grabbed the “Somerset” moniker from an old Regal trim package and slapped that in front of the Regal name to create the “new” Somerset Regal.
Over at Pontiac, the division scrambled to replace the name Grand Prix with Grand “something.” How about Grand 3000? Grand Ventura? No, no… got it! Grand Am! Cars with that name had only failed miserably twice, maybe the third time would be the charm (actually, it was—the Grand Am soon became the best selling Pontiac model and the best selling N-body by far).
Olds clearly wanted the linkage with the best selling Cutlass name. For 1982, the division had modified the Cutlass name by adding the nonsensical “Ciera” tag (did they mean Sierra as in the mountains, just with an alliterative twist?) to the FWD A-Body. For the 1985 N-Body, Olds adopted the Calais name from the “sporty” G-Special Cutlass coupe (which once again became the Cutlass Salon for 1985). The Calais was also offered with the more upscale Supreme trim, once again furthering the Cutlass connection. Note: in later years, when it was clear that the N-Body Calais was a bust, Oldsmobile became more overt with the Cutlass name in the hopes of rekindling some magic—the Calais became the Cutlass Calais from 1988 through 1991.
But no matter the name, there was nothing magical about the car. It was the same tired Olds formula made smaller and less appealing. The style, engineering competence and thoughtful features needed to endear the Calais to new generations of buyers were botched. The Car and Driver road test in November 1984 laid out the extent of the damage.
For a car targeting younger Baby Boomer buyers who were increasingly shopping imports, getting the little details right was critically important—but Olds flubbed the assignment. An old-school Detroit strip-style speedometer with blue backlighting was standard (more complete instrumentation or digital instruments were optional at extra cost). The steering wheel spokes, even on the optional “sport” wheel, were mounted at 4 and 8 o’clock, a suboptimal placement for gripping the wheel. The center console storage bin/armrest sat on top of the center mounted parking brake handle, so when the brake was engaged, the console armrest tipped awkwardly back. Embarrassingly sloppy.
Ergonomic flaws paled in comparison to the pathetic powertrains. Here was an all-new design running the same tired engines that had been rattling around in GM’s arsenal for decades. Base power came from the Pontiac Iron Duke 2.5 L four, and provided gruff, uninspiring power to countless GM cars including the X-Body, FWD A-Body, P-Body (Pontiac Fiero) and F-Body. It was essentially one half of a Pontiac 301 V8, an engine that had its roots in the first Pontiac V8 of 1955.
Ironically, GM had to spend money re-engineering the 4-cylinder in order to wedge the engine into the smaller J-Car-based N-Body. Per Car and Driver in July 1984: “it was necessary to trim this four-cylinder engine’s length to fit the available space. A total of 3.7 inches was eliminated by narrowing the front and rear main bearings, moving the end cylinders’ crankshaft counterweights inboard, minimizing the block overhang beyond the end cylinder bores, and sinking the water pump and the cam drive farther into the block.” Leave it to GM to extensively rework a very low-tech engine in order to “make it fit” rather than to design a proper, competitive four, something GM seemed incapable of doing for decades. Surely Boomers would love to rock (literally) an Iron Duke in their new sporty coupe!
The better engine choice for the Calais was the Buick-built 3.0 Liter OHV V6. Yet another “heritage” engine, this mill started life 24 years before the Calais was launched, back when many of the Baby Boomer target audience were little kids. At least the pushrod V6 provided respectable power, though fuel economy was not great at all for a compact. The only transmission choice was a 3-speed automatic—at a time when most key imported competitors were offering 4-speed automatics. As for drivers who preferred to shift for themselves, the 5-speed manual was only available on the 4-cylinder.
Let’s see, horrible styling, dated powertrains, bad seats, ergonomic flubs—why wouldn’t buyers come running? Naturally they didn’t, and Oldsmobile only managed to unload 106,240 Calais for 1985, 24% short of the 140,000 target GM had set for the car. Nor were these units incremental business for Olds, since Firenza sales tumbled 40% for 1985 and the compact Omega was gone, meaning that 86,821 of the Calais sales were really just filling in for the lost volume from 1984 for those models. As for the Cutlass Supreme, that 8-year-old design trounced the Calais: 151,926 of the RWD coupes were sold for 1985. But probably not to a lot of Baby Boomers…
C&D estimated that the Calais V6 as tested price was $12,500, which would equate to $29,082 in today’s dollars—pretty pricey for such an ugly, incompetent car. Plus, let’s think about the competitive set for those Baby Boomer shoppers: an all-new front-wheel-drive Nissan Maxima GL with the impressive 3.0 Liter SOHC V6 and 4-speed automatic would have cost only $1,000 more ($2,327 adjusted). Comparing a Calais Supreme with the Tech IV and 5-speed manual to a 1985 Accord LX 5-speed, adjusted for equipment, and the Calais MSRP was actually $344 ($800 adjusted) more than the Honda. Granted, these imports were selling at or above sticker, while the Calais was surely heavily discounted. But still, the Calais had an eye-popping high price for a car that was so uncompetitive and needed so many options to match the standard equipment on the imports.
If the appallingly bad Car and Driver review wasn’t bad enough to turn off potential customers, then Oldsmobile’s own marketing surely did. Here was a dumpy little car served up with underwhelming, dated engines. So how do you show it off?
That’s right, a modified Calais (convertible conversion) paced the 69th running of the Indianapolis 500. Just imagine watching this dorky little thing make its way around the track ahead of the race cars….
But wait, there’s more: Olds also offered a “limited” production Calais 500 so that buyers could park a piece of Indy history in their driveway. With a standard Tech IV!
And look inside! An interior sure to impress Baby Boomers from coast to coast. Talk about a date magnet!
Did the embarrassing Pace Car marketing really make a difference? Was the enthusiast-oriented Car and Driver’s assessment too harsh? After all, most car buyers weren’t car buffs in 1985, so maybe the mini-me Cutlass Supreme would suffice for some. Then again, maybe not. Consumer Guide 1985 Auto Test provided reviews for both the Calais Supreme and Cutlass Supreme, and once again the new car came up short.
The Consumer Guide test Calais had the optional V6 and sport suspension, which helped elevate the score in several areas. In the same issue, CG tested a Somerset Regal with the 4-cylinder and 3-speed automatic and found it sorely lacking. Their verdict on performance: “GM announces improvements to the 2.5 “Iron Duke” every year, yet it never seems to be enough. With automatic it’s sluggish, plus the transmission is slow to respond to the throttle for downshifts and it will quickly change to a higher gear unless you keep the pedal to the floor.”
The old-fashioned Cutlass Supreme was the preferred choice by Consumer Guide’s testers. Tried and true in every way, it was a comforting throwback for buyers still interested in a large, body-on-frame Detroit icon. However, the classic design did nothing to lower the average age of Oldsmobile buyers.
Having given up on the Calais as a Cutlass Supreme replacement, Olds added a 4-door sedan to the Calais model mix for 1986. At least that way the Calais line could be a more comprehensive replacement for the late, unlamented Omega X-Body. The move did add some incremental volume, as combined Calais coupe and sedan sales hit 151,307 units for 1986 (which would be the high water mark for Calais sales). However, the good ol’ Cutlass Supreme Coupe and Sedan retailed 211,156 units that same year.
Olds could not have been happy with the Calais sales performance. So what did they do? How about an ultra-bland minor facelift to make an already boring front-end even more generic? Hey, at least the car finally got flush, aerodynamic headlights.
What the Calais really needed, aside from a complete reskin, was help under the hood. By the early 1980s, it was clear that multi-valve OHC engines were the wave of the future, given the performance and efficiency advantages of that design configuration. Except General Motors had zero interest. In the book Setting The Pace: Oldsmobile’s First 100 Years, Engine Engineer Tom Leonard noted that “Management didn’t want four valves because…they cost twice as much.” Assistant Comptroller Jim Rucker recounted “We had a devil of a time trying to explain to the corporation that we needed another four-cylinder engine, because at that point we had a J-car engine, a T-car engine (for the Chevy Chevette/Pontiac T1000), and we had the Iron Duke. You add all those up, that is 7000 a day or more—a lot of four-cylinder capacity. What we had to do was prove to the Corporation that (the Quad-4) wasn’t just another engine.” Rucker and the Olds team actually had to buy a Mercedes 190, Honda Accord and Toyota Camry for a management roadshow to demonstrate that “the engines we [GM] had wouldn’t make it into the Nineties and weren’t what we had in mind for the N-Car (Cutlass Calais).” Though The General would ultimately market the Quad-4 as a leading-edge “clean sheet” design, the reality was that they had no desire to produce the engine at all.
This level of ignorance and complacency was shocking, but sadly it represented just another day at GM. Imagine being a talented GM employee suffocating under these clods. To make matters worse, Roger Smith’s disastrous reorganization was put into place during 1984, effectively eliminating independent divisions and consolidating massive North American GM into two gigantic bureaucracies: Buick Oldsmobile Cadillac (BOC) and Chevrolet Pontiac Canada (CPC). Imagine being a loyal Oldsmobile employee now having to tell people you worked for BOC. No wonder nothing got done right, if at all.
The Quad-4 was not done right. When the engine finally debuted for 1988, it did make an impression: a loud one. Corners were cut and the engine was noisy and unrefined. Consumer Guide Auto ’91 dryly noted that the Quad-4s were “the noisiest Calais engines, producing a grating, raspy growl…” Plus, CG pointed out that the Quad-4s developed “their power at much higher engine speeds, so you have to work them hard for brisk acceleration.” Flogging a gruff engine for speed is hardly the dream of any driver, particularly ones tempted by smooth imported 4-cylinders.
Even with the 1988 model year arrival of the Quad-4 and the new FWD W-Body Cutlass Supreme (yet another attempt to replace the old RWD G-Special, which ironically was still being sold as the Cutlass Supreme Classic), Oldsmobile sales continued the slide that had started after 1984—1988’s sales total was 36% lower than 1984 despite a slew of new models. The root cause of the problem was that the new front-wheel-drive Oldsmobiles were subpar, generic GM cookie cutter cars, both in looks and driving dynamics. The old Cutlass Supreme magic was destroyed, with neither the Calais nor the W-Body Cutlass Supreme able to take over for the successful older car and reinvent the brand for a new generation of buyers. Apparently, making great cars to attract Baby Boomers (and their parents) was too hard and too expensive. Surely there was an easier way to lure those pesky Boomers. Perhaps all that was needed was a new advertising campaign….
This infamous “New Generation of Olds” brand campaign debuted for the 1989 model year, and introduced the punchline “not your father’s Oldsmobile” replete with young “hip” people doing cartwheels on Oldsmobiles. In this case, there was truth in advertising: these cars were definitely not my father’s Oldsmobiles (actually my mother’s): our Olds were smooth, powerful, good looking, reliable, comfortable cars with good resale values. These chintzy, ugly, unrefined front drive Oldsmobiles? Not so much. Plus, by insulting previous Oldsmobile customers, GM managed to further offend the dwindling brand loyalists.
Thirtysomething buyers must have thought the advertising was hysterically bad. They happily continued buying Hondas, and the Accord became the best selling car in the U.S. for 1989. Close behind in the sales race were successful American designs like the well-executed Ford Taurus.
At Oldsmobile, the hemorrhaging continued. Brand sales continued to drop year-over-year. By 1991, the stale Cutlass Calais was still on the market with the same awful styling that had seemed out-of-date when the car had appeared 7 years before. During this same time span, Honda had served up 3 generations of the Accord, while the Toyota Camry and Nissan Maxima had seen two design generations. Olds had simply offered the “Quad-Roar” engine, flush headlamps and passive seat-belts. 1991 Calais sales bottomed out at a miserable 75,414 units for the year. Nothing Supreme about that. Total Oldsmobile sales for 1991 were down 62% from 1985 when the Calais was first introduced.
The crown jewel at Oldsmobile for the 1970s and early 1980s had been the Cutlass Supreme, but GM couldn’t figure out how to reinvent the gravy train in a downsized world. Olds failed spectacularly in keeping the Cutlass relevant for new buyers, with the Calais being the poster child for how bad design, dated and/or half-baked engineering, wretched marketing and a complete lack of understanding of target customers could conspire to create an unmitigated disaster.
So Jean Lindamood was correct with her prediction of doom: in December 2000 GM announced that Oldsmobile would be closing. The last Oldsmobile—an Alero, the successor to the Calais/Achieva–was produced in April 2004, almost 20 years from the date when Lindamood penned the 1985 Calais review predicting the Olds division’s death two decades hence. Sins don’t get much deadlier than that!
Related: Curbside Classic’s Complete Cutlass Chronicles Central
Could this prediction be anticipated? Perhaps with Oldsmobile being a brand more attuned to the older set ? (even though it was the “it” brand of the 70s), By the 80s Buick was more popular (look at where Buick’s sales were in ’84). By this time the market became fickle. Don’t Gloat, European car lovers: Mercedes Benz is now about as ordinary as Cadillac was in the 1980s – And one could argue,that with ‘quality’ declining at MB due to increased production (Sound familiar?) that an Olds today would be a bargain. Effing Ell, All this will get me into a Chrysler 300… Tomorrow!
And I got the feeling then BMW might follow the same path with some members of the board want to push to get every BMW in every driveway.
In a way, BMW has become the Olds of today.
Many used ones available and static styling. You see them everywhere. The new one in your driveway looks just like the one the 20 something down the street bought used from the local independent dealer. Takes away from the “specialness” of them imo
BMWs are the most prestigious lawn ornament money can buy, the shiny new one on the driveway replaces the dead last years model with the grass growing over it.
This is an epic write up.
I missed a lot of this because I lived in NYC during much of that time and did not own a car, but I saw and sensed the sadness on the streets.
And rented a few of them.
The conflicting console storage box & emergency brake would have been comical if it wasn’t so symbolic of GM’s own internal conflicts.
Once I started your story I could not stop. And, I kept saying to myself “so that’s how it happened”.
Funny about the console storage box. I had an 86 Grand Am that I acquired an aftermarket console storage box for to hold my cassette tapes. It fit perfectly between the seats and even had a small cutout for the emergency brake. But yes, the console sat on top of the emergency brake so whenever I applied the emergency the brake, the console would till up along with it! It didn’t bother me at the time but may be a bit strange today.
“We need a between-the-seats handbrake or the buff books’ll gripe about it. But most people buy automatics and nobody ever uses the handbrake with those.”
What made the console box/parking brake conflict so comical was the fact that GM launched a massive ad campaign at about the same time, proclaiming, “We really sweat the details at GM!”
The irony was noted by many, including Consumer Reports in its initial review of the N-bodies. CR also managed to roll its test car onto its roof, causin the steeply-raked windshield on the coupe caused the roof to cave in; that was unusual by that time, although I’m not certain if federally-mandated roof crush standards were in place by then.
The roof crush standard took effect Jan. 1, 1974.
Thought so, and weren’t the standards beefed up a bit during the ’80s?
With 15-inch wheels now considered dinky, the one-time popularity of fat 13-inch tires is sort of mind-boggling. (The Mk3 Ford Capri V6 had 205/60R13 rubber, which I imagine would be a project to find today.) I’m not too keen on giant wheels, but the 13-inchers look awfully dinky and were probably at least partly responsible for this car having not a lot of brake for a 2,700-pound car. Of course, that was also a beancounter thing, since even the later Bonneville SSEI and final Olds Ninety-Eight had those teeny little drums in back.
There’s not much I can add about the styling indignities of the N-body cars, but I will observe that one of my growing peeves with the American car magazines of this era, particularly Car and Driver, is their obsession with making every bit of trim body color or matte black. Nobody, least of all me, is going to argue that chrome trim can be overdone; I saw a late-model Honda Accord V-6 the other day that was almost gratuitously shiny enough to pass muster with Harley Earl, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. However, after almost 40 years of Euro sedans and pseudo-Euro sedans, I gotta say: Blackout trim is boring. Even the BMW E46 3-Series, the patron deity of buff book writers, broke out the chrome highlighter for its mid-cycle refresh and looked a lot better for it.
Admittedly, modern designers don’t seem to always know what to do with chrome. I saw a late-model Kia Optima the other day that would have looked a lot better if the chrome side window trim were a window garnish rather forming a fussy arc through the sail panel. But that’s the fault of overly precious design, not the material.
I suspect it was a reaction to Detroit’s seeming to cling to the Brougham aesthetic for too long.
It’s not that I don’t understand where they were coming from — the efforts to dress up cars like the Horizon and Rabbit (Mk1 Golf) in a vain attempt to appeal to Grandpa Fred in Des Moines were ridiculous and I have a visceral horror at padded vinyl tops. (There’s a blue 1989 Lincoln Town Car Cartier Edition across the street right now that is a case in point.) And a car doesn’t necessarily need brightwork. On the other hand, I’ve seen some of the “Euro” blackout jobs for which C/D editors went gaga and they were awful, even if it was in the opposite direction.
Agree about chrome; another problem with Euro-black trim, or any exterior plastic, is it doesn’t age well under the sun. This is especially relevant now that cars last longer than before.
Here’s another perspective on the chrome trim. People didn’t expect it on the German cars because they’d never had it. However when Olds removed it in an attempt to look ‘European’ it came across as GM having become too cheap to even chrome parts that had traditionally been chrome on Oldsmobiles.
On a side note, I had a ‘Buy American!’ friend who bought one of these with the Quad 4 engine. He started out very proud of it and its HO engine, but soured on it somewhat after the head gasket failed. Two years later he bought a Maxima….
German cars had and have chrome. In fact, for many years German cars had more chrome than post-Brougham Detroit cars. Just look at the door frames of Mercedes and BMW sedans in the 1990s.
At least the Pontiac Grand-Am had something going for it: Blue collar BMW 3-series. And that became more and more obvious as the Nineties wore on. I picked up my first BMW (a 1990 325is) in 1995 and rapidly learned that to go out on a Friday or Saturday night would mean getting challenged at about every fourth traffic light by some 18 year old driving an 8-10 year old Grand Am.
Definitely “not your father’s Oldsmobile”. Dad was smart enough to want a good car, even if it was boring.
I sold Oldsmobiles during 1990-1991.
My buddy bought a Calais W-30 442 with the quad-4. That car was back at the dealer at least once a month with a wide assortment of problems.
For the year that I sold Oldsmobiles, I can only remember selling Cieras . I am sure that I sold other models, but it must not have been many.
The dealership also sold Subaru, and I would walk around the lot comparing the comparatively better built Subaru to the Oldsmobiles that had many visible cosmetic faults such as crooked trim and large panel gaps.
I know everyone will enjoy their hatefest on this car. I will just point out one stat from the test. A well equipped, all iron V6 with FI and long roots, weighed in at just 2700 pounds. Who else in the whole world was doing this in 1985? As a purveyor of traditional American cars, does not GM get any credit at all for trying to keep a traditional car going into what they viewed as a dark fuel future.
Feel free to get back to your regularly scheduled programing.
While I was writing my long, long comment below, I thought, “John C is probably commenting right now and he will defend the Calais.” Yup, I was right.
I like the idea of a V6 in a compact, John, but there’s a good reason why the Japanese weren’t doing that: they had sufficiently refined, powerful and economical four-cylinder engines. The V6 option in the N-Bodies, and in the Ford Tempo, and in other domestic compacts was almost always a necessary option. As in, “The four-cylinder is a bit of a boat anchor, it’s best to pay the extra cash and get the V6.” Here’s an idea: get the base engine right. Automakers like Honda did, and they didn’t bother with a V6 Accord until the mid-1990s. Four-cylinders don’t have to be penalty boxes, but that’s what GM thought they were.
This is coming from a lifelong GM fan, but GM should NOT get credit because they cobbled together a mediocre car but priced it sharply. Especially back then, where GM – having such a HUGE share of the market – should have been held to a higher standard.
The Calais was just a lazy, lazy car and it’s a good thing they kept the dated G-Body around. Imagine if this was the replacement: basically a fancier J-Body with scarcely more power, an interior really no better, and a higher price.
I understand GM didn’t want to scare off consumers but when their first few new lines hit speed bumps, they should have changed their strategy for the upcoming new products. Oh, the J-cars aren’t selling at the price point we expected? Let’s go ahead and reposition them, but let’s make sure the new N-Bodies are WORTH the price premium. GM just kept plodding through the decade making the same mistakes. Sorry, but they don’t get credit for the Calais.
My thoughts as well; for years, parochial Detroit continued to offer lame & unrefined 4-cylinder engines, losing ground to foreign competitors who couldn’t afford NOT to pay attention here. Also note, the Camry had port EFI std. while the Accord offered it without badly needing it.
See the price premium commanded by the Japanese models. Much of that was exchange rates, yet compared to the Europeans, it didn’t stop them from gaining market dominance.
Couple of friendly points William. You will notice, nobody else seems to have, that the Calais was faster and quieter the all the Japanese higher priced competitors. Both at full throttle and at steady highway cruise. That perhaps is not what you might expect from a unbalance shafted 90 degree V6 when compared to sub 2.0 liter sewing machines. I dare say it required some engineering work. Detail sweated, and only at GM. The Japanese don’t need V6s, even though the 86 Accord was heavier than the Calais.
I would fully agree that balance shafts should have been added to the iron duke in 82 when the fuel injection was added. Gm did get there by 87 though. I suppose they could have put in the small Brazilian OHC, but that would negate the iron duke’s 10% torque advantage over the Japanese. I know, I know, only Americans need torque with their decadent autos and ACs. Cool people won’t notice. And didn’t, good luck waiting for C/D or R/T to point it out.
There are room for other opinions on the this car as with many others. The sales drop off with the Calais is similar to the drop off of the fox Tbird compared to the late seventies peak sales. Generational politics, nah it is all ol’ Irv’s fault. Wonder how many of the hundreds of thousands that had a job at the big three whose next generation didn’t, throw darts at his picture. How simplistic.
The Japanese manufacturers had a very different niche for six-cylinder engines: They were luxury car engines for very affluent people. As in Italy, 2 liters was a hard limit, tax-wise, so manufacturers had a strong incentive to make smaller engines that were actually appealing.
The idea of a 3-liter V-6 as a “small” alternative to a V-8 didn’t translate at all, any more than it did in most European markets, because it would have been way too expensive for a home-market family car. The closest the Japanese manufacturers came to that was something like the Nissan Maxima, which was basically a six-cylinder Bluebird and was marketed as a near-luxury car.
I agree that the basic issue was GM’s inability/reluctance (and Ford’s as well, in this period) to make four-cylinder engines that weren’t anemic, relentlessly unpleasant, or both. Also, a 3-liter engine with only 125 hp was ridiculous even for 1985, and as I recall, it took GM an absurdly long time to come up with even a four-speed automatic for these cars.
re 4sp autos, The third gear of GM autos, or for that matter the fourth gear of 80s FWD manuals were usually taller than the respective Japanese transmissions. This was possible due to the relative ample torque of American pushrod engines. Again not pointed out anywhere above.
re expense, I wouldn’t think for a moment that converting a Buick 90 degree V6 for duty in the new small GM vehicles was cheap or easy. The fact that Japan Inc. did notuntil a decade later, except in luxury vehicles is proof.
Re: your point on expense, John, that’s probably because there was little demand in other markets. The US was so used to V8s that the domestics’ lineups couldn’t just switch to 4 cylinders overnight, so a V6 was a natural step. Other markets like Europe, Asia and even Australia were more than happy for Camrys and Accords to have four-cylinder engines. Hell, even in the US today, four-cylinder engines make up the bulk of Camry, Accord et all sales.
The Accord soared to the top of the sales charts even though you could buy bigger, V6-powered domestics for the same price. It was at one point the best-selling car in the US. Why do you think this is? It wasn’t just “ignorant generational politics” as you choose to blame, but simply because the car was a great all-round package. It didn’t need a V6 and buyers didn’t care that one wasn’t available.
As for the three-speed vs. four-speed debate, it would be worthwhile looking at the MPG ratings for the Calais versus rivals with four-speeds. GM ended up in this same situation again in the early 2000s as it clung to four-speeds – yes, smooth-shifting ones for the most part, but four-speeds nonetheless – while the market moved on to five- and six-speed automatics. And if you compare, say, a Buick Lucerne to a Lexus ES350, or a Pontiac Grand Prix to a Toyota Camry, you can see that fuel economy was worse with the GM car and the GM models rarely bettered the Japanese in power.
William, regarding the multigear explosion. One wonders how much this is a band-aid to the lack of torque. A Japanese competitor to the Calais had a 10-30% deficit in torque. The torque it did have was at higher rpm. This was masked somewhat by a manual transmission but in the USA that was a small minority. Notice also that GM did not saddle the Calais with a Saginaw 3 or 4 speed but imported an Isuzu, their Japanese partner, 5 sp for those so inclined. A German Getrag, expensive, gearset was added later for the later HO quad 4s. No mention, does not fit the lazy narrative.
I wasn’t talking about tooling expense; I mean that in Japan (or Italy) in the ’80s, buying and owning a car with an engine bigger than 2,000cc was prohibitively expensive for a lot of people.
As for the automatic, (a) GM HAD four-speed automatics by this point and decided not to offer them and (b) it’s not simply a matter of tall gearing. The advantage of extra gears is that you can keep the intermediates and the axle ratio shorter for better performance without decimating cruising-speed fuel economy.
But you will see this N body eyesore every time you have to get in it, possibly the most gawky childish attempt at styling ever its disgusting.
+1 to kiwibryce. No matter what your opinion of Calais mechanicals, you’re looking at a car ugly as the 7 deadly sins.
GM out here was serving up RWD 1200kg cars with straight six or V eight engines that even looked ok, a vast improvement on the ugly Oldsmobiles, they even rode and handled pretty well too.
Not with modern FWD, not with 90 coubic feet of interior room, and a length under 180 inches. GN brought up the Maxima that the Calais could be optioned up to within 10 % of the base price of the base model Maxima. It had less interior space and weighed 11 % more, V6 to V6, America didn’t get the four that AUS/NZ got
Well, there was this 1978 Renault 30 TX. FWD, V6 with fuel injection, length 178 inch, well equipped. A wee bit heavier though, at 2,843 lbs.
Just a bit of teasing here John…
You mean not even Renault could not match the weight. Deadly Sin.
I kid of course, the 30 was a luxury model so not what we are talking about.
Any guess how price measured up?
If were to give GM credit for anything regarding this car, it would be props on the w41 cars. I absolutely hate this body style, but GM managed to do a pretty good job making the aformentioned cars look special. The paint, the trim, the wheels, and even the engine are all really good looking. And it had the perfomance to match, at least until the headgasket started leaking. But anyway, what good did that do for GM? How many of those cars did they sell? What kind of lasting impression did they make? On the other end of the equation are the run of the mill versions. Let me give you a personal ancedote. I was given a low mileage, one owner (little old lady owned) quad 4 firenza. It was about 15 years old when I recieved it. It wasn’t terrible to drive, but it was falling apart. The paint looked horrible, the shifter was broken, the headliner sagged, the radio didn’t work, and it blew a headgasket before it hit 60k miles. These types of issues did make a large impression. Picking a stat here and there from black and white means literally nothing. Feeling it in your hands and seeing it with your eyes is what matters. The competition, especially the accord and civic of the same era were a revelation in comparison.
Never was a quad four in a Firenza. An iron duke or the Buick V6 was a long lived motor. Quad fours were known for head gasket issues but one wonders how much of that with any car is not pulling over when running hot at high mileage. Or perhaps a little old lady whose 15 year old car had 60k and let the gasket dry out. In any case to Olds the only impression at 15 years was they should have sold her an Achieva and a Intrique during those 15 years.
Yeah, you’re right, about the engine. It was a SOHC motor. Headgaskets drying out. Is something new to me. I didn’t realize that was an issue with graphite and metal, and not an issue with cheaping out on gaskets. Its not like GM was known for that or anything. I’m looking at you series II 3800. And it couldn’t be that GM cheaped out on cooling systems too. Nope. They certainly never had a Dexcool fiasco. I’ve owned more than a couple little old lady and little old men specials. All have been Fords or GMs, and hands down the GMs had more issues. I haven’t owned a GM that hasn’t needed top end gaskets of one kind or another. And the interiors didn’t age as well either. Chipping plastichrome and droopy headliners and endemic to GMs.
Ugh, these cars frustrate me! I want to give credit to GM for so thoroughly downsizing their lineup, but they really did rest on their laurels far too much and they spent the 1980s failing to learn from their mistakes. And what a load of mistakes they made!
How hard would it have been just to develop a decent, modern, OHC four-cylinder engine? They could have created one and used it in the J, X, N, even A-Bodies. Instead, they foisted the Iron Duke (and its descendants) on the public for far too many years and then introduced the unreliable, underdeveloped, overly thrashy and noisy Quad 4. Sticking with the three-speed auto was another mistake. Oh, and selling the N-Bodies without a V6/stick combo? There’s another mistake.
Regarding the design, I understand ol’ Irv didn’t want to rock the boat. They were already shocking their regulars with smaller, FWD vehicles, they didn’t want to make them look completely different too. But damned if his designs weren’t the most lazy and uninspired in GM history.
GM was so completely clueless and rudderless in the 1980s. Even when they made vaguely smart decisions (keeping the G-Body coupes), they went and messed them up (left the G-Body coupes unchanged; gave the N-Body Olds two very confusing names).
Considering the first new GM of the 1980s was the X-Body, that must have been one bad omen for the decade. And they spent the decade simply haemorrhaging market share as a result of poor decision after poor decision.
I’m glad I wasn’t alive during the 1980s. As a GM fan, I would have been in an awful position trying to defend an automaker that was so mired in poor decision-making and misfortune. At least things improved in the 1990s with the W, G and H-Bodies.
I tend to think that “lazy and uninspired” is letting the N-body off easy in the styling department. If it had just been bland, it would have been forgivable, but the awful greenhouse/rear axle relationship that mars the styling of all these cars (and the FWD C-bodies) was nothing if not deliberate, judging by the design sketches. It’s not even a matter of a design that looked good originally and then got nickeled-and-dimed to death; it’s just a terrible design.
Having not seen the Calais in person and only in mostly flattering press photos, I didn’t realize how ghastly the thing was until I saw those side-on black-and-white photos. What an awful roofline. The detailing doesn’t even compensate. I have a love/hate relationship with the ’86 Cadillac Seville because I love its grille and taillights and other details, but then I look at its C-pillar/trunk/rear wheelwell treatment and I’m just absolutely flummoxed.
You’re right. Something like a Celebrity, that was lazy and uninspired. But the Calais was awful. Somehow, the Grand Am’s detailing compensated to some degree, enough so the coupe could look half decent. But then you look at a sedan and there’s that ugly roofline again, ruining everything.
The next-generation N-Bodies were a HUGE improvement. Yes, even the Skylark. They genuinely had some sense of style, even if they weren’t to everybody’s tastes. Personally, I thought they all looked good.
William, I will say as a kid the Grand Am was actually somewhat of a knockout, at least to me. The plastic cladding was fresh and hadn’t been overdone yet and especially in two-tone paint jobs looked great. The other N-bodies… eeeeeh.
The whole article is but one piece of the puzzle in a sad tale.
I suppose it could be summed up this way. A bunch of overpaid clowns without a clue of what they are doing! These clowns caused the loss of two divisions (so far) and the bankruptcy of a once great company.
I’ve never been a “wrong wheel drive” guy and never will be, unless I want to drive a boring POS. While I have many classic cars, and many of those are Oldsmobiles (my favorite brand), my newest is an ’08 Chrysler 300C AWD.
NOTHING and I mean nothing out there that is front wheel drive does anything for me but cure insomnia!
read Lutz’s Car Guys vs Bean Counters. Just what killed Olds ? It’s in the book …
Good God Almighty! I never realized that GM spent a dime on reworking the Iron Puke to make it fit under the hood of the N-Body cars. That is a sad tale in and of itself.
“We had a devil of a time trying to explain to the corporation that we needed another four-cylinder engine, because at that point we had a J-car engine, a T-car engine (for the Chevy Chevette/Pontiac T1000), and we had the Iron Duke. You add all those up, that is 7000 a day or more—a lot of four-cylinder capacity. What we had to do was prove to the Corporation that (the Quad-4) wasn’t just another engine.”
How about having a conversation about reducing the silly proliferation of engines? Many of the were very very close in hp and torque, consolidate – update – and perfect.
Yes, Dan. N Body Tech 4s get a “U” designation in GM’s identification system and they eventually got balance shafts as well. Pontiac did offer the Brazilian [ I think ] OHC 4 Turbo in the Grand AM at one point.
Why it couldn’t have been the standard 4 across the N cars is mystifying. That would have taken some foresight and a genuine interest in giving people a reason to buy one as well as pre-dating the current trend of small 4 cyl turbos as standard engines 30 years later.
Heard that they wanted to spell it ” Sierra” but that spelling was owned by Ford Europe. So “Ciera” it was.
GM had been using Sierra as a trim level for the GMC pickup trucks for years before Ford Europe even thought that maybe it would be a good idea to stop calling their midsize Taunus in some countries and Cortina in others.
These cars were designed during the perfect storm of CAFE, EPA and oil crises. Add the passing of the (styling) torch to Rybicki and the management shenanigans of Smith and GM was screwed. Demographics were another nail in the coffin of the old GM, me of the latter part of the baby boom, knows my older bretheren were not going to buy my father’s or anyone’s Oldsmobile, just on principle alone.
Speaking of older bretheren, my brother did have a 1985 Pontiac Grand Am, which he was originally enamored with. Be honest, anything that came after a stripper Dodge Colt, would be great. However, as time went on he expressed his disappointment with the car, mostly a series of (IIRC) bad assembly issues mixed in with some reliability issues. While he never bought another GM car since then, he has purchased several Chrysler products, minivans mostly, and is on a run of Nissans lately.
My oldest nephew was a bit of a motorized hellion as a teen, he managed to total three cars before he was 20. One of the cars he was able to purchase (and insure) was a 1985-ish Iron Duke-powered Calais. It was one of the upscale models when new and was trimmed out very nicely, actually. It would have made a very nice car for a young person who needed a commuter car, but my nephew was trying to use it as a street racer, a purpose for which it clearly wasn’t intended. You know that old saying about how driving a slow car fast is fun? Not so much with a 10 year old used Cutlass Calais LS.
Due to that treatment, the car cried “uncle” and broke frequently. Or maybe it would have broken a lot regardless of who was driving it. Either way, it probably saved his life, as he A) could barely get that thing to sustained high speed levels, and B) since it was sidelined so often, he was stuck finding alternative transportation where he wasn’t the pilot.
I remember these original N-bodies upon release; they were a hot mess and a lack of conviction on GM’s part to move the corporation forward (a la Iacocca and the K cars). The conditions that led up to this time were the same for all domestic car makers. But the perfect storm that was raging internally was what really set up GM for failure in recent times.
“Photography by Dick Calais” – hehehe
Excellent story, by the way, really well done.
So depressing to look back to the darkest days of GM thinking. I was a teenager and came from a GM family. I always read the buff mags and kept hoping that GM would finally produce something better – but it never really did. The MT renderings cranked out each month (by Duane Kuchar) were always space age and cool and gave me a glimmer of hope, but the actual crap they came out with…..really sucked eggs. The cars were so cheap, flimsy and malproportioned.
The C/D write up also nailed the “front end float” issue that made almost all of the FWD GM cars from the era feel like odd, rolling couches. It was a disconcerting feeling when the car – whether a Chevy or a Cadillac – felt like it was bobbing and weaving down the road.
Some time ago, someone mentioned an Oldsmobile/Honda combined dealership – that must’ve been an interesting experience for longtime staff to watch GM bring out “import fighter” after “import fighter” with the same agricultural engines, awkward styling and details far too costed-out to be competitive at anywhere near the MSRP they had in mind.
That being said, I think the N-bodies collectively and Grand Am especially are a better styling job than the E30 3-series since they at least avoided the latter’s conspicuously dated-even-when-new details. At least Irv *tried*.
I sold cars for a Olds/Honda/GMC dealer in 1990-91. My first (and only) demo was a ’90 Calais. Quad 4, 3-speed auto. Seat belts mounted to the doors. It was a truly lousy car.
I can still hear the drone of a Tech 4/automatic combo in a Ciera.
Honda buyers generally came in knowing exactly what they wanted and how much it should cost them. You usually had to work your butt off to sell an Olds. Since I worked on the Olds side, most of my income came from selling used cars.
Fantastic post here. And thank you Paul for the most compelling series to date.
And, oh, how GM deserved to fail!
A book I once read about ALCO, the venerable steam locomotive builder, illustrated how the structure and engineering mentality ALCO made it impossible for the firm to transition to manufacturing standardized diesel locomotives. These tales of GM’s Deadly Sins paint the picture of an organization unable to adapt to a market with scrappy foreign competitors. ALCO failed, as is it produced unreliable, uncompetitive products. While Paul wisely eschews politics in these posts, it would certainly be fascinating if an in-depth look at the 2007 Government Motors nationalization of GM could be written.
Do you recall the title of that book? GM/EMD ate Alco’s lunch, as their products were reliable with good after-sale support.
Alco did do well in India; their WDM 2 (majority locally-built) is still in use after 50 yrs. GM lost the bid for refusing to release design data to the Indians.
This post is by GN (No,not GM 🙂 ).
An excellent article that perfectly captures the fall of a once great marque. Even though my Dad was an Olds guy, and had worked at the local Chev-Olds emporium during the Cutlass’s halcyon days of the ’70s, by the time I could afford a nice new car Oldsmobile wasn’t even on my radar. Cars like this were why.
A friend’s wife had a 4 cylinder one around ’86 or so, and riding in it reminded more of the Vega than it did my father’s Oldsmobiles. Sad really, and I had never really realized how quickly it all went bad for Olds until I read this.
“… smaller J Car based N Body”. Thank you for validating what I thought I had read years ago, Paul. I do know they shared the cowl and the same water leak problems after many years due to age.
Is there more on this connection ? How much of the J Body was used to create the Ns ? I have been unable to discover this and if anyone knows, I’d like to learn.
Fantastic article and all true. And I collected all the brochures and magazine articles about the N Bodies and the Calais in particular when I bought an 86 Calais with 21,000 miles on it in 1992. [Mileage verified by the smog check records].
I found it good looking [ unlike the majority ]with broughamy Olds goodness in a small economical package.
And it was a nightmare for the 7 years I drove it. Every time it needed a repair it was $300 dollars in 90s money. 2 alternators, the AC system, heater core, dash pad top separating from the dash binnacle, torque converter switch, and more I can’t remember.
It did handle better than any other car I’ve owned or driven. It was quiet on the highway even with the Tech 4 [ the madness of being GM’s “go to” engine for so many years fascinates me ] and itself a reliable engine.
As I’ve stated before, it’s still in the family. After replacing everything that had gone wrong and with new headliner and paint, with 54,000 miles I gave it to my parents who drove it for years. This was the car my Mother claimed was the first car she’d driven she felt she had under her control.
They eventually gave the car to my little brother and his wife who are still driving it, though it might become mine once again as they just purchased a 4WD 98 Tracker. Perfect for not so hardcore “off roading” in the desert.
Original engine and trans, but it did require a head gasket at about 100,000 miles.
I won’t be unhappy to have it back. I still love all the Oldsmobile hash and the tail lights are some of my favorites on any car. It also tells the tale of one of GM’s Deadly Sins. That back story alone is enough to make me want to keep one running.
BTW, some press at the time reported that the Ns were targeted at “New Values Customers”, some marketing hack’s focus group results, I suspect, that suggested there was a conquest market for the Ns that included BMW, Japanese and other Euro marques. Who were, naturally cross shopping GM and domestic small cars. Uh-huh.
Only with with GM’s cash flow could one even begin to focus group N Bodies with that intent. Take a false premise and then validate it. Money no object. A closed corporate loop obviously.
I guess I’ll take the contrary viewpoint and say I’ve always liked the way these were styled. I don’t know why, but I’ve never really a problem with the formal roofline on small car, as it seems very practical in terms of space utilization and headroom (less so for aerodynamics). I will concede though that the G-body is a real looker though.
I guess they did sell at least one of these to a boomer, as my dad had one for a while. I don’t remember too much about it, other than it was burgundy with a red interior, and was a manual. He used it as a commuter car and always described it as reliable car that never gave him any real trouble. Which wasn’t the case on the Achieva that he had next, which was his last Oldsmobile.
Todd, the N Bodies have only about one inch less legroom in the rear than the X bodies and K Cars.
And you are correct: that formal roofline is efficient for headroom and visibility. At 36.9″ it is comparable to much larger cars and the seating back there is erect.
Wow, Lindamood really nailed the death of Oldsmobile! That’s crazy.
I may be in the minority, but I don’t think that the Calais is an ugly car. I think it was contemporary for the time, but I do agree that the idea to offer a shrunken version of the Cutlass was a very bad decision. As those cars were slotted to be replacements for their bigger G body counterparts (which would seem to point to the extended run of the normal sized G bodies, correct?) I think that it points to GM’s problem of what to do with the G bodies. My understanding is that the traditional carbed/ RWD setup was something that GM knew that they had to get away from, but didn’t know how to go about, which would explain the very long run that the ’81+ had, and also the generic, botched FWD followup to the G bodies. To me, the followups were the true Deadly Sin, because as a Cutlass fan, what I’ve always liked about the Cutlass up until the FWD conversion of the late 80’s, was that the Cutlass was a tough looking car. It always looked like it was just a rim swap or rally wheel swap away from being a muscle car, but with an upscale, luxurious DNA. The delays in proper fuel injection didn’t help matters…..I had an ’84 Cutlass Supreme with a 305, and you could tell that it was woefully stuck in archaic engine technology, with no power. The engine was in dire need of an update, even if the styling was (to my eyes) still very good looking and classic from a sporty luxurious muscle car look.
The followup FWD had pretty much NO ambitions of sport luxury. It was as bland and generic as you could possibly get. And to me, that was the true nail in Olds’ coffin, to do that to their flagship car. Well before the bottom fell out of the personal luxury car segment, you had Olds completely give up the ghost. At least Ford still had the Thunderbird with forward looking options like the supercharged Super Coupe (also keeping it RWD), which I can say from having owned one was a truly fantastic car on many levels, if just for the huge amounts of torque that it put out.
The odd thing about the Calais, is that it’s odd that they used that name. As mentioned, it used to be the sportier option (console shift, tach, etc) on the Cutlass. Then I think when the Hurst Olds came back for ’83 and the 442 came back, there was no real need for the Calais name……but Olds knew that it still had some sales power and brand recognition. Bringing it back under a smaller car nameplate made as much sense as the Charger coming back on the Omnirizon architecture. Adding to the confusion is that insurance companies considered an ’84 Hurst Olds as a “Calais”. I know this because a friend had an ’84 Hurst Olds, and his insurance classified it as a Calais model, based on the older, sportier Calais.
There’s times if I wonder if Olds didn’t suffer the most in the automotive world from maybe ’85 to 2000, simply because many base or lower level cars coming standard with amenities and features that used to be options that generated a good deal of money for automakers. I’ve speculated that this hit Olds harder, simply because they weren’t as prestigious as Cadillac and couldn’t necessarily charge the premium that Cadillac would for various luxuries and options, yet some well optioned Chevys and Pontiacs would still be cheaper and would have more cache, if not equal cache. For example, I don’t know what the price difference would be between a well optioned Lumina and even a base Cutlass Supreme (let alone a well optioned one) in the early 90’s, but I ask myself, “who cares?”. The cars were interchangeable enough that there was no prestige…….and the fact that I rarely see either of those cars on the road around here would point to that, in that nobody keeps those cars on the road because they have about the same used value and depreciation after a certain amount of time.
Yeah, I think that was a big part of the problem-Olds lost its cache. Grandma had a RWD 88 Royal Brougham and I remember really liking it back then, but it wasn’t a whole lot different than our Caprice Classic Brougham. I’d say the Olds had a bit more “fancy” look to it, but that was about it. Both were good cars, but as the years went on, I think Olds just became an answer to questions no one was asking.
Olds along with Pontiac (which specialized in exactly the sort of smaller, “sportier” cars that the Silent Generation execs just didn’t get) also felt the brunt of Smith-era reluctance to put in the cost-per-unit that you just gotta spend to make a car *nice*. If the manufacturer’s not willing to put in the money to make an allegedly premium product feel premium, why should the customer?
She got that right. I resented it when I first read it, but damn it seems almost clairvoyant now.
Lindamood’s take on the long running Olds names was the opposite of today where people complain about the constant name changes at Ford, Cadillac, Chevrolet Chrysler and Dodge. Nothing has lasted long enough to develop a following, much less brand equity
80 odd names for GM’s small and intermediate cars as posted on CC ? That really helped, eh, Jean?
BTW: the Calais script used in the badging is identical to that used by Cadillac when Calais was one of it’s trim lines.
Nice write-up.
I was never too impressed with the styling of these, but didn’t find it offensive, either. What was offensive to me at the time was GM’s complete unwillingness, despite its capacity, to come up with a suitable, competitive engine. Although I didn’t drive it, I rode in my Aunt’s Calais while visiting her in Michigan. What struck me even more than the poor interior quality were the hideous, raspy noises emanating from under the hood. A little investigation revealed a Quad 4 was the source of the cacophony. Was this the best GM could do at the time? As GN pointed out, the Japanese and Europeans had nicely refined 4 cylinder powerplants for several years at this point.
In my Aunt’s case, her Calais didn’t sour her on domestic brands. (Hey, she lives in Michigan…) But for one 3-year detour into a 2004 Taurus after her last Olds, she’s stuck with the General (most recently an Impala and two Cruzes) through it all. I imagine she’d still be driving an Olds if the brand was still around. At least GM has been building some nicely competitive cars in the last decade or so.
Overall, a sad story for such a, er…, storied brand. I’ve always liked the 60’s and 70’s Oldsmobiles.
Very nice article. I remember these when the buff books published the ‘spy pics’ of upcoming models. Those, and the production models were depressing. Jamming established style cues on a smaller model simply reminded people what was being lost, such as spaciousness, comfort and smooth engines. Instead we got cramped penalty boxes, too small for their intended buyer…. or what the styling cues suggested was the intended buyer. A new, forward-looking design (a la Taurus) would have worked better.
The annoying de-contenting of the cars eroded their market position. Why offer a stupid strip speedo? Leaving the desireable engine and trim packages on to the option list simply gouged the buyer and cheapened the image. Buyers could see the best competing brands equipped all their cars properly, bolstering their appeal and comptitiveness.
A friend of mine had one. The torque converter lock-up solenoid would get stuck, leaving the converter locked so the car stalled when one came to a stop. That and the cramped interior frustrated him, given the money he paid. He got rid of the car and ended up buying used GM coupes from the late 70’s to get the style and space he wanted. How bad is that? You can afford a new car but don’t buy one because all the new ones are worse than the models they replaced.
I saw two of these in traffic in Santa Monica several months before their release. They were obviously pre-production cars being test-driven by GM,with sensors coming off the wheel hubs, etc.; and manufacturer plates. I tagged along with them for quite a while, rather shocked at how utterly anodyne they were. Here I had finally fulfilled a childhood dream of capturing a new GM coupe out in the wild well before its introduction, and all I could do was be amazed at how they were utterly invisible in traffic. Another GM DS on its way!
I know it’s going to sound “me too”, but I was becoming very pessimistic about GM’s future at this time. A mammoth generational change was under way, as GN has of course written so well here in this post, and GM was totally missing out in the leading edge places like California.
My own automotive path perfectly confirms GN’s point: I was a boomer with a rapidly rising income, and very import-oriented in principle. But we too bought a Cherokee and a Caravan because of their unique qualities at the time. But after them,it was all imports brands. GM was dead to me by 1985.
In fairness to Olds, though, you wonder how much the corporate homogenization contributed to it. In the 80’s, GM axed the individual divisions’ engine choices, and it was a given that the individual divisions would suffer. No more Olds Rocket, and the Iron Duke proliferated amongst all the divisions. It’s debatable if the continuity of the Rocket engine would have saved Olds from death, but it certainly didn’t help.
Another problem–even for Buick–is that with things like the Grand National, eventually they got told by corporate to stop doing muscle cars. I can’t say specifically in the case of Buick, but this had also reverted them back to “grandpa’s car” status, and in many ways, I’m curious as to how Buick escaped the axe (if anyone could do a CC on exactly why Buick persevered and Olds did not, I for one, would love to read it). And Olds still had some unique ideas in the 80’s–the Lightning Rod shifters on the Hurst Olds were kinda gimmicky, but they were unique and offered a manual feel in an automatic, for those that wanted both worlds. If Olds were going after a younger demographic, certainly the lack of a Rocket engine, Hurst Olds / 442 (after FWD) wouldn’t help things. Maybe GM viewed all of these Olds things as outdated, but for example, other car makers/ divisions had things like Shelby, Hemi, Boss 302, R/T, SS, Z28, Posi Trac, that never got old. There’s certain things that when you first come up with them, they’re instant legends. Maybe GM saw Hurst Olds/ 442 stuff as loss leaders, but things ebb and flow. In the 80’s, performance minded things were less popular with buyers (ie: enough that the Camaro had got discontinued), but as we’ve seen, they’ve made a real resurgence in the last 10 years. One wonders what a Hurst Olds or 442 would be in its incarnation in 2016, if it had been allowed to thrive.
The Grand National (and GNX) is arguably THE quintessential 80’s muscle car in actual output and performance, not to mention a well built, forward thinking 3.8 turbo engine.
At any rate, if you guys can manage to seek out “Black Air” about the Grand National, it’s a great documentary. There was a general consensus amongst the GN workers at that time, that when GM corporate dictated the FWD conversions, that they also demanded the GN get axed. I’m not sure if that’s a Deadly Sin mentioned here at CC, but it certainly needs to be written, if it’s not already. GM’s ill prepared FWD mandates had singlehandedly killed any division specific uniqueness, and the desire to kill the GN (even if it was a loss leader and cost more to build than what it actually made) is a serious, serious nail in that coffin. The Calais writeup here alludes to the first real Deadly Sin status for FWD mangling, but I think that the GN/ Hurst Olds/ 442 discontinuation needs to be brought up to really bring the magnifying glass to the anthill here.
The frustrating thing is that the 3.8 turbo in the Turbo Trans Am was, in a weird way, yet another failure. Its 4.6 0-60 still makes it a fast car that can compete with many performance cars today, but one gets the feeling that it was solely the engineers that pushed for it, with corporate hating it. And the you have Buick that probably wasn’t too thrilled about Pontiac needing to borrow their engine to be able to top their performance. I think that most of our fascination with GM Deadly Sins, is how GM was obviously capable of brilliance, but they refused to listen to it. If GM engineers made 3.8 turbo that good back then, can you imagine what almost three decades of refinement could have brought? The LS series are great engines, but it feels like they ignored an entirely different path that they had already created.
I remember reading a interview with Olds manager John Rock. One of the impetus’s of the Aurora V8 was because he said ” if they had a clay model in the studios they’d put a goddamn Buick V6 in it”. At least he tried ( within the limits of his general manager status) to give Oldsmobile something unique later on.
“[I]f anyone could do a CC on exactly why Buick persevered and Olds did not, I for one, would love to read it”
China. (That might be a bit shorter than you’d hoped, but that is the answer.) As a popular choice for emperors and Communist officials, the Buick nameplate enjoyed an enviable reputation in the world’s largest emerging market for cars. Olds… didn’t.
Excellent article, probably the best DS article I have read. I remember an old MT magazine that I used to have that showed a drawing of all the car companies playing poker. It showed GM at the table with a ton of chips but had no cards. It kind of summed up GM of this era. I wish I still had that magazine as I post the picture.
I think it’s pretty easy to see that the 1980’s was the worst decade for GM. The fact that they were doing so well in the late 1970’s and they had such an abundance of cash probably only harmed them in the long run. Chrysler had no choice – change or die. And they quickly abandoned their old outdated platforms and accepted the K-Car to bring it back from the dead. While Ford was better off, they quickly realized that they needed to adapt quickly to the ever changing 1980’s environment. Then there is GM. They had a plan, continued to downsize, and switch to FWD across the board (except for their the F and Y body). But even their own corporation didn’t have faith in the plan and it was executed in a half-assed manner. They introduced new platforms, while keeping their predecessors around. How does this spiel confidence to the consumer? While I personally like the old RWD 70’s platforms, like the B-body and A/G-bodies, their short term profits were a short term solution and probably hurt the corporation as a whole in the long run.
While GM realized they had to change with the ever strict EPA, CAFE requirements and the quickly changing customer tastes, I think they also did not want to compromise profitability, Remember, Roger Smith said they were in the business of making money. This lead to the under developed cars, lackluster outdated drivertrains and engines, and never striving to be a segment leader. This really started in the late 1970’s with GM’s half-baked solutions to saving a few MPG’s, resulting in things like the TH200 transmission or the E4ME carburetors. If GM would have invested the money it had in to developing fully developed cars and took the time to develop and adapt the new technology, maybe things would be different. But instead, they rested on their laurels and were arrogant enough to believe that people would just continue to by their cars regardless of what they pumped out.
The choice of going with conservative Irv Rybicki as being the head of design really was a very deadly sin. GM for years had been the industry leader in styling, and lets be honest most of the time that was what moved cars. GM cars of the past may have had their deficiencies, but at least they looked good. I think people can be a lot more forgiving for a cars short comings if they at least look good. This era of GM really stagnated in styling and refused to move out of their 1978 styling themes. Ford really took the lead, on the domestic front, with the aero look. GM didn’t catch on until it was far too late. The lack of styling, and the horrific quality on the 1980’s GM cars really killed them, even with their loyal customer.
“GM cars of the past may have had their deficiencies, but at least they looked good. I think people can be a lot more forgiving for a cars short comings if they at least look good. This era of GM really stagnated in styling and refused to move out of their 1978 styling themes. Ford really took the lead, on the domestic front, with the aero look. GM didn’t catch on until it was far too late. The lack of styling, and the horrific quality on the 1980’s GM cars really killed them, even with their loyal customer.”
Absolutely. And to add to that, people will say that they want better gas mileage and reliability, but let’s face it, a good portion of the time, people want to drive something that looks good, that represents who they are, and something with prestige/ value. It’s a rolling statement. As you say, GM’s styling went south (to me, even on 90’s Firebirds/ Trans Ams), and they weren’t really selling cars on looks much anymore (at least not at a clear advantage over the competitors, though things like the overly oval themed Taurus may have made GM the lesser of evils in the visual dept). Couple the “necessary evil” purchases by GM loyalists that begrudgingly bought GM vehicles even though the designs were nothing special, and by the time that the reliability issues had an effect on resale values, you had to be a GM diehard to want to continue with the products, anymore.
Mind you, the aero look has arguably sent the industry styling down a black hole in terms of memorable styles for the last two and a half decades or so. I miss the days when cars were styled around what aethetically looked good, rather than worrying about drag coefficients and trying to wring every last MPG out of it.
An excellent, in depth article. I don`t need to add anything to the comments, because everybody else said them already. My mother had an `85 Calais coupe with the V6. The less said about that, the better. A total crapper on wheels that fell apart like a cheap Chinese made toy.
Didn’t know until I read the specs, but the Calais is basically the same size as a 70 Maverick. Wheelbase, length, width, and height are very close. Even tread width is the same. But only for 70. 71 and up tread width went up an inch. And lets not forget, the 70 Maverick also came base with 13 inch wheels.
I don’t think the Calais was so bad looking, and the Grand Am from the latter ’80s was a good seller, I think.
I had a balance shaft version of the Quad 4, and I didn’t find it noisy at all, until it was at near or full throttle. Yes it roared a bit, but not obtrusively so, and was a hoot getting on the freeway coming home from work each day, I thought it moved pretty good. And if the engine was a tad noisy, perhaps it was a good thing since it masked the cracking sounds of the cheap plastic interior parts as they fell apart.
The history of GM is filled with cars like this Calais that didn’t quite hit the mark, but the real reason that GM died is that the cars demonstrated horrible durability and reliability. I won’t be back.
By the time the Quad 4 got balance shafts, it had also received something like five years worth of other updates that were supposed to stave off the need for balance shafts. So, it did end up being much more refined — eventually.
I remember reading in Automobile magazine DED Jr. complaining when he first drove a Quad 4 car that he “couldn’t drive it smoothly” because of the agricultural quality of the transmission and roughness of the engine.
I agree, Ohonesten. These Calais may not have been the great beauties of all time, but I hardly think they were ugly.
One day I will make a timeline diagram of the evolution of the basic bodies of GM: X, N, A, F? It’s rather hard to follow. The next thing is to chart graphically the Cutlass/Supreme/Ciera business.
As for this car, the Calais, it’s hard to know what the designers had in mind. The two-door looks correct up to the b-pillar and then there seems to be about 50cm missing. I think the designers may not have had “soak time” to see the car properly. I am sure they were talented professionals but they lacked the time to learn how to style shorter cars. European brands knew this; was it too hard to do a study of the proportions? Also, did nascent CAD hold back the shapes as I suspect they did in Europe in the mid-80s?
Thanks for this article!
About the missing 50cm- I always picture the then President of the U.S, in an earlier incarnation as a movie star, crying out ” Where’s the rest of me!”…
The one thing I can’t stand is that B-pillar, which slopes backward too much. That sort of design cue is, in and of itself, innocuous, but it’s at odds with the door cut-line, and the car is just too square for it.
I’m pretty sure my mother had a Buick Somerset (or maybe it was a Skylark) when I was very little. It routinely refused to start and left us stranded.
And as far as the “formal roofline” trend, yeah, GM did take it too far. But I wonder what the last GM model was that used that roofline.
1993 was the last year of the C body DeVille, with the formal look.
1991 was the last year for 1985 era N bodies, along with last straight back windowed Park Av and 98.
This car is a complicated sin. This Olds actually sold well despite some legitimate shortcomings, and its Pontiac sibling was something of a hit, and even sold well to a target demographic in their 20s and 30s, at least in the Midwest.
A well written article, with some interesting information I didn’t pick up living in the era. What GM did with the Iron Duke here may be a mortal sin among more venial acts. The ‘80s was definitely the decade of why can’t the domestics seem to build a decent 4 popper for the NA market? Chrysler sort of defaulted into acceptable engines first, but it had to when it became an essentially all four-cylinder car maker – it was live or die for them.
Another mortal sin not really emphasized here was the platform proliferation. The N body competed internally with the J, X, A, and arguably the G. I definitely saw people young, and old, switching rather fluidly among them. The Firenza was particularly ridiculous in showrooms along with the Calais.
Outstanding work and research in your article GN, thank you. You candidness and objectivity is appreciated.
GM designed some promising concept cars in the early 1980s. No question, the design talent and financial resources appeared to have been available to introduce some great cars. However like many GM products, the final production designs seemed so watered down, and far too conservative. GM seeming to consistently take a very timid approach, not bringing the best elements of design concepts into their production cars. A significant blown opportunity.
The 1981 Aero X concept for example, designed under Rybicki, had great design potential. If only GM was as aggressive as Ford in pursuing advanced aerodynamic design to production. If the X-cars were as attractive as the Aero X, and equally well built, It could have been a whole different story for GM in the 80s. Imagine how much more competitive this design would have been, with the Taurus/Sable for example. Even if it was introduced as late as 1987-1988. As opposed to the conservative W Bodies. The Aero X reminds me somewhat of the Chrysler LH cars in design and stance. The LH cars being introduced twelve years later! The success of the Taurus proved the US market was open to an advanced design like this.
You can see design elements from the Aero X in future Saturn and Oldsmobile products. However, the execution was clearly cautious, as little of the smoothness and overall fluid design and integration of the Aero X design reflected in final Olds and Saturn styling from the early 90s. Rather, it appears GM attempted to mimic the concept in some design elements, especially around the ‘C’ pillar, with questionable results. As the 1991 Saturn for example, looked dated at introduction compared to the Aero X.
I feel that GM default formal roof line should have ended with the A Bodies. As it was already tired by 1983-1984.
I’m sure many talented GM designers have regrets working in such a restrictive, conservative and bottom line focused culture.
I like that concept. The 1988 GM -as in Opel- Vectra A hatchback comes close, given its shape and the glass all around.
Not bad Johannes, though I would still describe it as very safe and somewhat conservative, in the vein of typical 80s GM design. Given that cars like the Audi 5000, and Ford Taurus had already been on the market several years, it doesn’t break any new ground. Its roof line is reminiscent of the W Body Buick Regal and the Daewoo LeMans.
What I like about the Aero X is the whole body of the car appears as one fluid form. Both lengthwise, and equally importantly, width wise. Too many GM attempts at aerodynamic designs are too narrow and abruptly vertical on their sides to convey a smooth overall shape. The Pontiac Aztek, Buick Rendezvous, various Saturns, are perfect (if extreme) examples of this. For example, the original Toyota Previa being a more successful overall integrated shape than the Rendezvous in this sense.
I really like the Aero X as well, and think this concept could have been a basis for many successes for GM in the 80s, if they were more aggressive in pursuing design leadership.
To be fair Opel was developing the Vectra A at a time when BMW was printing money in spite of EXTREMELY conservative styling, and aiming at a market segment where Ford had recently been burned by going too far too fast. And yet they still pretty much nailed it, although blacked-out B and C pillars and maybe a chrome surround to unify the side window opening would’ve been an obvious improvement.
I’m not criticizing the Opel at all. It is what it is. Very safe in its market segment. Just saying it doesn’t have the game changing style basis like the Aero X concept. That could have made GM a design leader, even if it was delayed a decade. The Aero X design could have been sold in the early 1990s, and it still would have appeared more advanced than what GM was selling in North America.
Not sure what you mean by Ford being burned going too far with the Taurus and Sable. They were runaway successes in North America. I’m referring to how that Vectra design would have been seen in the North American market. The roof line being very similar to the Regal and Grand Prix.
The focus of my post was that GM obviously had the design talent to be a leader in the industry in terms of design if they chose to. And I was pointing to their concept cars.
I don’t think nlpnt was talking about the Taurus and Sable, but rather the Ford Sierra.
Thank you, yes I knew that, as I was intentionally pointing out to him I was suggesting how the Vectra design may have been received in the North American market. As I was referring to the North American market all along, when Johannes pulled the Vectra as an example. The concurrent Vectra design not having styling that was going to surpass the Taurus/Sable in leading popular design in North America.
Tricky one. I remember when the 1988 Vectra was introduced as the Mk III Vauxhall Cavalier. It was time to replace the all-conquering Mk II, but the Mk III felt too safe and too bland. Sure, BMWs and Audis at that time were conservatively styled, but many of GM’s primary European competitors – eg Ford, Renault – were pushing at the styling envelope. I can see the relationship to the Aero X, but the Mk III Cavalier never captured the imagination in the way the Mk II did. Ford had sorted the weirder excesses of the Sierra by that time, and Vauxhall ceded leadership.
That Vectra arrived in NZ as a Vauxhall hastily rebadged Holden on the Auckland wharf before loading on transporters for delivery to dealers it signalled the end of the J cars though GMH in Australia hung on with Js for a few more years before rebadging some Toyotas, the finally returned to the world GM fold in the mid to later 90s.
Thanks for a very comprehensive and detailed posting. Since I was from a GM/UAW family and I also worked there for a few years, I was saddened by this turn of events. I guess this is what happens when you would rather hold onto the past, instead of figure out how to succeed in a new world with new challenges and opportunities. And remember that this whole scenario played out in all the divisions, except for trucks. Chevy,Buick, Pontiac,Oldsmobile and Cadillac. All were debased and lost their cachet, prestige, and uniqueness. I just can’t get interested in almost any new GM car. I made the move to Honda, Ford, and even Chrysler for a time. If I were to buy another new vehicle it’s a good chance that it would be a Ford. Not that they are perfect, but for a popularly priced car, they are pretty good.
True, and the lost sales led to the massive job losses and GM plant closures, even though import makes were selling well and opening new plants.
LOLROFL at Consumer Guide calling the ’85 Calais: “(…)at least as roadworty as most Japanese rivals”. That word roadworthy means things like safe tires, brakes, steering, and lights. I have zero doubt CG used it deliberately to make certain readers think of roadable, which means things like good acceleration, braking, handling, and ergonomics.
What makes me doubtless on this point? Two things: (1) Consumer Guide were experts in this kind of subterfuge, starting with pretending to be a peer of Consumer Reports, and (2) I’m the Chief Editor of an automotive publication, myself. Stuff like this comes across my desk every damn day.
“My father was an Olds guy, but Oldsmobile wasn’t on my radar”
“Oh how GM deserved to fail”
“GM was dead to me by 85”
Ignorant generational politics gone amok, You guys even don’t even bother to discuss the cars. I hope I will be excused if I withhold judgement until somebody discusses the car who knows something about them in context of the competition. 1985 Chrysler Lebaron coupe, Mercury Topaz coupe, Dodge 600 coupe Hell okay Mazda 626 coupe.
Completely unmentioned. There is a narrative to be advanced. Facts unneccesary.
John, I am an early Gen Xer, and was of driving age when these cars were introduced. I have in fact driven many of the cars you mention, either as rentals or as test drives when car shopping with my older brother. I also came from a very loyal GM family–parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins… our family had LOTS of GM cars for years, and most of them were good. But sadly, not in the 1980s, which is when I honestly feel GM collapsed. I also have all the issues of buff books and Consumer Guide Auto Test from the 1980s, so I can easily access period reviews and feedbacks. The consensus, and not just from the perspective of GM bashers, was that GM cars in the 1980s were not as good as the competition.
Have you driven a Honda Accord from the 1980s? I have: my brother owned a 1984 and a 1986. They were fantastic cars: fun-to-drive, fuel efficient, ultra reliable. The engines were jewels. Fit, finish and material quality were excellent. I have also driven N-Body rentals back in the day–none of those cars came close to the Honda. I remember one time my Pop visited me in college in 1986 and he rented a Calais Sedan. Pop was an extreme GM loyalist–at that point he had personally bought over 20 new GM cars, going back to The General like clockwork every few years. His verdict on the Calais (and mine): pure crap. The thing had a 4-cylinder/auto and it was loud, rough and felt cheap. Not even close to the Honda in feel or quality, no matter what the spec sheets might have implied.
Those same sentiments were echoed by Consumer Guide and the buff books–they rated the imported subcompacts and compacts higher in the 1980s because they were superior products overall. When any car was well done, domestics included–like the Ford Taurus, the accolades poured in. The feedback on the FWD GM A-Body was also good, at least when the cars were first introduced (they carried on too long and the favorable impressions declined accordingly). For comparative feedback circa 1985, I just looked up the rankings in the 1985 Consumer Guide Auto Test and the all-new Calais was outscored by the BMW 3 Series, Dodge Lancer, Honda Accord, Mazda 626, Mitsubishi Galant, Nissan Maxima, Plymouth Caravelle and VW Jetta (the issue did not test a Tempo/Topaz or a Camry, but the Toyota would have unquestionably scored higher than the Calais, not sure about the Ford products). So even when new, as tested by a team in Chicago (not import crazy L.A.), the new GM N-bodies did not impress relative to the competition.
I think what makes this Deadly Sin so painful is that so many people wanted and expected GM to do better in the 1980s, but the company served up far more misses than hits. That fact severely damaged GM’s reputation. The market responded accordingly, and the only bias that most people had was the expectation that they should get the best car available for their money. When GM repeatedly didn’t deliver, they took their business elsewhere, my formerly loyal-to-GM family included.
The saddest part? When I was a kid, I fully expected that I would be a happy Cutlass owner someday. But by the time I was of new car buying age, Oldsmobile was about the last brand I would have ever considered.
True, the Tempo/Topaz was dismal, and the LeBaron was not much better, either.
However, in my humble opinion the major difference was that Ford and Chrysler had recently emerged from near-bankruptcy. That wasn’t the case with GM, which was comparatively flush with cash in those days. Instead of investing in product, under Roger Smith GM went on a spending spree, buying companies such as Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Hughes Electronics, both of which were bad decisions.
GM was the leader; it was the world’s largest industrial corporation. It could have produced better product in the early ’80s, and more to the point, it should have.
I’m a Baby Boomer. Please feel free to disagree; that is your right. But also, please see fit to understand why others may have a firmly grounded point of view that differs from yours.
Roger Smith wanted to use all the bought technology to make cars “cheaper to build”, but didn’t work out.
John C, I just want to let you know that I stand (okeh, sit) in solidarity with you. Yours is a very unpleasant, harsh situation—what with being forced to read stuff that offends you on the internet and all. You are entitled to your opinion, no matter how completely detached from reality it might appear to everyone else; I hope someday, somehow, you’re able to escape this awful tyranny and live out your days reading only those websites—surely there must be many of them—where the virtues of the ’85 Calais Supreme are celebrated and rhapsodized.
Daniel, no problem, I am having a good time. A lot of smart people engage in a circle jerk and then are shocked that someone could possibly think something else .Except that the Calais was better than it’s cohort, if one actually thinks about it.
Except I think the key point made in both GN’s article and the review itself is that the Calais failed to attract new buyers. And the sales figures for the Calais and the entire Oldsmobile line show the brand was becoming increasingly irrelevant. Oldsmobile once had the #1 best-selling car in the US and yet a few decades later it was shuttered. Did the Calais have some good points? Absolutely, and the Consumer Guide article in particular made that argument. Was it better than a Tempo or a Dodge 400? Probably. But did it help arrest Oldsmobile’s long slide into irrelevancy? No. It was a mediocre offering.
I’m always very dubious of vintage reviews, too, when the tester is some top-line model with a more powerful engine and the optional sports suspension. It makes me think, if this is the weak praise mustered for a car when it has put its best foot forward, how much worse is the base model? And indeed, GM was selling heavily to fleets and you just knew that a Calais 2.5 was going to outnumber the “fancy” models by a considerable degree. So a lot of these reviews where the top-range model has been tested really aren’t representative of what people were actually buying.
The Calais was okay. But, and this is my main argument here and what I always take issue with when I have these discussions with you, GM was a huge industrial juggernaut and they should have done better! I’m not going to pat them on the back for making a vaguely decent car and cutting corners in almost every place, when their litany of poor decisions in the 1980s led to huge financial losses, factories closing and thousands of workers losing their jobs.
I’m just grateful that GM is making excellent cars again. It makes it so much easier to be a GM fan. No more, “Oh, this GM car is actually quite good if you tick this box and this box on the option sheet” or “Well, it’s not as good as Car X but they’ve got huge incentives on the hood now!”
See my Tbird mention above. A lot of forces taking on the General in 85.
The Calais wasn’t a bad car, but it was definitely mediocre. Despite what the PR guys might have been saying, GM seemed to have absolutely no interest in competing with Honda or Toyota and were content to stick with ‘just good enough’ to go up against whatever Ford or Chrysler were building. In fact, it’s as if GM upper level management at the time were making decisions not like they were the biggest car company in the world, but as if they were an independent clinging to life as if it were the last years of Studebaker or AMC.
If there was one thing that should have sounded alarm bells at GM, it was how both Chrysler and Ford simply stopped following GM’s lead and went there own way after a certain point. It’s hard to imagine a more stunning reversal in the auto industry hierarchy when ‘no one’ was copying GM the way they had decades ago.
“In fact, it’s as if GM upper level management at the time were making decisions not like they were the biggest car company in the world, but as if they were an independent clinging to life as if it were the last years of Studebaker or AMC.”
As an alternate viewpoint, there’s times that I’ve pondered this, as well, and was wondering if GM actually wasn’t in trouble by the late 70’s, but spending money as if they still were well off. The corner cutting seems to point to a business in trouble, much like AMC. It seems a bit like a guy that’s well dressed and seemingly well off at the gambling table, but spending his mortgage money, etc. My reasoning for mentioning this, is that the Fiero just seemed so ill equipped to survive from the beginning with its cost cutting, and must have lost GM money. Plus, with various recalls and replacement items, you wonder if GM weren’t in a hole far before it would look like they were in one. It’s easy to spend money when you have a seemingly endless line of credit, and where at the gambling table, you always have the mindset that you’re gonna win it all back (and more) with one good hand.
Was it ever a proven thing that GM was actually doing well in the 80’s, or were the cost cutting 80’s a knee jerk reaction to some bad ideas/ gambles/ poor money management in the past? Sometimes it’s hard to tell with a company (unless looking at their accounting), because big businesses tend to give the illusion that they’re doing well, and fudge numbers so that investors and customers don’t lose faith in their company.
Our 1980 Monte Carlo was such a poorly engineered car, that it appeared that drastic cost cutting was happening at least by that time. It was honestly AMC Pacer type bad, where something was going wrong on the car every month or two.
There was lots of GM copying still going on. Nobody else in 1985 had a V6 in their compact offerings. By 1995, they all did, except I think Mitsubishi. Most with clean sheet designs. Even VW had figured out an innovative VR6 that would fit in their Golfs. You can thank Honda for that, no wait GM. GM Greatest Hit?
As I say, you’re quite entitled to your own opinion, regardless of its objective veracity. My own opinion differs from yours; if I were in the market for a new 1985 car the Calais would have easily made it onto my “Hell no” list. If it had to be a US-brand car of approximately the Calais’ size, it’d’ve been a carefully-specified one of Chrysler’s K-car derivatives—easy choice. If it didn’t have to be American, it’d’ve been a Volvo 240 or a Honda Accord or any of several others. If it had to be American but didn’t have to be Calais-sized, it’v’ve probably been a thoughtfully-specified Chev Caprice.
Lido did a great job getting the most out of the K and L platform. My first car was an 86 Turismo.
GN, my apologies. I saw this article and immediately jumped on without realizing it was you and not Paul who had written it.
Many thanks for your insights. This is as comprehensive and detailed as any article I’ve seen on the Calais and other N Bodies.
I’ve bookmarked it for reference.
Awesome article. As a former quad4 powered achieva owner I can easily relate.
I always wanted a detail explanation of the 1984 restructure but can’t find one. Anyone with detail on it should share it here
I guess I’ll comment on what I think about these cars. Suffice it to say, if I could find a symbol of everything wrong with GM during the 80s, these would be in the running. So unattractive, so gutless, so badly built. Then there’s the ad campaign….
I can name the exact problem with the ad campaign, and it’s not the terrible execution or the insulting loyal customers. If you are going to have a good ad campaign, make sure that the product you’re selling, is actually worth making such claims about. If I was around during when these ads were running, I probably would’ve been at least somewhat familiar with Oldsmobile. I probably would’ve been around cars like the Cutlass Supreme, the 98, the Toronado, and the 442, stuff that had distinct engines, body styles, equipment options sheet metal, etc. Even if these ads were to entrance me into the showrooms (Highly doubtful), if what I got when I walked into the showrooms was rebadged, samey looking, cynically made, hunks of scrap metal like the Calais, I probably would’ve been either laughing hysterically, or confounded beyond belief. And I probably would’ve walked right out of the showroom, or buy a used older 98 or Cutlass Supreme and keep that forever.
So, GM was right. This wouldn’t have been my Father’s Oldsmobile. Because my Father’s Oldsmobile would’ve actually been good.
The thing I find sadder, is that if you were to look at the lineup Oldsmobile had in the mid-late 80s, and compare it to the Oldsmobiles they were making ten years later, the difference is night and day. The cars may not have been brilliant, but they all looked different, and in some cases, were totally unique (See the Aurora for proof positive of that). I would go so far as to say that if the “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile” ad campaign with cars like the Aurora, the Intrigue, the Alero. I think maybe it might’ve worked. At the very least, the cars would’ve been worthy of more than just a snort of derision.
Buff book complaints notwithstanding, I don’t categorically object to the pushrod V-6, at least at this point in history. The downside of four-valve layouts is that without variable valve timing and a variable-length intake manifold, you tend to lose on the bottom what you gain on top, which hurts in heavier cars with automatic.
On the other hand, 125 hp and 150 lb-ft of torque from a 3-liter six with electronic fuel injection is borderline embarrassing, pushrods or not. For a fuel economy penalty of almost 20% over the four-cylinder engine (modern EPA combined figures are 20 mpg for the V-6 vs. 24 mpg for the four-cylinder auto and 25 mpg for the four-cylinder manual), it looks pretty grim.
The Cadillac 4100 (4.1 liters) was rated at 135 hp, so 125 from 3 liters does not seem bad.
BMW 2.7 inline 6 with similar tuning profile 121hp.
The BMW Eta engine had 20 lb-ft more torque than the Buick 3.0 despite 273cc less displacement, and returned the same fuel economy despite a slightly shorter axle ratio and almost 300 lb more weight. Likewise, Ford’s 3.0-liter Vulcan, which had 140 hp.
And since when is the HT4100 any kind of model of engine technology?
Ok, then – the 3.8 liter Buick V6 put out 165 HP by 1986 with little change from the first FWD version. Which still suggests that 3 liters should make about 125 to perhaps 130 or so.
Overhead cams do not mean that low end torque is bad, it really depends on tuning. Cadillac (ill fated) Northstar came with two tunes, the base 275 HP version with 90% of peak torque at 2000 RPMs and the 300 HP version that was less than that, but had more torque at 6000 RPMs where it was rated at 300 HP. Comparing the 4.5 Alante engine with the Northstar also suggests that with 4 valves per cylinder, the torque increases about 10%.
To me, these N-cars are a bit perplexing. They seemed to be so unsure of what they were supposed to be. All the lead up for the 1985 introduction was for the coupes. So perhaps they thought they would be seen as individualistic and desirable choices, with a bit of flair? Then GM threw all that out the window for 1986 when the 4 door “family” versions arrived. I think a large part of why the Grand Am was the runaway best seller was because it seemed to have the most defined focus of the three. Whether it was a cheap stripper or highly optioned, they all at least were trying to seem sporty. Over at Buick, if you did not tick the right boxes, you sure could suck a lot of the luxury out of one. Then at Oldsmobile, it was all mix and match. Keep it stripped if you so choose. Like luxury? Make it a Supreme! How a bout a little spice? Could I interest you in one of our ES / International series / GT / 442 models (…) ?
I never hated the exteriors of these. Certainly more appealing than the A-body cars to my eyes. What did them in, for me, was the questionable interior styling and ergonomics. Quite a few fads of the 1980’s appear, such as optional digital dashes and control pods on either side of the instrument cluster. Things like this really made these cars seem dated quickly; just compare the dash and interior of this Calais to a 1986 Accord and you will see what I mean. Overall, when the most redeeming features a car has can only be described as adequate, everything had better be so then. I think it’s pretty clear the N cars missed that mark.
I think this sums up the ultimate issue with Oldsmobile so far as marketing went.
As Paul pointed out with the Dustbuster minivans, GM seemed comfortable using gimmicky approaches on what futuristic/leading edge should represent in their attempts at advanced design. Futuristic design elements that reflected their own unique view. Not necessarily good design.
It took until the 1990s, when GM was capturing the smooth, organic aerodynamic design elements Ford was already achieving in the early 80s. And even then, GM was not subtle as they went overboard with many of their attempts to appear cutting edge. Some of those 1990s Pontiac’s for example, were embarrassingly tacky in their execution.
Had a friend that worked at the Fremont Ca plant.A contest was held to come up with a new slogan,a worker at this plant came up with “Mark of Excellence”,he was given a new Cadilliac when he retired.I remember when TIME magazine put the quad 4 on it’s cover with the statement”The Little Engine That Could”.
Am having a hard time finding foreign competition to the 150hp 2.3 Quad four when it debuted in 1986. How about this. 1986 Porsche 944 2.5 USA 147hp Mercedes 190E 2.3 USA 130hp. BMW 325es 2.7 inline 6 121hp. Strange since it was designed for foreign competition.
1988, not 1986.
Honda’s 2.0 liter B20A series DOHC motors were producing 135hp in 1988 (and up to 157hp in other world markets). The following year Honda introduced VTEC in the B16A. Those motors put out 158hp from just 1.6 liters. Torque is obviously lower, but then so are their displacements (and again, refer to Japanese annual road tax to understand why).
Mercedes had the 190E 2.3-16 on sale in the US beginning in 1986; they had 167hp. Same 2.3 liters.
BMW had their M3 and it’s 192hp. Same 2.3 liters.
What did Honda’s 1988 carb or carbs 2.0 base engines have? Remember the 2.3 Quad 4 got up to 195hp in HO 442 form.
When Mercedes sold a 2.3-16 or BMW an M3 within 200% of a Quad 4 Calais you can mark me impressed.
And what did GM’s base 2.0 fuel injected four cylinders have then? Less than a carb’d Honda’s. It’s obvious these aren’t genuine questions anymore. No point in continuing further here.
Highest net output of the twin-cam B20A was 148 hp (150 PS) DIN in uncatalyzed B20A7 European form. The 160 PS figure for the original DOHC B20A was JIS gross; net output was about 135 hp.
Think 122 net was the best it got in the US Accord LXi. SOHC 12 valve. A nice bounce over the more common DX/LX with the carb. I think it is safe to say the three Calais choices offered better engine options except perhaps for base model 5 speeds pre balance shaft. Just my opinion.
Sorry if I seem agitated, on this thread it is me against the world. Somebody has to stand up for the people that designed, built, sold and drove this car. The recoded history on the Calais is thin and C/D is hardly Biblical in it’s infallibility. I won’t comment further.
In fairness, the Mercedes-Cosworth 2.3-16 and BMW S14B23 were high-strung, fairly exotic engines offered in limited numbers at very high prices mostly for racing homologation. They really were not run-of-the-mill passenger car fare.
A lack of power was never the Quad 4’s problem. Its output was respectable in 1986 and Oldsmobile eventually got 190 hp out of it. The issue was that it was really not a pleasant engine, it was peaky, and it wasn’t nearly as reliable as the better Japanese fours.
I only included the BMW and M-B because those two were the likely insparation for the Folks at Olds. “What if we were to make an engine like this for our everyday products and really make people take notice?”. They were eyeing up the demographic who aspired to those cars at the time.
Another 1988 150 hp GM engine was the 2.0i DOHC 16v as used in the Opel Kadett E GSi, for example.
With catalyst? they were optional in Germany around then I think?
Our Korean Built version of the Kadett GSE had a 95hp version of the 2.0 cjiguy makes fun of above. Sourced from Australia if I remember right.
Yes, 150 hp with catalyst. And 156 hp without.
Have a look here. It’s in German, just scroll down a bit for the chart with all the “Ottomotoren” (gasoline engines) specs:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Kadett_E
Here’s the real thing. That Korean built Kadett was a sissy with its lousy 95 hp.
Cooly long engine list. Even a pushrod 50hp for slowpokes. Had to look up stufenheck on the 2.0i GT engine. Disappointed it only meant notchback. Figured it would mean goes like hell ala Dodge Omni. Yet no iron duke, baffling.
I must say I have no idea which Opel engines were also used by other GM divisions. Opel’s “own” top engines were always inline-6, available with fuel injection decades ago (like in the Opel Commodore of yore). And in the seventies Opel already had a fuel injected 115 hp 2.0 liter 4-cylinder (see Opel Kadett C GT/E below).
1994 was the first year for the new UK built GM “Ellesmere” V6 engines. These were quite troublesome, weren’t they ? Considering all the Cadillac Catera (a rebadged Opel Omega B1) horror stories.
By the way, in the late eighties a fuel injected 150+ hp (circa) 2.0 liter 4-cylinder engine became the norm In Europe for C-segment hot hatches/sedans. Somewhat later even in the smaller B-segment hot hatches. PSA, for example, had a hell of a fuel injected 1.9 liter DOHC 16v engine back then.
USA did have a 111hp FI 2.0 on the mid 70s as well. DOHC and even 16 valve. Based of the Vega engine with a cylinder head by the English Cosworth, and FI by Bendix. The goal had been 150hp but with American smog laws. Supposedly it was not a troublesome engine. 111hp really wasn’t enough though in a 2500 pound Vega and with all the expensive componants the car was too expensive.
The Ellesmere V6 was in a surprising number of GMers that were trying for a Euro fair, including Saabs and Saturns. My brother had a troublesome one in his Catera. The Cadillac dealer told him to not blame Cadillac and if he bought a real Cadillac next time he would be more pleased. Food for thought to those that dream about fancy Opels being brought over as Cadillacs. I suspect if they were brought over as Opels they would have done fine as the buyer would have expected a Volvo/Audi like ownership experience.
Cars from different places were designed to different sensibilities, and this created a world of choice. That is gone now. And it is why a car like the Calais can seem so nonsensical to people but far outsold the Omega it replaced. A fact danced around by GN. The Grand Am sold even better with it’s more expressive styling until it was turned into an Opel by people who did not understand the appeal.
John, I did look at X-Body Omega sales relative to the N-Body Calais, but the story is not as good as you might think. For an apples to apples comparison, you have to look at 5 model years, since that was the total time the Omega was on the market. So for 5 years of Calais sales versus five years of Omega sales, the difference is 128,196 in favor of the Calais. But keep in mind that Omega sales absolutely collapsed after 1981, due to the myriad recalls and incredibly poor reputation the car earned. The X-Body cars were basically black listed as “not recommended” by Consumer Reports and Consumer Guide. That the Calais beat the Omega in that context is hardly a sparkling endorsement. Also, think about fleet sales: I’d wager that a large percentage of Calais became rental car fodder, something that did not happen with the Omega in later years due to its poor reputation (fleets, with an eye on resale, likely wouldn’t touch an X-Body after 1981).
Also, not all the N-Bodies were more successful than their X-Body counterparts. Buick sold 982,852 X-Body Skylarks versus 583,372 N-Body Somerset/Skylarks over the entire run for both cars.
I have to admit I have never known anyone to be such a passionate defender of the N-Body cars. Perhaps you should live the dream and get one for yourself. There’s a 1985 Calais with the Tech IV and 3-speed automatic for sale in Nashua, NH if you’re interested. This gold beauty has just 48K miles on the clock for a mere $5,000. It’s only been on the market for 111 days, so you better hurry…
Thanks for the advise on purchases GN. I am actually much more passionate about the Calais cousin the Corsica /Baretta. I owned a 93 Corsica and a 95 Baretta. So I am fairly well versed on those. I hope I can say that without giving PN or you an idea for the next deadly GM sin. I can see the title. The sin of making John C. happy. The later 90s restyles, becoming Achieva, put on weight and length in a way that took away the effiecency that I admire in the originals.
On Omega sales. I tend not to think much of first year X body sales. Nobody had or ever had anything like it and it seemed so much like the future. Once competitors and the rest of the GM line was brought onstream, sales were normalized with import buyers sticking to their tastes and many domestic buyers being “bitter clingers” as President Obama might say, to Detroit’s more traditional offerings.
I did enjoy your article even if not agreeing with it or C/D.on everything. It has also been a good discussion.
Haha, don’t let that Calais get away!
Agree that the discussion has been great, and I really appreciate seeing your perspective on these cars. I WISH the Calais had looked as good as the Beretta–I think that car was one of GM’s best looking designs from the 1980s. Part of what really hurt the N-Bodies was GM’s adherence to the “formal” look with the bolt-upright rear window. It had become cliché by the mid 1980s and had the unfortunate effect of making so many GM cars look too boxy, old fashioned and too much alike.
I think one thing you and I share is a real sadness for what happened with GM. I sincerely wish that there hadn’t been so many Deadly Sins served up by The General. As you know, I grew up surrounded by GM cars and they were mostly good to great for their intended missions. To see the company stumble, so badly and for so long, was (is) depressing.
When I researched this DS piece, I read through Setting The Pace, and it made me feel awful to be frank. There had been so much pride in Lansing, and it all came crashing down. I genuinely feel for the thousands and thousands of good employees and managers who were unable to break through (even though I do believe they knew how to do things right) and were forced to endure as a once great marque was humbled and then killed. The effect on dealers was catastrophic as well. Mossy and Royal in New Orleans had been powerhouse dealers and undoubtedly very profitable businesses–for a while it seemed like every fifth car in NOLA was an Olds. Now Mossy sells Buick/GMC, and Royal’s site is a Whole Foods.
Here’s a great clip of a New Orleans hometown hero, Saints QB Archie Manning, pitching for Royal Olds: https://youtu.be/N-uX6BQ9SeU Needless to say, this was my childhood and the great Olds memories are strong. I am still sad that they are gone…
My ex’s mother had a red burgundy one with red velore interior and that noisy quad 4. She drove it a month and then took over her husband cutlass sedan rwd full brouugham. He drive it a while and then repaired the old caprice Waggoner he had parked in the yard and drove that. It was cramped and had a flimsy plastic interior that had started to come apart in a year. The little sister had it for a while like 2 years and it blew a headgasket and they junked it rather than fix it. Those 4 s had more parts than a v8..the quad 4 was the referred 4 cylinder. Quieter and reliable at least. This car a deadly sin? I don’t think so. They didn’t replace cutlass or grand prix, those continued on, but rather were their own thing nicer than a j car or a chevette. They didn’t really replace anything good. That deadly sin falls to the 88?89? Cutlas with the God awful windows that replaced the g body cutlass. Agree that they were bland ugly cramped, crap boxes. They to me competed against the dodge 400 and tempo topaz or lebaron. To me the Chrysler was the best. At least it was broughamy and fairly reliable and more comfortable. The tempo topaz was and abomination and I rank it worse for its ugliness alone. I think if one had to pick of the 3 the Chrysler wins. It was reasonably reliable, looked good for a small car and had nicer seats and had more standard features. But I will not buy one since I prefer large cars. Olds lost me when they killed the 98 rwd. And even it wasn’t as good as a marquis.
All I can offer is a view from afar, having grown up in Israel but clearly those (and the Xs and Js) were the kind of cars that killed US cars in over there, where, going back to the 20s, they owned the luxury segment of the market. It was not only the looks but the legendary reliability was gone and that – more than anything else – was the deadliest sin. I remember those coming out on the market – they just did not look right and started falling apart very quickly under local conditions, very unlike their forerunners from the 20s – early 70s. People noticed and by now there were alternatives from Germany – Israelis in the 80s felt no longer obliged to shun German products as the previous generation. Suddenly we had lots of 3-Series BMWs, C-Class MBs and Audi 100s. Fast forward to 2016 and US made cars are far and few between, with only the odd Cadillac or Chrysler 300 making an appearance, with the market controlled by the Germans and Lexus.
This article had me looking up Irv Rybicki and his styling legacy on the internet. Seems his main thing wasn’t a lack of talent, per se, but he wasn’t quite as expressive and forceful a personality as his predecessors. Not a bad thing not to be a hothead, but sometimes that’s what it takes to get the job done.
Combine Mr. Rybicki’s relative passivity with new challenges with EPA / efficiency concerns, he kind of had the deck stacked against him. As for the Calais itself (and the other N-bodies), I have two thoughts:
* I never realized they were intended to replace the beloved G-bodies. (What??? They seemed barely larger than the J-bodies);
* Not ugly, none of them. I thought they all looked decent, but I do have to laugh when GN wrote that they looked like they were designed by a fifth grader, as I was in the fifth grade when these came out.
I think Rybicki was an example of the Peter Principle in action (The theory is that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate’s performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role). Rybicki was put into a role for which he was ill suited, at a critical juncture for the company where design should have been more important than ever.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, perhaps more than at any other time in its history, GM needed an outstanding designer to ensure that the transition to smaller, more efficient cars did not sacrifice the corporation’s design leadership. That meant someone aggressive and passionate, ready to fight bean counters, recalcitrant engineers and obstinate manufacturing executives. Jordan’s nickname in the company was the “Chrome Cobra,” giving you a sense of how demanding he was and how hard he would fight for great design. GM’s top executives either did not understand why passionate creativity was vital, or they did not want to deal with someone who would push back (or both). That was a lethal error.
More than anything else, as the domestic companies had to move rapidly from big cars to small cars, GM needed someone who was a true design visionary, able to create great designs on a smaller scale. Chuck Jordan was the right person for that job: he had run Opel’s Design in the late 1960s to 1970, so he understood how to make small cars look great. Examples of his work at Opel included the Manta, GT, Ascona and Rekord D–all were very well proportioned and expressive. That sense of scale and detail was crucial for making compelling smaller cars–Jordan understood it, Rybicki did not.
Once Rybicki retired in 1986, GM did appoint Jordan to the top job, perhaps realizing the styling disasters had caused the company significant market share and profit losses. Jordan worked quickly, and his styling transformation of old platforms was impressive. For example, the second generation N-Body cars, introduced for 1992, were far better looking and well differentiated than the first generation cars. Likewise with the revamped H- and C-Body full size cars for 1992. The handsome Gen4 Seville was also Jordan’s. Imagine if he had been able to work his magic in the early 1980s, before GM started hemorrhaging marketshare?
Sadly, by the time Jordan took over design leadership at GM, severe damage had already been done. No longer was GM perceived as the “one to beat” for great designs–Ford had taken that crown among U.S. makers. Jordan had a scant 6 years before his mandatory retirement age in order to regain some semblance of style for GM cars. But it was too little, too late… and that blame has to go to GM’s management for putting in the wrong guy (Rybicki) at the wrong time (late 1970s).
I’m not certain it’s really fair to blame Irv Rybicki for GM’s design issues when he was in charge of styling. It would be rather like blaming Elwood Engel for Chrysler’s GM me-too sixties’ car copies (which were actually pretty good). Both of those guys got their positions because they would do what Roger Smith and Lynn Townsend wanted them to do. Rybicki was given a specific set of parameters within to work (i.e., cost-effective), and his designs reflected that. I have no doubt that, at the time, Smith was pleased with what Rybicki came up with.
Smith didn’t want any kind of classic Harley Earl or Bill Mitchell GM styling leadership ‘flair’ because that would have undoubtedly cost money that Smith didn’t want to spend. He wanted a chief stylist who would tow the line, and that’s exactly what he got.
Some great points. I think that it’s integral that someone or many people are passionate enough at a company to challenge the status quo, because you’re left with a bunch of yes men who often will seal their fate anyways, if they’re given parameters that essentially set them up for failure. You need engineers and stylists to go to bat for the product, because the guys upstairs in the big offices don’t give a damn about the product, or the individual people that buy them. It’s all just pie charts and demographics. It’s the same thing with the music industry–you generally have a bunch of people in top positions that really know nothing about music.
The difference between successful companies like this and non-successful ones, is that the successful ones preferrably have passionate, knowledgeable people at the top, or if they aren’t very knowledgeable or passionate about what they’re selling, they hire people that do know, that they can trust. The failures have the big corporate types with little to no knowledge of what they’re selling or who they’re selling it to, and they hire a bunch of people under them that have barely any more knowledge or passion than they do. I can only imagine the high fives that these guys give themselves in the boardroom, assuming that the product will somehow magically sell itself.
The sizing of the cars during GM’s “rapid shrink” of the eighties was perplexing on so many levels. One thing I was thinking about as I wrote this DS was why GM didn’t just make a more expressive coupe version of the FWD A-bodies. The FWD “A-Special” could have just resumed its role as the style-leader of the mid-size line. Unfortunately, there were two problems with that:
1) GM already had 2-door FWD A-Bodies–boxy and uninspired to say the least. It’s a shame the company didn’t just launch with the 4-door as that body style was more suited to the very pragmatic, square styling.
2) GM was about to make its flagship E-Body coupes (Toronado, Riviera, Eldorado) the size of the FWD A-Body. That’t right! Though it hardly seems possible, the new-for-1986 E-Body was about 1 inch wider and 1 inch lower and 2 1/2 inches SHORTER than the FWD A-Body. So GM couldn’t have an A-Special Coupe that size…
Oldsmobile’s showroom floor was such a mess for 1986. The flagship Toronado coupe was shorter than the Cutlass Supreme AND the Cutlass Ciera, while it looked like a dead-ringer for the compact Calais. Craziness….
Inflation was out of control during the 70’s, with fuel prices rising at the end of the 70’s into the early 80’s. GM was bent on downsizing in the early 80’s, which left them with little choice but to carry on with plans in place for new models for the mid 80’s. The N cars were replacements for the X cars. By the end of 80’s the downsizing of the C and E bodies were being reversed to some degree.
I also think that GM would have been pretty sure that the domestics would follow to the small size. Chrysler did with it’s one platform for every car. Ford didn’t. I wonder how much the reason for this is that they just didn’t have the budget to do it. I have many problems with the Taurus, but it is hard to deny that it benefited from being designed a few years later.
GM is trying to stay ahead of the proverbial curve, but they are so far ahead, that when the curve changes direction, GM is left with products that are not quite right for the market, like the E-bodies/platform.
“Rybicki’s ascension ushered in a disastrous era for GM design, as the once-wondrous styling studios were only permitted to send forth boxy, cookie-cutter cars. The J-cars were bland and undifferentiated. The front-wheel-drive A-Bodies were sleep-inducing, with rigidly square greenhouses and minimal divisional identities. Awkward proportions were the hallmark of the front-wheel-drive C-Bodies, making the GM flagships look small and cheap. But the winner of the ugly pageant for GM’s 1985 line-up was the stumpy N-Body.”
Absolutely nailed it, good job! (what a turd-blossom of a car)
I must say that this is one of the most well-written and thought-out articles I’ve read on CC in a long time. Well done George!
This Olds is an excellent example of why the Japanese and German manufacturers gained so much market share in the ’80s. The Baby Boomers flocked to the imports because of styling, performance and perceived value. The GM cars had none of those.
In the mid-1980s, Herman Cain, future failed U.S. Senate candidate from Georgia and future failed Republican presidential candidate, was a Burger King executive when Pillsbury Co. was still independent and owned Burger King (i.e., pre-1989). I lived in Minneapolis at the time – I also worked for Pillsbury for several of those years, in market research – and would visit my family on the east coast via Auto Driveaway cars; I’d drive straight through with a brief nap or two, then had the use of the car for a few days at the other end, before delivery.
I drove two Oldsmobiles that belonged to Cain and his wife when he transferred to and from Cherry Hill, NJ a few years apart: an Omega sedan followed by a Calais coupe. (The latter had a back seat full of plants that I took care of and delivered along with the car to Mrs. Cain; I never met Mr. Cain.)
I drove about 1200 miles in each car, when they were fairly new. I’ve never driven, before or since, such clearly mediocre cars. The seats were terrible, and in addition there were other less definable qualities that are better analyzed in the above story.
I am certain that Cain (and/or his wife) chose these cars voluntarily – a subject for contemplation.
The Grand Am looked more in tune, even with the stiff roof. And sold better, but then many quality bugs led to them being ‘el cheapo’ entry level cars, disposed of when making better income.
Calais was trying to appeal to older and younger and failed. The door pull straps and red velour, matched to alloy rims and black trim was like Granny Clampett in a mini-skirt.
I remember at ’88 Auto Show there was a Calais with newly available column shift* and bench seat. An older couple was shown this by a ‘Product Specialist’, and they still weren’t impressed. They wanted the bigger Oldses of the past.
*It was all plastic and seemed like a cheap aftermarket modification.
I will confess, I’ve owned 2, yes two of the Calais. Both were last year 91 models and both gave me somewhat indifferent service. The first ’91 in light blue was purchased as a replacement for an ’83 Subaru wagon that had just been repaired after a wreck despite having 150,000 miles. Since I was into month 7 of my first job after school and had passed informally from probationary FNG to hired employee with full benefits, I pulled the trigger on something which rode a lot better and was much more comfortable, plus the Subie was a stick bucking a 30 mile stop and go commute each way vs the 3speed auto with lockup converter. Achieving better mileage and being more pleasant on the commute between Benton and Little Rock. It was the main ride for my ex and me until some warranty problems surfaced that the Olds service dept insisted weren’t problems at all and wall-jobbed me until I went away. Which we did, back to Subaru for the first of three new cars between me and the ex from them.
The second was in 2000 Montana where I was in need of a winter beater which could handle the ice on the roads around Helena better than my ’98 2WD Tracker. A buy-here, pay-here with a good rep was recommended to me by a co-worker and he accepted credit cards as payment, so I experienced carja-vu as the white ’91 Calais (this time with a Quad 4 instead of the Iron Duke) was the most presentable of the candidates my credit limit would allow. This car took everything I could do, from blizzards to road trips in the summer and regular dirt road travel to meet clients for home visits. Not much went wrong, brakes all around and the coil pack tended to die on an annual basis. When the transmission started NOT locking up on the highway at the usual speed without me backing off the gas completely, I feared the imminent arrival of expensive adventures, so I kept my eyes open for a suitable replacement which in true CC fashion took the form of a ’73 Galaxie two door hardtop in cream yellow under brown vinyl.
I had an opportunity last summer to buy a fully loaded ’85 Calais (45,000 miles) with the 3.0 V6, but the test drive dissuaded me, as I spotted issues with the heater, A/C and suspiciously low readings on gauges. Perhaps the seller’s refusal to let me drive played a part also, but it seemed boomy and rough. Perhaps you can’t go home again.
The only thing my grandfather ever said about his Somerset was how much it irked him that it guzzled oil while my father’s VW Jetta never leaked a drop.
I always thought the facelifted Calais had the nose that should have been on the ’85; it was at least distinctive, if not overly attractive, and looked reasonably modern. The interior, though… I don’t even know where to begin. The only way I can assume that GM execs thought these things would attract baby boomers is that they had neither met nor ever spoken to one.
My own theory can be summed up by the turn signals. I had the Pontiac version of the N car. Every time I used the turn signal, it felt like I was breaking a chicken leg. The turn signal on my 2nd car, an older Honda Civic just felt so much better.
A little thing to be sure, but it summed up the whole car. GM cars felt “cheap and tacky”. If you hung onto one very long, the experience only got worse.
A car is a major purchase. Even an economy car buyer wants to feel they’re getting a well built machine. GM cars of this era weren’t – no matter how much you paid.
“Breaking a chicken leg” is the best description of that feeling ever. I knew it reminded me of something! (And the “n”s weren’t alone…)
I’ve never driven the Calais, but I can say that my ’84 Olds Cutlass Supreme that I had many years back had the feeling of the description “breaking a chicken leg” with the turn signal stalk. It didn’t feel natural at all, like something was always gonna break. It never did, but it didn’t inspire confidence that it wouldn’t give out at some point.
Since my 82 Regal was virtualy the same as your Cutlass Supreme. We had the same gear. Mine never broke, but always felt like it was just about too. It’s a tactile thing. I have a 1940s American Standard faucet on my lav sink,the handles of wich feels like it’s going to fall of. (the screw is tight, but I guess it’s 0.5mm to long?) It’s been doing it’s job for 70 years (20 of it with me not doing any thing to it!) so it’s not a “bad” product, just feels weird.
If I had a dime for every single mom I knew that bought a used N-body, be it a Calais, Grand Am or Somerset, I’d be able to get a new LaCrosse. I’ve always wondered what the attraction was for single mothers and this GM platform…
the price and something remotely familiar.
Say what you will about the Calais’ styling, looks, and what-have-you, the car certainly was reliable.
In my case, once I happened upon an 85 Calais with only 65k miles upon it – its owner had passed away and her relatives wanted to get rid of it so I snapped it up for just a few dollars. I drove that car hard, through three New England winters, and often skipped regular maintenance/oil changes, etc.
The car always started up, never died, never fell apart except at one point I had to replace tires and the muffler.. When I moved away I was able to sell the car for $1200 and it still was in good condition & ran like a top.
That’ll be young urban professionals.
Nah Daniel….where I come from, it’s upwardly mobile.
Alright, I’ll be sure and call them yumpies when I’m where you come from, then.
I remember one of the “sported up, Calais’s” sitting on the lot at “Farrish Olds” , in Fairfax VA. Always wondered, who ‘drove it home”?
This long thread gives the Calais more attention than I recall it getting when it was new. Reminds me of an old joke.
A preacher and a pilot are both entering heaven. St. Peter gives the preacher a wood staff and cotton robe. The pilot gets a gold staff and a silk robe. The preacher asks why. St. Peter responds: “When you preached, people slept. When he flew, people prayed.”
Perhaps the ultimate Calais sin was putting people to sleep. Not so many prayed they could someday own a Calais.
Just a few days ago there was a writeup here lambasting GM for changing their car names too often. Now we have one highlighting a C/D article that starts by criticizing Oldsmobile for still having the same car names they did two decades earlier. GM just can’t catch a break.
> Base power came from the Pontiac Iron Duke 2.5 L four, and provided gruff, uninspiring power to countless GM cars including the X-Body, FWD A-Body, P-Body (Pontiac Fiero) and F-Body. It was essentially one half of a Pontiac 301 V8, an engine that had its roots in the first Pontiac V8 of 1955.
The Iron Duke is all but unrelated to the 301 V8. It is more closely related to the 151 4 that GM do Brazil used, which itself was derived from Chevrolet’s 153 4 from the Chevy II/Nova. Pontiac did briefly have an engine they called the Trophy 4 that was used in the first-generation Tempest, which was basically one bank of the 389 V8, and I think this engine is being confused with the Iron Duke.
I never understood GM’s midsize strategy in the ’80s. Weren’t the 1982 FWD A bodies originally supposed to supplant the RWD A/G line? Buick transferred the Century name to the new car, and Olds used the Cutlass name on it, suggesting this. Then the N bodies were supposedly originally G body replacements too. Then the W body aka GM-10 finally filled this role, although Olds still kept the G body Cutlass Supreme Classic for one last year, meaning Olds sold their 1978-vintage Cutlass Supreme coupe alongside three cars that were supposed to replace it. Meanwhile, if the new N bodies didn’t float your boat, you could wait a year and buy a lookalike shrunken E/K body (Toronado, Seville) for only twice the cost. There were also the L bodies (Corsica/Beretta) that were about this size, or the FWD C and H bodies that were just a bit larger and similarly styled. I have to wonder if the N body’s shrunken-G-Special looks and names were just a ruse to get people to think of them as such rather than what they really were – updates of the troubled X bodies. The Calais was about the same size and same shape as the departing Omega, and often had the same Iron Duke/3 speed automatic drivetrain too.
I assume the original rationale for retaining the RWD G-bodies a while longer was to spread out the retooling expense. Toyota did the same thing with its transition to FWD. That’s why the E80 Corolla/Sprinter coupes remained RWD, but the sedans and five-doors were FWD. Toyota was building something like a million units a year in all, so they didn’t want to spend the money to retool everything at once, and they judged that the packaging advantages of FWD were more urgent in the family car lines than in the coupes.
Ironically, Toyota in Japan had a similar blizzard of different models that weren’t all that different in size, price, styling, or features. While we got the Camry instead of the Corona, Japan got the Camry AND the Corona, and the Carina (which became a platform twin of the Corona with the switch to FWD), AND then the Vista, which was a Camry twin. This isn’t even getting into the coupes and four-door hardtops, or the Camry V-6 Prominent (basis of the subsequent Lexus ES250), which at least had a different mission; there wasn’t a lot to choose between a Camry and a Corona, and almost no mechanical difference between the actual platform twins.
The main reason it worked rather than being a disaster of confusing lookalikes is that it allowed Toyota to sustain its different distribution channels (they even added one — the Vista was its flagship), which gave them a much stronger dealer base than Nissan or any of the others. If they’d put a T160 Carina sedan next to the V10 Camry in the same showroom, even the salesman probably couldn’t have told you how they meaningfully differed, but that wasn’t the point.
I guess the moral of the story is a decision that seems commercially inspired when you’re on top may be disastrous if you’re slipping, or vice-versa.
What made Toyota different from GM was that even though they kept some older configurations around as new ones were introduced, they still kept the “old” RWD designs fresh. I’m not sure if this was always true in the JDM, but at least in N. America in 1984 the new FWD Corollas were joined by a revamped line of RWD Corollas that were all new inside and out. There were a few holdouts from the previous generation (1980) in Japan and likely elsewhere, but these tended to be less-popular body styles like wagons/estates and panel vans that were not produced in the new E80 generation. They didn’t keep their 1978 design of the core coupes, sedans, or hatchbacks going through 1988 with just a facelift, and the carryover models from previous generations were planned rather than accidental “we can’t drop the old models because they’re so popular” as happened with GM in the large and mid-sized segments.
I never understood the (old?) Toyota dealership model in Japan, with the Corolla Store, Camry Store, or whatever the others were called, all selling almost the same vehicles. At first it seems like GM in the ’80s and ’90s with mass overlap, but the GM divisions at least were originally separate companies, and all still had separate engineering staffs into the 1980s. Whereas Toyota seemed to go out of their way to sell near-duplicate cars at different dealerships.
Historically, the reason Toyota established the multiple dealership channels was because that was the only way they could add more dealers.
Toyota during the early postwar occupation had what for the time was a really strong dealer network. However, because there was almost no market for passenger cars, there weren’t that many dealers, and to keep them viable, Toyota had given most of them very large territories.
So, when the market started expanding and Toyota needed more stores than the existing dealers could or would establish, they had existing contractual obligations for territorial exclusivity. Adding new distribution channels provided a way to open additional stores in existing territories without technically violating existing exclusivity agreements. Of course, some dealers cried foul anyway, although Toyota mollified them by allowing them to buy minority interests in the new channels. (See https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/text/taking_on_the_automotive_business/chapter2/section9/item1_a.html)
I think also Japanese car dealership tended to be smaller than typical American dealerships, so having a more finite lineup for each channel’s outlets made sense. There was eventually some sense of the channels seeking different audiences, but I don’t think that was ever as central as just having more stores.
For instance, in the early ’90s, Corolla Stores had the Corolla, Corolla II (Tercel twin), Camry (narrow-body JDM version), Windom (Lexus ES300), Estima Lucida (Previa), Townace van, Celica, and Supra. Vista Stores had the Tercel, Sera, Vista (JDM Camry twin), Saber (U.S. Camry), Cresta (Mark II/Chaser twin), Aristo (Lexus GS), Hiace van, MR2, and Land Cruiser. So, some models overlapped (Tercel/Corolla II, Camry/Vista), some didn’t, and none of the channels had all the models at once.
So much has been said, it’s hard to come up with something other than Amen, but I’ll try…
Was it just yesterday we were considering Name and Form? What a horrible example of GM trying to hang onto a name but getting it wrong. From Cutlass as a sharp edged weapon pretty much at the head of its class, it had become more of a dull butter knife, a small item of dubious appeal and function. Who ever aspired to a butter knife? And Calais – though I’ve never been there, from what I’ve read it seems a rather uncomplimentary name to give a car.
But ugh, the looks! And GM really thought they could sell a car that looked like this! Wake up guys – advertising isn’t the answer to all product ills and shortcomings.
Could a case be made for the appointment of Irv Rybicki over Chuck Jordan as a deadly sin? Real Cutlass below.
Very nice! As a fellow artist, always impressed how clean your paint edges remain. And your paint finishes in general, show outstanding workmanship, and quality. Besides, excellent colour choices.
Thank you Daniel. I will admit whenever I post a model now I always wonder what Daniel will think. 🙂 This was an ’85 442 kit which I turned into a mainstream Cutlass, by adding extra chrome, wheel covers, whitewalls and the landau top. Why? Because I wanted to build it differently!
Clean paint edges are the result of careful masking with quality tape, but these are simple compared to some work I’ve seen others do. The chrome trim is usually adhesive foil which I cut to shape before applying; I will admit that is tricky around wheel arches. For this Cutlass I pretty much followed a brochure photograph, just leaving off the mid-body protection strip, so I can’t claim credit for the colours this time.
Fellow modeller agrees! Well done.
Just an excellent piece, well researched, well reported.
I have sought for a name for the early eighties Cutlasses, and “shovel mouth” perfectly fits the bill! “Cow catcher” could have been another option. Not to say I didn’t like the look, at the time anyway, but it was certainly an odd feature. Kind of a reverse waterfall as opposed to the 73-75-77 versions.
To think the planning and design execution of these duds, took years in advance. Plenty of time, to see the market evolving, and clearly see these were turds in the making. Styling-wise, the cookie-cutter ’82 A-Body design template, was already getting tired by ’83/’84.
A shining example of wholesale corporate hubris.
Design began when everyone believed gas prices would keep climbing, so the company’s life could have depended on them being successful, making their mediocrity even more shameful. If they’d chosen higher quality & style, they might not have needed to cut costs so much, but there was also a bad recession in the early 80s when the bad decisions were made, and no one but Reagan believed the economy would take off like a Rocket V8 in the mid 80s.
GM was lucky that gas plummeted in ’85 so they could sell profitable big cars again.
Peak Lindamood. She became a cartoon as she dragged Automobile beneath the surface, but this is a reminder that she used to have something to say.
They should have just changed the division name to Cutlass to reduce confusion. I thought the bland styling began with the ’77 B/C bodies, especially their front ends. The ubiquitous vinyl roof spoiled the ’78+ Cutlass Supreme. It is harder to style a small car distinctively, and then they had 4-5 versions to make of most of them. I wonder if the switch to unibodies and robots had much impact on the styling envelope.
I like the boxy styling of GM’s cars in the 80’s, as well as Chrysler’s K-cars and derivatives, and the Ford Fairmont. I was just scared of GM quality in the 80’s. There was no internet, but it was well known that those cars were unreliable and unrefined.
It seemed as though GM loved to recycle and cross-reference certain notable divisional nomenclatures from the past. Like for example Chevrolet Chevelle Concours (from 1968 through the 1972 Concours Estate more like a glorified Chevelle Malibu Classic Estate Wagon), 1976-77 Chevrolet Nova Concours and then later on in 1994 the Cadillac Sedan deVille now had the top of the line Sedan deVille Concours to only legitimately and directly make this FWD option a notch below the 1994 Chevy Caprice Classic RWD stretched platform based Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. With the Calais designation, Cadillac availed this version as a notch below the Fleetwood Brougham in 1974-75 but above the Sedan deVille. After Cadillac ditched the Calais nomenclature several years later, Oldsmobile used this in the Cutlass Supreme lineup from 1980-84. After 1984, the 1985-87 Cutlass Calais (later just plain Calais from 1988-91) were the new compacts which replaced the FWD X-Bodied 1980-84 Oldsmobile Omega. After 1991 the Oldsmobile Calais was replaced by the Oldsmobile Achieva new body but still the same exact FWD J-Car based Oldsmbile Firenza platform from 1982.
One likely reason for this was to maintain ownership of the trademarks. Generally (at least in the U.S.), you have to use a trademark to hold onto it — if you stop using it for longer than a certain period, it may be considered abandoned and you’ll be in serious danger of losing the rights to it. This is also why, for example, Ford kept finding excuses to slap the “Cobra” name on different things.
GM was lucky that gas plummeted in ’85 so they could sell profitable big cars again.
I don’t know if I’d call it lucky, all of GM’s resources were poured into cars like the N bodies and when fuel costs stabilized and made the RWD B bodies and G bodies viable again they had both withered on the vine in technology and design, and much of the buyer base who would have bought a Supreme on the same basic bodyshell 7 years earlier had moved onto greener pastures(imports), leaving mostly GM loyalists buying them, and not buying the N bodies that had sucked up so much development.
That they were lucky any line at all was selling, maybe, but they were between a real rock and a hard place between aging legacy models and underbaked all new models cluttering lineups. I don’t think the strategy of fielding both was wise at all, the N bodies shouldn’t have ever been developed, period. GM had plenty of smaller cars already in the BOP lineup (X, A and J bodies) without the N bodies to keep showrooms busy, so this whole effort to downsize literally everything including something as contradictory as PLCs to compact proportions was really a putting all their eggs in one basket, it defeated the whole purpose of having a full model lineup where one line sells if another doesn’t and can lines can reverse fortunes with trends
Trucks are main reason GM is still around today, though now going into EV’s.
GM’s 80’s car program was to “bring out smaller cars”, to the demands of the 1979-81 market, screaming for fuel economy. As Brock Yates said in his book, GM “made them look small” and used low HP motors to “make buyers think they get good MPG”.
In other words, “good enough for loyalists”, thinking former GM buyers would trade in older RWD cars for the Alphabet soup products in droves. But, ignoring competition, as if “they don’t exist”
I’m also a boomer, remember when these came out. I didn’t have much exposure to them, but someone in my condo complex at the time (I’d just bought a condo the year before while in graduate school) had one. I wasn’t the target audience for these at the time, but curiously as time progresses I find I’m more interested in these than I was back in the day…except for one thing, my parents had bought a new ’84 Pontiac Sunbird, which despite being maintained at the dealer, by the book, went through 2 engines in less than 80k miles and was junked after 5 years…it lost a timing belt when it had less than 1000 miles on it. The car it replaced, a ’78 Caprice Classic wagon, was much better, my Dad should have kept that and fixed it up after his accident (a minor fender bender but my Dad didn’t want to spend any more on it). The Sunbird did get better gas mileage, but it doesn’t matter how good mileage it got if it was junk after 5 years…despite being less expensive than the Caprice Classic, the depreciation makes it much more expensive to own per year. Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but back then GM seemed to punish those who wanted a smaller car (while staying with GM). I know it wasn’t an easy time for them, and they even messed up on Cadillac and other big car engines, but that’s not a way to encourage repeat buyers…My Dad actually did return to GM for his last 2 cars (both Impalas) but it took quite a while for him to even consider buying one.
To be fair, my sister owned essentially the same car, also an ’84, also a Sunbird, but other than rust (we’d moved to Texas so rust wasn’t an issue, but she lived in Vermont still) it gave her decent service. You could argue that he got a bad one, but I don’t think he was that much of an exception…you didn’t see too many of them after a pretty short time (at least from my observation).
I don’t think I’m a typical buyer these days, I’m a car person, I don’t want AWD, nor a truck, cars ride well and that’s become more important to me as I’ve aged (plus ease of ingress-egress, which I think helps sell trucks as they are generally higher than cars). Image isn’t a consideration….I know I’m old and I’m certain most people know that independent of what I drive. What I think I’d like is an old-fogey mobile, something like a full sized 60’s or 70’s car. They say you can’t sell a young guy an old guy’s car, but you can sell one to an old guy…if they were still available. But a comfortable car, with a bit higher seating than a compact car is pretty attractive to me…just don’t punish me for wanting one by making it undependable or not have reasonable expectations of being able to keep it a few years without major repairs. Other than low seating, one of these would probably satisfy me, even though it is not full sized, if it had the promise of keeping it for awhile….maybe I should find an old Buick Century or Cutlass Cierra, since you can’t find anything like that available new…now that I’m “that age” I’m disappointed that I don’t have the choice to buy one (unlike my counterpart 50 years older than I).
I owed a Calais Supreme in 1985 and loved it. Had it for 5 years and was very reliable. I have many since, but hands down best car ever