(first posted 6/9/2016) Though the giant was teetering badly by the late 1980s, General Motors could still garner quite a lot of attention when it came time to announce new vehicle platforms. While personal luxury coupes really weren’t to Road & Track’s taste, they duly evaluated the much ballyhooed, allegedly differentiated trio from Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. What was their take on the latest and greatest from GM?
The hype surrounding the GM10 cars was in full swing for 1988. GM was predicting that the new Regal, Cutlass Supreme (not to be confused with the Cutlass Calais, Cutlass Ciera or Cutlass Supreme Classic) and Grand Prix would sell to the tune of 500,000 units annually, just in their two-door guise alone.
Buff Books seemed more than ready to play along. Naturally, Motor Trend named the Grand Prix as its 1988 “Car of the Year.” Car and Driver also boosted Pontiac’s “Excitement” imagery by highlighting the style and—ahem—performance potential of the car. Automobile Magazine, being the self-proclaimed “most sophisticated” of the American buff books, preferred the subtler, “aero” looks of the Cutlass Supreme. No one really paid much heed to the Buick, other than to acknowledge it was returning to being “Buick-like” after the incongruous detour into all-black Turbos.
But only Road & Track drove the three cars back-to-back, and as such provide an interesting glimpse into how well executed the divisional identities really were.
As Road & Track’s introduction to the cars pointed out, GM was betting that Americans would once again come flocking to large personal luxury cars as soon as they saw the GM10s. The harsh reality was that the massive Baby Boomer cohort was showing a strong preference for smaller cars, plus the market in general was shifting to 4-door body styles. Between the three divisions, GM managed to sell 311,077 GM10s for 1988 (Regal: 129,997, Cutlass Supreme: 94,723, Grand Prix: 86,357), far short of the half million unit target. It was also a far cry from the heady days GM was trying to recreate: 10 years prior, during the peak personal luxury period, these same models had sold a whopping 901,448 units in 1978 (Regal: 273,365, Cutlass Supreme: 399,639, Grand Prix: 228,444).
The price tag for the GM10 bet was colossal. Road & Track noted that the development costs were $5 to $6 billion (other reports peg it closer to $7 billion). Even in today’s dollars, that total is a huge amount to spend on a new platform. But these figures were from the mid-1980s, so the comparable amount now would be $10.5 to $14.75 billion! Let’s pause to let that sink in: nearly $15 billion dollars! Did all that money buy all-new, state-of-the-art OHC multi-valve engines, world class chassis tuning, outstanding space utilization and efficiency, exemplary materials and build quality or the latest safety features like a driver’s side airbag? Not a chance!
The GM10s were new-ish, but shared many components with other GM products like the 1986 E-Bodies (rear suspension) and 1980 X-Bodies (engine). Yes, the GM10’s “corporate” 2.8 Liter V6 started life in the Spring of 1979 as an option for the Citation/Phoenix/Omega/Skylark. Luckily, for GM’s enormous investment, they were able to add fuel injection and coax an extra 13 horsepower and 12 lbs ft of torque out of the old-school OHV V6 by the time the motor was plunked into the GM10 coupes! That was surely worth at least a billion or two…
To GM’s credit, the styling of each of the GM10 cars was unique, both inside and out. In that regard, the designs harkened back to the days where GM products were clearly related but well differentiated. It was a refreshing change from the uninspired and depressingly similar FWD GM “look alike” offerings from the early and mid-1980s. But the beauty was only skin deep—underneath the specific divisional identities were the same unspectacular underpinnings.
Different didn’t necessarily mean better, however. Inside the GM10s for example, emphasis was placed on styling gimmicks at the expense of function, be that subpar digital instruments or overly complicated switch gear. In an era where more and more buyers were seeking ergonomically excellent interiors, the GM10’s style over substance approach seemed out-of-step for the times.
That disconnect applied to the dimensions of the cars as well. The GM10s were essentially full-sized outside, measuring just 4 inches shy of the large FWD H-Bodies in length, while basically matching them in width and weighing only about 125 to 175 pounds less. Inside however, the GM10s were far from full-size, and were actually tighter in basically all interior dimensions when compared to the mid-sized A-Bodies, though the latter were shorter by 4 inches, narrower by 3 inches and lighter by 200 to 300 pounds. Bigger-on-the-outside and smaller-on-the-inside had gone out of fashion by the mid-1970s, never mind the late 1980s!
Needless to say, the GM10s would have a tough time appealing to the desirable demographics GM was targeting for each model. By 1988, Baby Boomers ranged from their mid-20s to early-40s, and many of them were being seduced by Japanese and German imports or trendsetting domestic offerings like the Ford Taurus. Sporty cars and minivans were also “in”—larger, less practical 2-door American cruisers long on looks and short on power? Not so much… Also alarming was the fear expressed by the divisional managers about attempting to deploy too much “new” technology with the GM10s, demonstrating that GM was once again completely out-of-step with the increasingly sophisticated and tech-oriented tastes of the prospective buyers.
One of the biggest shocks with the introduction of the GM10s was under hood. It was nearly unthinkable that each division would be saddled with the same underpowered 2.8 Liter corporate V6. After all, in 1988 Buick and Olds were already offering the well-regarded 3.8 Liter V6 as an option in their A-Bodies (Century, Cutlass Ciera) and standard in the H-Bodies (LeSabre, Delta 88), while Pontiac made the slightly better 3.1 Liter V6 (merely enlarged from the 2.8 and far from “new”) standard in the A-Body STE and the the 3.8 Liter V6 standard in the H-Body Bonneville. GM couldn’t be bothered to make the 3.1 V6 standard and/or offer the tried-and-true 3.8 Liter V6 in any GM10 at launch, even as an option? Where exactly did all those billions in development costs go again?
Road & Track’s final assessment of the GM10s was lukewarm at best, dryly noting that the platform itself was sound enough, though I doubt at the time anyone would have dreamed that variants of the W-Body would still be available for sale 25 years later! R&T’s editors opined that perhaps GM would make needed improvements for the 1989 model year. No such luck. The more popular 4-door body style didn’t start appearing until the 1990 Chevrolet Lumina arrived. Airbags wouldn’t come until 1994. While the slightly more potent 3.1 V6 would become standard across the board for automatic-equipped cars in 1989 (manuals stuck with the 2.8 that year), performance was slow in coming to the GM10s. Pontiac did in fact get the limited-edition McLaren Turbo for 1989, but those were few and far between. Most GM10s continued to offer anemic performance for their first 3 model years—larger, more powerful engines only began to appear in volume for 1991. Given the truism that “you only get one chance to make a first impression,” launching the GM10s with suboptimal power was really a deadly sin, especially given their looks and market positioning.
This is not my mother’s actual ’83 Cutlass Supreme, but looks almost exactly like hers—same color (Silver Sand), loaded, no vinyl roof covering—except mom’s had the body-colored Super Sport wheels.
I can provide some additional real life commentary, based on my family’s own GM10 experience. In the early summer of 1988, my mother was ready to replace her 1983 Cutlass Supreme sedan. She’d enjoyed the Olds and had gotten good use out of it, keeping it a bit longer than her usual 4 years. But the square-cut sedan did seem dated as the aero look came into vogue, so she was ready for a switch. Since the last of her kids (me) had just graduated college, she also was ready for something more “personal” since “mom-duty” was officially over. She was adamant that she wanted a two-door coupe.
I naturally thought that the highly-praised Acura Legend Coupe would be perfect. Upscale, quick and desirable, what wasn’t to love? Well, that would be the price. Neither my mother or father could wrap their head around the $28,000 ($56,629 adjusted) price tag for a Legend L Coupe with automatic. So while the Legend was a great deal compared to its German competitors, it was pricey by the standards of American cars, equating to a Lincoln Mark VII or Cadillac Eldorado. My mother wanted an upper-middle brand, like what she had being driving for years, and she wasn’t interested in a full-on luxury car.
Nor was she interested in a small coupe, like a Honda Accord, Honda Prelude or Mazda MX-6. I was in the process of car shopping for myself at the same time, and the Prelude was my pick. She thought the Honda was perfect for me, but she wasn’t ready for that sort of car.
My Pop and I tried to steer her to the Mercury Sable, but it was out because it had too many doors. The Cougar, with its unusual roofline and rear quarter window, was not to her liking at all. My mom also tried the v8 Thunderbird, which I thought was a great choice, but she claimed she couldn’t get comfortable behind the wheel because she felt like she was sitting too low. Though nicely styled, the LeBaron coupe also didn’t make the cut, both for its 4-cylinder-only engine options and the fact that the brand was still rather tarnished from near-bankruptcy and the plethora of tarted-up K-cars.
So that left GM, and they had three all-new choices aimed right for her heart and pocketbook. Naturally, we started at Oldsmobile, since she’d been very happy for years with that brand. For some reason though, the new Cutlass Supreme just didn’t interest her. She thought the outside was bland, and agreed with Road & Track’s assessment that the interior looked disjointed.
Pontiac would surely be the pick then! My Pop had a 1987 Bonneville SE company car at the time, and it was nice and somewhat sporty in a big American cruiser kind of way. The new Grand Prix had sharp, aggressive styling, plus Pontiac had recaptured some of its performance credibility with cars like the 6000STE. However, my mom wasn’t sold. One thing she didn’t like was the instrument panel with the confusing and complicated pod controls. Plus, she wanted to check out the Buick, since our family had enjoyed many tri-shields through the years and she’d always liked the brand.
So off we went to Crown Buick on Clearview Parkway in Metairie, where right on the showroom floor was an Arctic White Regal Custom with a light gray bucket seat interior and the Gran Sport package, exactly like the one pictured in the sales catalog. That car was the GM10 she liked best, and a test drive in a demonstrator sold her on the handling feel. Literally, my parents bought the car off the showroom floor.
Thus started my family’s final four years of Buick ownership. I’d say that Road & Track’s judgment was pretty much right on. The car did come across as a Buick, so it was on target in that respect. The problem, at least for GM’s aspirations, was that the image represented by the Regal was appealing to a 54-year-old woman—not what the GM marketers envisioned when they sought to lower the median age of Regal buyers to 40. Of course, most of Buick’s advertising for the Regal wouldn’t exactly tempt thirty somethings….
Nor could any GM10 lure buyers who had any sort of performance inclinations. Under hood, the 2.8L V6 was simultaneously loud and slow. As R&T noted, it was only adequate off the line, and then rapidly ran out of steam. The noise never ceased, however. My mother really missed the 307 V8 in her old Cutlass Supreme—while no powerhouse, it was robust enough and at least somewhat refined (ironically, she had viewed that engine as a step-down from her previous ’79 Ninety-Eight with the 403 V8). GM just kept sliding down in the power department…
With Road & Track rating the Regal’s Gran Sport suspension as offering the best ride of the GM10 bunch, then the suspension tuning on the Cutlass Supreme International Series or the Grand Prix SE must have been really bad. Mom’s Regal crashed over bumps, often so hard that the car would make a huge BANG as it jolted occupants. Keep in mind that this was in a car being driven by a middle-aged matron, not a boy racer.
Perhaps the jarring ride contributed to the rattles that the Regal soon developed. Other issues, like the wind and water leaks, came courtesy of the factory. The latter were so bad, both in the passenger-side door, which would fill with water, and in the trunk, which frequently sported a flooded spare tire well, that the car earned the nickname “Slosh.”
Inside, both the ergonomics and material quality were an absolute mess. The digital gages were ridiculously small and hard to decipher. The glove box was miniscule, even the owner’s manual pouch was too big to fit inside—the console between the bucket seats (on cars so equipped) was necessary to hold basically anything. The fake wood trim was so bad that it made cheap Formica look elegant by contrast. The velour upholstery on the doors had a peculiar fuzzy texture, truly like mouse fur in the gray interior of my mother’s Regal. Plus, as Road & Track pointed out, the door and dash trim didn’t line up—I don’t think GM got that right on any Regal. The whole effect was simply sloppy and cheap, all in a car that was supposed to be “premium.” It was especially ironic since GM had been spending large sums on advertising quality starting in the mid-1980s with the “Nobody Sweats The Details Like GM” ad campaign.
Aside from lax quality control at the factory, GM obviously did not “sweat the details” on many day-to-day features of the Regal. For example, the Gran Sport package came with fog lights, but they had covers on them. So Regal owners would either leave the covers off permanently, or leave them on and never use the lights, like my mother. No one, however, was getting out of the Regal Gran Sport in inclement weather and bending over under the front bumper to take off the stupid covers so they could use the fog lights…
Equally asinine was the functioning of the intermittent wipers. GM10 coupes featured wipers that swept out from the center, and when the driver engaged the intermittent wipe function for light rain or mist, the left side wiper would jump up and rest on the windshield about 6 inches above the cowl, right in the driver’s line of sight. Idiotic, and the only reason I can think of for this “feature” was to remind a driver that the intermittent wipers were activated. Of course, when the wipers intermittently wiped, the driver might also realize they were on… doh!
While Road & Track only had the test cars for a short period, time didn’t make anything better—age did the GM10s no favors. Many issues cropped up within the first few years of Mom’s Regal ownership, all of which exemplified the poor build and material quality of the car. For example, the driver’s door let out a horrible, loud creaking/groaning sound whenever it was opened or closed. My mother likened it to the sound of some mortally wounded jungle animal shrieking in pain. She’d have it rehung and lubricated frequently at the dealer, but to no avail: the sound was never gone for long.
But the exterior paint was gone too soon. The issue started on the hood, when huge chunks just flaked off, leaving exposed metal. The hood was repainted, but then the same thing started happening on the front fenders and the roof. The whole car ultimately had to be repainted at just two years old.
My mother was stoic about the Regal, and kept it, flaws and all, for four years (my father, by contrast, ditched his last GM car, a horrifically bad 1989 Cadillac Sedan DeVille, after 18 months). Perhaps it’s because she’d picked the Regal herself and wanted to save face. But she certainly wasn’t sorry to see it go. One last telling element—the resale on the Regal was terrible, with my mother’s car garnering the lowest possible wholesale value (equating to a poor condition, high mileage car with a salvage title) even though hers was very well maintained, never wrecked and only had about 30,000 miles. No new car dealer, not even Crown Buick, wanted a used 1988 Regal coupe in Fall 1992—“Slosh” undoubtedly wound up at a second- or third-tier used car lot.
My mother’s GM10 Regal resulted in a pathetic departure for the brand in a long-time loyal Buick family: my great great grandfather had bought his first Buick in the nineteen-teens, and family members had driven them ever since. But this Regal earned the dubious distinction of being the last GM car anyone in my family has owned. And the GM10s earned their reputation as one of the key factors leading to the decline and fall of GM.
Additional Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1988-96 GM-10 Buick Regal – Right Car, Wrong Time
CCCCC Part 13: 1992 Cutlass Supreme – How The Mighty Have Fallen
Cohort Capsule: 1990 Pontiac Grand Prix LE – I’ve A Feeling We’re Not In Kansas Anymore
Curbside Classic: 1991 Chevrolet Lumina Euro – GM’s Deadly Sin #18 – Where’s The Light?
Between the Taurus, the 1982 F-body, and these cars, I
was a very optimistic ’80s teen as far as the future of
car design was concerned.
Too bad the interiors couldn’t compete with that curved
glass and sheet metal. Inside was like early-80s interior
or even refreshed ’70s.
I knew these were underwhelming, but I didn’t realize just how much they spent on them. Could any other car company have survived flushing as much money down the toilet as GM did in the 80’s?
They didn’t.
Looking back: of the three coupes, I’d say I like the
Regal’s exterior the best(fresh but clean), and the
Prix’s dash the best(closest interior of the three to
what we are accustomed to today).
My least favorite exterior – the Prix. Like, it’s too
busy; my eyes can’t follow it smoothly from one
end to the other.
I think both the Grand Prix and Cutlass ended up better looking after their facelifts with the thin sealed beam headlights, but I have to agree with you for these first year models, Regal looks the most well sorted. The Grand Prix looks overdone and the Cutlass under.
I was thinking about that while reading this. Are these the only cars in history that actually went back to sealed beams after having composites?
Page 138 – left column: “appreciate reduced steering effort”
Come onnnnnnn(sorry Warner Wolf)! – you’re Road &
Track, NOT parking lot & driveway! I want increased
steering effort, and tight straight-ahead especially over
40mph. And I want it for Hyundai prices, not BMW.
The fog light covers: Mark VII LSC had them too. I’ve lived with them for almost 6 years of owning the LSC now and it’s really not that bad. How many times does one DRIVE into a thick fog out of nowhere? Sure, it does happen, but usually you step to the car on a foggy morning/evening/etc and you already know you’ll need the fogs. So then you just take the covers off and toss them in the trunk. Takes like 30 seconds. Then later at some point put them back on the next day or whatever (another 30 seconds). Really not a biggie and those things DO protect the fogs (which on the LSC have real glass lenses, not plastic), keeping them from yellowing and the various chips from the road. Not a bad design at all, in my opinion.
Plus the covers look really cool.
Were they real fog lights or just for show? Real fog lights are “on” while the head light are “off”.
Can’t speak for the Regal, but the Mk7 fog lights are “on” only when the head lights are “on”. I’ve actually been wanting to rewire that, but that means I want to upgrade the fog harness and go grab power directly from the battery. It’s on the to-do list…
Anyway, the Mk7 fogs add quite a bit of illumination in front of the car. They’re pretty functional.
Real fog lights also have a specific beam configuration. These didn’t, and the car looked better without them.
Where I live, one can suddenly drive into tule fog so never mind the stupid covers even if the fog lights are useful.
Mostly, stock fog lights are a “I got ’em” showoff thing. I never use mine.
You’re quite right; overwhelmingly, front fog lamps are cosmetic playtoys. Even very good fog lamps (which do exist, but aren’t very common) are of almost no use to most drivers in most conditions. There are certain conditions in which they can be useful, but for the giant most part, justifications for turning them on (“helps me see deer alongside the road”, etc) are not grounded in reality.
About the only thing the ones on my ’05 Mazda 3 were good for, was for spotting rabbits at night just before I ran over them!
I could be way off here, but I was under the impression the fog light covers sidestepped some sort of regulation, DOT or otherwise, that would preclude the car being sold new with fog lights.
The market demanded fog lights, and the manufacturer will deliver, right or wrong.
No such reg. Fog lamps are not federally regulated; their regulation is left to the states. Theoretically, a state could prohibit the installation of fog lamps, but no state does so (and none ever has, to the best of my knowledge). Some states do regulate fog lamp usage, at least on paper, but none has a requirement for a cover. Mind all the BMWs and Mercedeses that came factory-equipped with fog lamps—no covers—starting in the mid-1970s.
Great article! When these cars first appeared, I was shocked at how GM could have replaced the G-body with these…things. Needless to say, but how many of these early GM-10s do we still see running around? Not many….
That goes for plenty of GM models from the 80’s. I remember how it seemed every new GM design was worse than the model it replaced – smaller, slower, more cramped, uglier, and all looking the same.
And even when they did offer a decent package or engine, it seemed to just in very limited quantities. Instead crappy mediocraty was needlessly produced everywhere.
GM of this era was too focused on making money to make cars.
They either forgot that The Product Comes First, or simply ignored the obvious. This is yet another way a company with 53% market share falls to 15% and struggles to stay there.
I’ve driven a few GM-10/W-bodies over the years, I’ve noted here what a hot rod the final W-Impala is, although to a car, the front suspensions always felt like they were going to fall off at any moment.
I wasn’t a big fan of the styling but proper execution would’ve made the whole packages more endearing.
I get the idea they had no idea what the competition’s product was like.
Either that or, in an overwhelming attack of hubris, they thought it didn’t matter.
The decision to invest and launch the 2-door models long before the high volume 4-doors was a disastrous decision made personally by Lloyd Reuss. He personally loved these coupes over any 4-door and thought everyone else would too, even though decades of proven sales patterns indicated otherwise. He even directed funds to make extra factory capacity available ahead of time, disite there was no evidence it would be required. That 500,000 -unit sales estimate was a Reuss fantasy with no evidence.
Reuss’s poor product and marketing decisions must have caused more harm to GM than anything else. Plenty of GM’s deadly sins from the 80s and early 90s have his hands all over them, including the failure of the Shamu-bubble B-bodies.
Reuss was undoubtedly looking at GM’s past experience in this segment when he placed a priority on the W-body coupes. GM’s intermediate coupes had easily outsold the sedans and wagons, if I recall correctly – particularly since the advent of the Colonnade generation.
He ignored Ford’s success with the Taurus and Sable. Ford didn’t even bother with coupe versions of those cars. They were only available in sedan and wagon form. If you wanted an intermediate-size Ford coupe, the dealer directed you to the Thunderbird (or the Cougar, in the Lincoln Mercury showroom). The lack of a coupe body style didn’t hurt the Taurus or Sable at all. Both were huge successes.
Another thought was maybe GM was trying to bring back the Colonnade look? They were a radical departure in 1973 and sold well, but that was another decade.
Yeah, GM was thinking it was still 1977, when 2 door lux-coupes [Cutlass/Regal/MC/GP] ruled the showrooms. They expected all the owners of RWD G bodies to simply trade in for W, as if there was no competition.
But, they were way behind the times, and should have looked to California market to see changes, but only looked at MI and OH.
To older loyalists, the W’s were “too much like a spaceship” and they got Cutlass Cieras. Younger buyers said “cramped, slow, and “who cares?” Then when 4 doors came out was too little too late.
Only thing that saved them in the 90’s was SUV’s/trucks.
“..a Reuss fantasy…”
Misread that as Seuss fantasy! 🙂 More coffee…..
For GM to publicize how much they invested in development betrays a fallacy common among the American leadership class: Assuming money spent means good results.
Toyota, at least, was bent on reducing development costs (and thus the product cycle time).
That development cost is insane. Bear in mind Ford’s MN12 development cost for the 1989 Thunderbird and Cougar was a meager $1 billion, and those were truly all new cars minus the base 3.8 and AOD. THAT cost cost product planners their jobs!
$5-7 billion for GM to apply another letter of the alphabet to the same crappy FWD template they had used since 1980? What the hell!
I was wondering too. How on earth do you spend so much money, and still wind up with a pre-owned platform running parts-bin mechanicals? Where did all the money go?
No wonder GM failed.
Wow, I have that feeling of shock and weakness like I missed a flight that crashed and burned 5 minutes after take-off. I think I’m going to be sick………..
I believer there was a commercial at one time that started “Hey there Cutlass watchers.” I was a Cutlass watcher. I had two during my high school and college years (’73 and ’76 Cutlass Supreme coupes) and I really wanted to like the ’88 coupe. The sort of space ship styling was a bit off putting, the door mounted seat belts were appalling on a car in this price class, and I’ve always disliked exterior door handles built into the pillars. (Note to stylists: Doors need handles, get over it, put them were they belong.)
I was finishing my college years, driving a handful of old classic cars for he heck of it, and wondering where to go next automotively. The thought of new W body Cutlass was a briefly a consideration, but mentally, I was rather quickly back to Ford’s T-Bird and Cougar if a coupe was to be in my future.
Various contortions in my life, including the meeting of my future wife, meant that a coupe didn’t come on the radar for a while, and when we finally bought one, we purchased an MN-12 Thunderbird. It served is quite well, and was a solid trade-in at 10 years of age.
Proof that coupes were dying as family cars, we had our fist child and the T-Bird turned in to a ’99 Chrysler Town and Country.
As someone well familiar with these cars, it is obvious most of the development money was spent restocking the liquor cabinet in Lloyd Reuss’s suite, among other execs….
I owned a new 1988 Gran Prix, number 6,066 from the new Kansas City, Kansas Fairfax assembly plant.
Its design was excellent. Great size, comfortable, quiet, pretty fast, fun to drive, cool red interior, and efficient. Folks stopped to admire it.
Quality? Where to begin?
The great looking gray-silver paint peeled to the steel within three months. The electronic gage cluster was replaced six times before I gave up and drove by the tach alone. Couldn’t keep the car aligned and the steering rack groaned each morning like a dying man. That problem, the Pontiac service manager said, was called Morning Sickness and had been a problem for GM for years.
Within a year the engine began stalling and wouldn’t restart until cold. My dealer, Reed Pontiac of Kansas City North, could not have been better in trying to fix the problems and keep my happy. I got used to driving a loaded, full-size loaner car (and passing the service bay where my Grand Prix now called home).
The engine problem did my car in. With help from engineers in Detroit, we determined the car would only run with engine emissions way out of spec. With this tune, the transmission computer got confused and wouldn’t shift into fourth gear.
Randy Reed and I met with the GM zone manager and we negotiated a buyback. They offered me a heavy discount on a new Pontiac, but I declined that. I hated to leave the car. It had been repainted by a custom car shop (courtesy of GM) in an even more striking Mercedes gray-silver. I understand the car went to the crusher immediately I left the lot.
Lesson learned: Never buy a first year car or a car from a new factory. Consumer Reports would go on the recommend the 1992 and later Grands Prix.
I went back to Ford and owned a string of excellent Ford Tauruses.
Never buying a first year car is a lesson my grandparents learned with two different GM products.
The first was the much ballyhooed 1977 Impala. The car tracked moderately sideways despite what was done at the dealer. Paint that faded and rear seat material that became powder.
The second was a 1992 Roadmaster. Five torque converters, three transmissions, and a new engine by 40,000 miles. It finally got sorted out but a car like this was GM’s sugar stick, so I’ve never understood why this car was so bad.
The Impala drove him Chrysler for two cars; going back and getting the Roadmaster drove him to Lincoln.
So true Jason. We had a ’77 Caprice Estate wagon that was an absolute POS. Moldings, hubcaps and emblems fell off that car all the time. The electrical system was messed up and the car had more rot on it in 5 years than you could imagine.
GN,
Your mom did not look at the Buick Riviera? I know that CC gives the 86-93 Riv a Deadly Sin Award but the 89-93 models were attractive and nice riding. Everybody I know that owned one (I knew many folks that had owned or still own one) loved the ride and the car itself.
As for the GM10? I was 11 years old when they came out in 1988. I hated the look of them then. When I worked at a GM dealership years later, I learned to hate the GM10’s mechanicals even more. Nothing was easy to replace on it. This is the only line of cars that replacing rear brake calipers as standard maintance just like and oil change
She did not, because in the Summer of ’88 Buick was still selling the ultra-stumpy circa-1986 version. I do think the “butt lift” in ’89 improved the looks a lot, but it was still saddled with the CRT that year, which never would have worked for my mother. Also, my father and I had seen all the terrible reviews on the Riviera, so we avoided it like the plague at that point.
You are right though, that a Riviera should have been a great choice for her. At that point in her life, she wanted a really nice 2-door, just not a full-on Cadillac or Lincoln, so the Riviera could have been perfect. But no, another GM deadly sin to scare away buyers like my mother who would have “really rather had a Buick.”
Speaking of the Riviera, I think one of the reasons GM may have decided to only offer the 2.8 L V6 in the GM10 initially was to avoid hurting the E-bodies any further. The W-Body was actually bigger than the E-body in 1988, and if it had the same motor as the more expensive, it was highly possible than even fewer people would have bought a Riviera or Toronado. So bad product decisions in one line led to bad product decisions in another…
The question is which of GM’s Deadly Sins was the greatest, in terms of dollars wasted and lost and lasting negative impact on the company. I nominate these. Utter disasters, in every conceivable way. These are the single most emblematic reason GM croaked. It was not the undervalued yen, or the expensive UAW contracts. It was the absolute drunken sailor approach to designing, developing and building cars like this. Everything was wrong, from top to bottom.
The head of the UAW in the early 1990s, when GM was bleeding cash, said it best.
The Taurus was the car that made Ford.
The W-body was the car that sunk GM.
The contrast between the two companies’ approach to this critical segment is quite interesting, and shows why Ford did well during the 1980s while GM’s downward spiral accelerated.
One of GM’s answers to slow W sales was “keep the A body Ciera/Century going!”.
Sure, they got elderly buyers, but the ‘granny cars’ turned young buyers, those born after 1950, away.
There were two types of Buick customers in those days
1. The frugal customers that wanted a lot of comfort but did not want to pay big bucks. They bought A Body Centuries.
2. The well to do customer that a plush comfortable ride with luxury and creature comforts but wanted to not attract attention to themselves (like a shiny Caddy might). Those bought a Lesabre or Park Ave.
None of them were interested in a first generation W body Regal which cost more then a Century but offered less room.
Don’t forget fleet buyers!
My neighbor in the early/mid 90s worked for a beer distributor and had an A-body Century wagon as a take-home company car. Dated, but nice, and IMO the wagons that kept the original rear styling somehow aged better than the butt-lifted sedans that came off looking like a house that’s been added on to in a totally different style from the original part.
I wouldn’t say everything was wrong. Better quality and refinement would have made a world of difference. I don’t think these were horrible cars conceptually. They were built like crap and it was ridiculous to focus so much on the coupes and delay the sedans.
+1. I agree these were the deadliest of the deadly, particularly since the GM10s were developed for such a critical market segment, one that GM had dominated for decades. Never mind small cars, it was just shocking that GM could botch their core products so badly.
Poor quality, sad workmanship, iffy electronics, STOOOPID management and myopic planning.
Interesting that two of the three marks are dead and gone.
Reading stuff like this, GM should feel lucky it wasn’t based in England, otherwise they would have run out of capital and folded like BL et al.
I’m unconvinced not being in England made much difference, for GM shamelessly got legislative backing as a reward for failing just as BL did at first & as Chrysler got loan guarantees in ’79. Now Iacocca made good on the loans, but the principle was established.
Moral Hazard, anyone?
I had a Buick GS twenty years ago. I thought the digital IP was one of the best executed ones I had seen in those days and I generally HATED digital IPs. It rode well – I never noticed it crashing and banging over northern Ohio’s awful roads.
It did develop intermittent electrical problems that I was never able to track down…it stranded my wife one too many times far from home and I sold it the next week – the buyer got full disclosure as to everything I knew that was wrong with the car – I threw in the Shop manual with the sale. His mechanic did finally find and fix the electrical problem and I saw that car around town for many years afterwards – he was very happy with it.
The rear disk brakes were a god-awful design that was hell to fix and/or keep working. In fact this is the car that sold me on rear DRUM brakes for my next two cars.
I would curse it every time I had to work on it, wonder why I was doing it, then I’d take it out for a test drive and be reminded that it was a comfortable car that I found enjoyable to drive…but I liked the ’94 Bonneville SSE that replaced it much better.
I’d love to know what the heck GM spent all that money on because it didn’t show in these cars.
What year was your Regal GS? I believe GM did improve the ride on the cars with that package starting in 1989. The 1988s, like my mother’s, were the problem. And I must say her car was really bad–I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car that was more jarring over certain types of bumps, particularly the crests, dips and potholes that are common on the streets of New Orleans.
You also reminded me that her car had issues with its rear disc brakes as well…
I was waiting for someone to bring up the rear calipers, we used to get customers buying front pads for these cars and complaining they wore out too fast. Turns out it didn’t take long for the rears to seize up and not help stop the car at all. The design of the rear calipers required the regular use of the parking brake to adjust the pads–guess what percentage of folks use their parking brake? Techs had to pound out the rear slider pins, clean them up and grease and reinstall them, soon a kit was offered with plastic sliders that didn’t corrode in the bores. The ultimate fix was stainless steel liners installed when the calipers were rebuilt. A brake rep told me the caliper design was borrowed from GM of Europe where they didn’t spread salt in the winter–GM did customers a favour going back to drum brakes on some models. Adding to consumers woes– composite spring that started to sag and the end bushings wore, spark plugs that popped out of the heads of the 2.8, and steering racks that bled out of the inner tie rods.
I really thought the Grand Prix was kinda cool when it came out but I was 25 and right in the marketers wheel house.
Oh wow, that brings back memories! The dealer kept telling my parents they needed to set the parking brake every time they parked. My Pop couldn’t get over it–needing to set the parking brake on an automatic transmission car in New Orleans, which is flat as a pancake. My mother couldn’t believe it either and of course never remembered to set it. So I guess the brake problem was “her fault.”
Also, the parking brake itself had a terrible operation–you pressed it to set it, and it bounced back. Then you had to press it again to release it. No parking brake release handle, no markings, nothing to indicate how to use it–the design could not have been any less intuitive to use.
Six billion dollars wasted. Allowing the old tradition of the four door being the afterthought to continue in the sedan era. Not realizing what a bunch of Japanese assembly plants then going up would do to possible volumes. Allowing the mid size car’s weight to approach full size levels with the inevitable marginalization of the base engine. Heeding calls from people who would never buy the car for 4 wheel discs dispite what that does to the upfront and maintenance costs of actual buyers. The W car was guilty of all the above.
There were some things that were improving fast in the late eighties and early nineties that these cars were a part of. Fuel injection was in every car. A smooth shifting long lived overdrive lockup automatic was in the vast bulk of these. There was now enough torque on tap to lessen the gear hunting of earlier versions. There was differentiation that allowed a buyer to customize how sporty, luxurious or thrifty they wanted their car to be, a choice fading fast. Rust proofing was much better. Perhaps most importantly, most served their owners well as evidenced by how many are still passed around poor people. Overall a C+ effort.
Some at GM thought that if a new car was slow, it would make owners think “car must get good MPG then”. Brock Yates had this in one of his books, when discussing the ’82 J car.
The interviews with the three marketing guys pretty much says it all. There was certainly nobody whose job it was to hype these things jumping up and down to scream about how game-changing they were. If anything the commentary from the marketing guys seems somewhat apologetic.
One of my brother’s friends had a late 80’s Grand Prix as a 4 year old low mileage hand-me-down from his dad, who was a dentist and traded up to a Lexus, IIRC. The car rattled like a blender full of marbles, the wipers were permanently stuck in a half-mast position and would “park” wherever they felt like it when shut off (except where they were supposed to). The oddball stereo components had gremlins galore, but would have been too troublesome to replace due to their non-standard size and shape, so were just dealt with, and the electronics and switchgear might or might not work as intended on any given day, depending on weather or some unknown influence. In short, the car was crap. Ironically, said friend was a high school senior at the time, and initially his peers were a little envious over the father handing the car over to him, but 80% of the time he was in the passenger seat of my brother’s ’83 Dodge Colt, as at least it did what was required of a supposed transportation vessel.
Wow, a lot of bad experience with these. Pretty much everyone in my family had drifted away from GM by the time these were out. I don’t recall any really bad cars, but the customers either died or desired things that GM was not providing.
My mother’s worst car was probably her 80 Horizon. A partial repaint (offered before any paint had peeled), a broken door handle, and a persistent odor of gasoline at the age of five was about it, but that was enough to break her of any further desire for a Mopar. I can only imagine what might have happened had she gotten a car like GN’s mother got.
These did absolutely zero for me at the time, but then that was the problem with a lot of American stuff then, with the exception of Ford, which seemed on a roll at the time. This is one platform that I have never warmed to.
A friend once had a rental pontiac grand prix (probably 1993 or 1994 model) in the Adirondacks, and it drove on the dirt road/jeep roads of the area like a rally car! Fast, powerful and sure footed. Solid and unpreturbed by significant bumps, dips, washboard, etc.
I also rented a chevy lumina (shared this platform if I remember correctly) in about 1996 or 1997 for a long road trip (Washington DC to Northern New Hampshire and back again over a 3 day weekend) and found it an incredible car to cruise in.
As Paul has pointed out numerous times before, it seems that GM saddled a strong platform with many weaknesses, and then improved the platform over time to such a point that the late versions were really quite good, if still too little too late to attract an audience in a competitive marketplace.
And they menaged to get a bit more mileage of that platform when the Lumina was replaced by the Monte Carlo and later, the Impala.
We could wonder what if GM had launched the GM-10 as RWD models if things could have been different?
Given GM’s terrible marketing, the “quality” ad posted above is surprising in that they didn’t use an Opel in it.
PBS did a documentary on GM around this time and faulted them for the same thing: using a fire eater to promote it’s new trucks at an auto show shortly after the saddle bag gas tank scandal. WTF ?
Then another clip showed an engine on a conveyor built with a line man bragging: “This is the best engine we build”. And it was an OHC 2.0. Built in Brazil.
Tested a used Olds Cutlass two door in the early 90s. At some point they had gone to the Quad 4 as the base engine. After all I had read, I expected it to be loud, angry and to generate much NVH unpleasantness.
It was a surprise. Well isolated, no raspy sounds from the engine compartment. The car itself rode extremely well and was exceedingly quiet. Quite nice.
But consider, I was driving an 86 Olds Calais at the time, complete with the legendary Tech 4 and three speed automatic so, I guess one of these would be refined in comparison.
Re: “morning sickness”. This was a problem in the A bodies and Xs. There was a time lag between when the car was started and on the road before the power boost kicked in .
Strange feeling, like a big notch from input of effort to finally getting a response at the wheels. I was not aware that any noise was involved, so perhaps that mechanic’s explanation was a convenient response to someone’s steering problems. I am thinking they are two different defects and not the same thing. My Citation had this problem. No noise but a strange disconnected feel for the first mile or so.
It’s also known that GM has had a decades long problem with their intermediate steering shafts causing noise and clunking through the run of the Ws and on my 99 Cavalier and it’s being mentioned in problems recorded with IONs as well.
So much effort and treasure to build the same car in three different versions. And I have been horrified to see digital dashboards make a comeback in new cars. It was a dumb idea in the 80s, why bring it back ?
They engendered no enthusiasm [except for those dazzled by flash masquerading as high tech] and plenty of derision by road testers at the time. Why should it be any different today except for the same reason?
Almost as useless as wire wheels, opera windows and hood ornaments.
Yup, that clunking steering shaft was still an issue on my mother’s 06 Lacrosse.
It is my understanding that the morning sickness was caused by hydraulic cylinder in the rack. It was so cheap the piston was grinding against the wall. Some aftermarket outfit made stainless steel sleeves for proper repairs.
As far as digital instruments goes I can see some reason for their return. Every aspect of the car’s operation is already monitored by sensors and the data is fed into the Body Control Module. All you need now is a data cable to feed the selected data to the instruments. It does away with the mechanical speedometer shaft that used to prone to trouble.
The clunking in the steering shaft was cause by a defective ISS (intermediate Steering Shaft)
GM still suffers with that issue. I test drove a 2016 Impala last month while waiting for my Colorado to have its oil changed. I pulled out of the parking lot and turned the steering wheel to the right and clunk! I then turned it to the left to go on to a street down the road and clunk!
You would think by now GM would have fixed an issue that seems to have first been known back in the 1980’s. But nope.
ISS issues were never a problem in the 80’s. The morning sickness was an entirely different problem that was pretty much fixed by the late 80’s.
The ISS issue started with the 95 Riviera and Aurora that featured the new Magnasteer system. The newer generation W-bodies adopted this starting with the 1997 Century/Regal and Grand Prix and the then new Buick Park Ave. This part was revised numerous times and now is much less of a problem than in years past but yes a 2016 W-body Impala does use the same basic ISS as in years past with a different part number and it will eventually wear due to it’s design. I have had 3 W-body Impalas up to current. Only the 2000 had the issue at 82K miles and the dealer installed the grease kit which lasted until around 150K. The 2008 and my current 2013 have never exhibited the issue even with the 2008 having 112K miles before trading in! Moms 2008 LS Impala still steers perfectly with 73K miles.
The Ford Panthers also have a similar issue with the 2003-2011 steering column intermediate steering shaft that wears and causes looseness and clunking. Our shop swaps them out on a regular basis on both cars manufacturers.
I am not aware of any new body style Epsilon Impala with an ISS issue. Nobody with a 2014 to 2016 has complained of any clunks or looseness on left turns(systems of a bad ISS) on any forums or owners that we know of these cars. If it is an issue it usually manifests with higher mileage older cars. I have driven many of these new Epsilon cars and never noted any clunks in the steering so it sounds like your test driver may have had another issue. If it was an ISS issue it would have been noticeable on left hand turns.
Where exactly did all those billions in development costs go again?
GM had lots of overhead, and committees for each division, back then. Probably spent on ‘3 cocktail lunches’ and “business trips” to sunny climates. “Touchy-feely” seminars, etc.
But, again, W is another GM car that they “got right” after maybe a decade? The 1997 era Intrigue and GP were much better, but not too many cared enough.
The last of the W’s will roll off the line this month, Impala Limited for fleet only.
Great cars. I always liked the exhaust sound on these. Brings back memories. I miss the w body.
My goodness, I don’t think I’ve every heard a story more accurately depict what a true “lemon” is. The sad truth is that if your mother’s car was this flawed, I’m willing to bet that a lot of others were too, especially to lesser but still unsatisfactory standards for a new non-economy car. And people wonder where all the negative feelings towards GM came from.
This Regal, combined with my Pop’s rotten ’89 DeVille, shattered our family’s trust in GM. The really sad part is that for years my parents really liked GM products and were loyal buyers. Their expectation was to get a stylish, reasonably powerful, well made car for a fair price, and GM delivered exactly that for a long time. That’s why the 1980s was so tragic for GM–they had so many customers like my parents who felt that GM products were a wise choice, only to discover they’d been duped. And the damage that does to a company’s reputation is just enormous! I remember my parents told EVERYONE how awful their GM cars were, readily convincing friends and family that GM products weren’t worth buying anymore. My parents were never GM bashers, but they were GM victims, and Hell hath no fury like a loyal car buyer who gets repeatedly burned.
Would love to hear a write about about the 89 caddy – especially being a TOTL car
And I have heard just as many of these very same stories about Ford and Chrysler products and even many German cars during this era. Being in the car business for nearly 30 years and a rabid fan for nearly 40 keeps your eyes open to many complaints and what cars keep coming in for repetitive repairs. IMO the 80’s was one of the worst eras for reliability, next to the 70’s, with funky newer style electronics, air ride suspensions, new quirky fuel injection systems, aluminum and steel engines with numerous leaking problems and a plethora of other things.
I don’t know how I never noticed it until now but the Grand Prix LE with the 5 star wheels made me realize they were aping the Ferrari 400i for much of the styling. Neither GM or Pininfarina’s finest.
Yet for some reason, one of the few Ferrari’s I’ve ever wanted to own. I find them attractive. And I also loved the Bitter that copied it.
These must have the tiniest gauges ever installed in a car. Even the Lumina had a sad little 140 KM/H speedometer in a little eyebrow cubby.
I don’t think they got the 3.1 because if I recall correctly it was introduced in or around 1990.
My biggest memory of these is the back end dragging on the ground because the rear fibreglass unileaf broke or wore the end off.
In 1988 I was in the market for a new car. I worked for Hughes Aircraft Co. at the time and looked closely at the GM cars as Hughes employees, part of the GM family, were offered a 15% discount. I looked at the Buick Regal, Cutlass Supreme and Gran Prix. The Regal looked okay but hated that electronic instrument cluster. The Pontiac was a bit too plasticky and didn’t like the side cladding. That left the Cutlass Supreme International, which in 2-door trim, sort of looked sporty and the instrument cluster was acceptable. The rear window blending into the rear side windows was interesting styling though.
Even with the GM discount I found the Cutlass Supreme was priced a little over my budget and downgraded to the Buck Century and Cutlass Ciera, and the Ford Taurus. Absolutely hated the Century’s narrow electronic instrument cluster. The Cutlass Ciera wasn’t bad but looked dated compared to the Taurus. Ford dealer offered a great deal on a 3.8L Taurus LX, so I bought it. The Taurus LX served well for nine years, but not without issues. Have always wondered if the Olds Ciera International version with the 3.8L V-6 would have given better reliability.
(BTW, considering I was working for a GM-owned company and bought a Ford instead didn’t go unnoticed by Mgmt. About a year later I was laid off. Hard to prove there was a connection, but I noticed lots of Mgmt drove BMWs and Mercedes. And we all know Mgmt is immune to such foibles, i.e., “What applies to Thee does not apply to Me.” LOL)
I remember how many of these GM10’s became ubiquitous as used car buys for a lot of high school drivers when I was growing up in the late 1990’s. At the time, they seemed to offer good value. Yet every single one I came across thru acquaintances was by then truly junk. Who else remembers the distinctive rasp of a 2.8/3.1 with a shot exhaust? These may very well be the only cars that made a Cavalier a reasonable alternative…
I got to go against the grain here. My parents bought a 1989 dark grey Buick Regal when it was about a year old. This was by far the newest car our family had ever owned, other than the 63 Super Sport dad bought new, that predated me and my mom. Compared to the mid sized 1984 Bonneville (with it’s weak, weak, carbed 3.8 v-6) we already owned, this car seemed like a rocket. I’ll never forget the first road trip we took in it. We filled up the tank and drove forever without the gas gauge budging. We figured we broke the gas gauge by overfilling it. Turned out we were wrong, the car was getting around 35 mpg on the highway! The quality problems of the ’88’s must have been sorted out because for the most part this was a very solid and well built car. The paint and interior still looked great 13 years later when we finally sold it.
The 2.8 was quicker than these tests indicate perhaps because these were brand new green pre- production examples. 10.8 seconds 0-60 sounds closer to what they actually did and the sub mid 9’s with the stick. Today that sounds slow but compared to the 110 HP 3.8 2BBL Buick V6 that many G-bodies were saddled with, even up until 1987, the Generation II 2.8/3.1 felt way snappier and did indeed get great highway gas mileage in these rather lightweight 3200 LB coupes.
Note too that these cars came std with the 440 4 speed overdrive hitched to a 3.33 axle compared to the old 3 speed and 2.41 lazy highway gears of the G-body cars.
Ah the memories I have of road trips in my Grandparents 1991 or 1992 (I don’t know the year) Metallic Silver Regal GS Coupe. I remember the fake leather, the seat buckles and silver exterior causing hot searing pain when touched it in the summer. I remember the cool looking (to a 5 year old) dashboard and the classy pillar door handles. I need to ask them how long they owned that car as I remember it being cosmetically perfect for the time in my life they owned it. It was traded in upon the birth of my second cousin for a mediocre in comparison early 2000’s Grand Am in silver; The first sedan my grandparents owned since an opening rear passenger door caused my aunt to fall out of the family sedan back in the early 60’s and my grandmother to swear-off sedans for the next 40 years.
I saw it on craigslist a few years ago, mint as can be, anyone know a way to find old craigslist ads? If anyone can find a image of a silver regal gs coupe let me know as I’ve been out of luck.
That old Gm-10 GS still looks cool as hell to my 18 year old eyes.
Best one I could find:
The colour is spot on! Thanks
I wonder how many Thunderbirds and Honda Accord coupes these GM blivets “sold” for Ford and Honda?
These blasts from the past always make me think about GM and their ‘wonderful’ ways – I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – let’s spend a ton on research and development, introduce/release the car before it is thoroughly tested, have the American public get pissed off about the shitty quality and then improve it slowly over the years when it is too late and buyers have run away and the product is tired. GM always seems to bounce back but they are and always will be the same, even to this day.
The money spent on this program was quite shocking at the time and for GM to not have the sedans ready until mid way through 1989 as the 1990 Lumina sedan was simply nuts. The first year quality glitches are somewhat expected if a little extreme but they did iron out most of it by the 90’s.
We sold a pile of these cars during the 90’s and there issues were well know but could be dealt with pretty easily. The door mounted handle was a fairly common wear/break item that we actually kept in stock. The rear disk brake issue was partially due to the wrong type of grease in the pins and Winter climates that used salt saw these units lock right up rendering the rear brakes non functional. This was also a problem with many Audi’s during this time at my Uncle’s repair garage who also used rear disk brakes. The dealers and aftermarket made an updated grease kit for these that helped.
The all digital clusters in the early years were also noted for flaking out and the ignition switches were troublesome. Early run cars also suffered paint peel on certain colors and water leaks were seen on certain examples. I don’t remember very many of these with the morning sickness issue with the steering rack but perhaps early build models had these issues. Some cars also were noted for the glued on carpet material coming apart in the door panels and under the dash.
We always looked for clean lower mileage well kept examples and sold many good ones to happy customers after cleaning up some of these maladies. It seems like the 1989 on up versions were better, especially with the 3.1 but the digital dash and rear brakes were sometimes an issue.
On another note I owned quite a few 90’s W-body cars along with my folks and various friends and family members. The 1994-97 Cutlass Supremes were actually very solid nice driving cars, the Regals were quite nice with the 3800 and the GP’s were sporty and fairly entertaining with the 210-215 Hp DOHC 3.4 V6. None of us ever blew up an engine or lost a transmission and reliability was pretty decent my this point. In fact dad kept his 1994 red Cutlass sedan up to 210K miles as a courier delivery car and it remained reliable right up till the end. By that point it needed a wheel bearing, had a leaking transmission cooler line and some rust was setting in but it still ran and shifted good.
Hated all of these. And from behind, it like something was missing from the rear quarter panel/wheel wells as the forward part of the wheel well protruded out farther than the back part of it and the bumpers, especially on the GP. Those el cheapo interiors and those tilt wheels weren’t even funny. I was so happy I purchased my RWD Cutlass in ’87. Then I needed a 4 door 2nd car for an outside sales job, and being loyal to GM and not being picky for a daily driver, went back to that Cutlass for another try but I just couldn’t do it. That aqua blue color was a known problem too. It would peel off in patches.
My father worked for gm for 36 years gm norwood home of camaro firebird I got to work there 3 summers in a row 82 thru 84 while in school it seemed like the dedication was there everybody seemed to be doing a great job but something like bad 70s vibe gm quality was still there haught ing them at least there it was they had the best paint set ups from Germany , so good gm was proud to give tours to other manufacturers to come into our plant to see, toyota ,vw,and chrysler were all brought into norwood to see the hight tech set up but the cars were marginal at best and it doesn’t help these are performance sporty cars which are deemed disposable at the time, my dad ask me if I was gonna get me a new f body I said no I’ll wait till they get the bugs worked out he said that will be never, I kinda laughed, I rembered they had those cross fire injected 5 litre cars they could get them to run at factory with all the engineering, people there I was like I’ll pass on anything gm makes for now,
Awesome entry, GN!
I drive by Crown Buick on Clearview in Metry several times a week.
Instead of seeing shiny new Electras, Regals and Rivieras parked out front; all that is there today are tall tippy CUV’s and HUGE G*d Da*n pick up trucks.
🙁
As you say, the “GM10s were essentially full sized outside, measuring just 4″ shy of the larger FWD H-Bodies.” Why not just do a nip and tuck to the next generation H-Bodies- add a Chevrolet- and call it a day. Pocket the $7 billion. And no stinking Lumina in the bargain.
These cars were so sad. I remember the hype when they arrived, and being a Chicagoan, started seeing them on the road right away. As thousands can attest, these cars weren’t good. After the X-car fiasco, I was leery of anything GM. Sadly I was justified.
They ended up in our rental fleet by the thousands. I tried to like them. We had all three coupes and we also ended up with the sedans as well. The interiors were terrible. The criticism above is spot on. I couldn’t believe GM could have ever permitted these awful dashboards and interiors in their cars. The mouse-fur, NO AIR BAGS!, the deranged IP styling, the long heavy creaky doors. Sad, so sad.
Don’t forget the engines couldn’t get these cars moving, and the transmissions were obsolete POS that no other manufacturer with any street cred would send out in their vehicles. We had problems with our rental fleet. Renters hated them and we saw lots of loose and peeled cheap interior parts deliberately pulled off.
I find it impossible to believe that GM spent billions putting this crap on the road. Real problems GM had at that time. Good looking cars, that were just the worse.
The powertrains on these cars sounded (to me) like an agricultural drainage pump system.
Roger Smith’s creations, “good enough”*, thinking “real Americans will still buy from GM”. Expecting lots of older RWD trade ins**, but then decline of market share, instead.
And lots of excuses, whining and screaming ensued.
* You want good MPG? Here you go!
** Mint RWD G bodies from 1980’s sell for 5 figures on Bring (you know). W bodies? Lucky to get $3-5000.
GM totally misread the market by not introducing the sedans at the same time as the coupes. Then they drug their asses for 3 whole model years before finally giving us 4 doors.
Think about it, baby boomers are now having kids. This isnt like the old days in the 60’s/70’s, you put your kids in car seats by this point in time. Car seats are a PITA in a coupe. Baby boomers were trading in their old Cutlass Supremes and such for sedans.
Also speaking of safety it was extremely cynical to put those stupid seat belts on the doors and once again drag their asses and not offer airbags until 1993(1995 on the Lumina I think) Once again GM was not listening, safety was a huge selling point by the late 80’s/early 90s(thank you Volvo for pushing this HARD)
I had a long term subscription for “R&T” and “C&D” for decades.
I do recall this article when new. It seemed to me that the editors were struggling to find nice/good things to say about these quite under-whelming cars.
“We were all impressed by the ovality of the muffler’s end plates—a fine contrast to the roundness of the attached pipeworks.”
Exactly
🙂
I realize that I am comparing apples to oranges with this comment…but….my svelte and stylish 1987 Mercury Sable 4 door seemed to be (at least) one generation newer/ahead of these slow, inefficient, moaning & groaning mid-size GM cars.
As I remember, a lot of the money went into automated manufacturing to reduce labor costs.
The Olds outside with the Buick inside for me.
This article made me think of a magazine ad for a hi-fi speaker that I saw in the 1970s, headlined “The speaker with a revolutionary substitute for money: brains.” The body copy went to say, among other things, that “the right capacitor costs no more than the wrong one.” Of course, you do need a capable engineer to determine the right capacitor.
These cars show that money is no substitute for brains. Can someone explain in a nutshell just why GM was so dysfunctional during this period?
GM’s W-body/GM10 screwups:
1. Offering the pathetic Iron Duke as a base engine. The 151 was crap from the beginning until the end, in every vehicle GM used it in. It didn’t have to be; I’ve seen them with aftermarket valvetrain components that had power to go along with the economy. And didn’t shake any worse than the GM tuning.
2. Offering the 2.8 as an upgrade. The 3.1 should have been the base engine, with the OHV 3.4 optional. I have a 3.1L in a ’98 Monte Carlo. I could wish for more; but it’s adequate.
3. Using a piece-of-crap 3-speed automatic as a base transmission. The 4T60E was reasonably adequate although it needed better “tuning”. A non-electronic 4T60 should have been OK.
4. Some models got a goofy electric-motor brake booster/ABS unit. Pure junk–they’ve got a screwy geartrain system driven by that electric motor that causes problems. Most W-bodies up through ’93 model year got a vacuum booster that is a high-failure unit. They “partially” fail–the brake pedal requires high effort for a moderate stop; but the booster passes all the common/simple tests–doesn’t leak vacuum, doesn’t make excessive noise. But it also doesn’t boost very much, either. The power assist is maybe ten or twenty percent of what a properly-functioning booster provides. The booster is not a tremendously-difficult thing to replace but can make an ENORMOUS improvement in stopping power. Everyone blames the brake calipers–but it’s the booster causing the trouble.
5. Piston Slap, the noise of which GM officially blamed on the valve lifters on my two engines. GM says it’s harmless; and that’s sort-of true. The engine will run forever with the pistons rattling around–but it affects the knock sensor which pulls timing and cuts power and fuel economy. This “should” have been fixed as a recall; they can’t be making their EPA estimates for economy, or their advertised power when the spark is retarded. Probably can’t meet emissions requirements, either–but I haven’t tested that.
I’ve got surprisingly few complaints about my two Lumina Euro 3.4Ls–one is a ’92, bought nearly-new, the other is a ’93 purchased as a parts-car for the ’92. But it ran so well, I fixed it up and kept it. These have the “Dual Twin Cam” 3.4L DOHC 4-valve engine. Both have around 160K miles on ’em.
Both of them had the dreaded and outrageously-common partially-failed vacuum brake booster.
Both of them have no end of piston slap.
Alternator replacement on the “Dual Twin Cam” 3.4L is a bytch. One of those deals where it’s near-impossible the first time you do it, and not so horrible after having gained the experience.
NO damned air bags. Thank God. Whoever decided that loading explosive devices into the passenger compartment was a good idea should be committed to a mental hospital.
Both of them need the timing belt replaced at 60K mile intervals. A nice weekend project for the mechanically inclined; but expensive to have it done professionally. There’s a “special tool” set; I have it but it’s not really needed. Simply being clever can TOTALLY eliminate the need for the “special tools”. (They’re nice to have, though.)
I put both head gaskets on one of mine. Had a coolant leak into #1 cylinder. I’ll do the other engine probably this summer. At 150K-plus-miles the exhaust valves showed wear, the intake valves looked near-perfect, as did all the valve seats. I ground the valves to “perfection”, lapped ’em to the seats, slapped it back together, and it runs great.
Both bodies are nice ‘n’ tight. No rattles except from a failing strut mount–easily rectified and didn’t become a problem until some time beyond 100,000 miles.
The transverse leaf spring uses rubber pads at each end, where it bears on the suspension. The rubber pads wear out. Darn. Repair requires $30 in parts and a few hours. Moog offers a two-plastic-spacer kit that lifts the rear end a bit, compensating for sagged rear leaf spring.
I’ve had water in the trunk, but only when the area around the trunk seal gets plugged with pine needles and leaves so the water can’t drain. Same thing happens with my ’77 Nova and ’66 Toronado.
I’ve never understood the hatred for the GM10/W-body platform. I wish I could buy a brand-new ’92 Cutlass Supreme convertible with the 3.4L Dual Twin Cam engine and suspension. The Olds Cutlass 2-door was a real looker, too. Everything stylistically the Ford Probe could have been, but wasn’t.
Who ever bought you mom’s Cutlass sure got a great deal. With the Super Stock wheels, chances are the handling package (rear sway bar, thicker front sway bar, different bushings, etc) was also included.
I had the same package on my ’83 baseline 2-door Cutlass with bucket seats and console. It wasn’t the fastest, but it could handle interstate cloverleafs better than most sport cars.
There are atleast two on the road that I am aware of. I got mine from a machanic who was just done trying to figure out the car. Vaccume leaks, rough idle. My mechanic got her running she is great on the highway. Gas actually compares with some newer vehicles I have had. It drives with no drag windows down. Right around 60k, I got it for $500, paint needs work. A reliable 30+ year old car I can live with it, it’s too hot to take the bus. The dash everything accept the front seats were pristine. There is a little wear to the car, with it’s short daily trips for the household. I think it will see me to my last days. Greatful for a dependable car in the middle of the desert. Second Buick Regal, this one is older, but had alot of thought go into it. More innovations than the 98 I had.