Does anyone miss Oldsmobile?

Does anyone miss Oldsmobile? Not what Oldsmobile was in its heyday - but what it had become by the mid-late 1990s just before GM pulled the plug?

Probably not.

Same goes for Plymouth.

Like Olds, there was a long and storied history. Once upon a time, Plymouth had been a great brand defined by an exciting lineup of standout cars. But Plymouth faded into badge-engineered irrelevance - re-selling the same basic cars sold under the Chrysler and Dodge nameplates. Just like Olds. And just as irrelevant.

The same could be said today for Ford's Mercury division - to say nothing of several of GM's divisions, whose continued existence makes ever less sense for an automaker whose share of the pie has dwindled from a high approaching nearly 60 percent of all vehicles sold in North America circa 1979 to around 24-25 percent today.

GM keeps Buick and Pontiac mainly because it has no choice - or faces choices as unappealing as ditching the brands themselves. It has the unions, of course - and they seem determined to kick themselves in the nether regions rather than do what's in the long-term interests of anyone who hopes to work for GM in the future. As adamant as the president in his refusal to admit there might be trouble with the "mission" in Iraq, union leaders refuse to give GM any breathing room at all -- which may just leave GM on the floor not breathing at all. But they don't seem to care about that.

And then there are GM's dealers. These are independent franchise owners - not directly under GM's control. So the company can't just close up unproductive dealerships (or limit the number of dealers in a given geographic area, as Toyota does). And it is legally bound to provide "product" (vehicles) even if those vehicles aren't selling well. If that sounds odd, bear in mind that many dealers (perhaps most) don't make the big bucks selling cars. They make them servicing cars. So there's not much incentive for a dealer to close up shop - even if he is selling a brand that has become an also-ran.

This leaves GM in the position of having to dig deep and make generous buy-out offers (as it did with Olds). The money involved is enormous. GM can't afford to do it -- but it can't afford to keep on pouring money into unproductive, duplicative brands, either. Toyota is almost as big as GM in terms of worldwide sales (and awash in cash while GM is awash in red ink) and it does this with half the brands GM has (Toyota, Lexus and the new Scion small car spin-off vs. GM's six full-line divisions). Not one of the major Japanese nameplates has more than three divisions, in fact. Most have just two. A "standard" brand (Honda, Nissan, etc.) and a "prestige" line (Acura, Infiniti).

That's all - and it's probably just enough.

GM's in a bind - trying to eke profitability out of a structure that's too diffuse for the market it has - while Ford is dead in the water and seems to have no clue what to do about Mercury, let alone its struggling Lincoln luxury division. Bill Ford fled the scene, abjectly conceding he was in way over his head. The "Way Forward" appears to be a blind alley with a bricked-up wall at its terminus. The company is riding on the fumes of its retro-themed Mustang - one of the very few bright spots in an otherwise dismal product portfolio. GM, at least, has managed to resuscitate its Cadillac arm - but the union/over-capacity issues loom large, waiting to crash over GM"s Renaissance Center HQ like a mega-tsunami.

Of the "Big Three," Chrysler has the most coherent brand stratgey.

No one seems to miss Plymouth - and Chrysler doesn't appear t have lost anything for having bid the brand adieu. There's a "standard" line (Dodge) and a "prestige" line (Chrysler) and that seems to be just about right.

The fast food industry may be the best example of how this works - and why. Everyone knows the menu at McDonald's. Taco Bell, too. These joints focus hard on their core product - and try to avoid being all things to all people. (Yes, there are now salads and so on at McDonald's, but this is a sop to political correctness and the food police. People go to McDonald's for burgers and fries and shakes. Providing these staples of the American diet with amazing efficiency and consistency is what McDonald's and the fast food industry in general have honed into an art form). The most successful imports hew to the same philosophy - and that coherence (along with good value and pleasing the customer) has made them into the juggernauts they have become.

There are lots of very smart people at both GM and Ford who know all this stuff - but their hands are tied by institutional barriers, legal/contractual ukase and the same sort of lethal inertia that kept the Titanic speeding toward the iceberg even after the ship's helm ordered hard to port. By then, of course, it was already too late.

Not many of us miss Olds. Or Plymouth. At least, not what they had become in their final decade. Ten years from now, another generation may be saying the same thing about Mercury, Buick and Pontiac.

Maybe even Ford and GM too.

Yeah, I miss Olds, but only for sentimental reasons. I never owned a Dodge.

Put that way, I don't miss Olds or Plymouth either. I always thought GM had too many divisions.

I think that if GM had been smarter in teh 1970's and 1980's the brands would have been doing a lot better than they did.

Same for Chrysler, although I think that Plymouth actually had potential. Back in the late 1960's, Plymouth sold the Barracuda, Belvedere, Satellite, Valiant, and the Road Runner. They were appealing cars in their own right, but you could get a Dodge for the same money and it was the same car.

Nameplates are nothing more than a brand label on the same equipment.

In the fifties, GM doors and clips largely interchanged but came from different tooling, so the cars were visually distinct, and no division was 'full line'.

Then somebody decided that it just wasn't possible to underestimate the intelligence of the car buyer.
For a while, apparently, it wasn't.

But Detroit was wearing blinders of its own manufacture.

Invisible product planners decided what you would buy, by deciding what would be offered to dealers.

Unreachable 'zone service managers' kept warranty costs in check by frustrating aggrieved consumers, and thereby making it impossible for the engineers to distinguish good design decisions from bad ones in time to do anything about them.

... and other manufacturers were less arrogant, more nimble, and more sensitive to their actual customers.

Detroit has changed a lot, but they still have buildings full of executives. Recalcitrance among the labor force has a lot to do with their perception of those buildings' inhabitants.

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Originally Posted by mrblanche

Yeah, I miss Olds, but only for sentimental reasons. I never owned a Dodge.

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Olds built some really pretty cars - esp. the late '60s Toronados, which I have always liked a lot....

"Nameplates are nothing more than a brand label on the same equipment."

That has been true at GM since about 1981... however, before then, each division had its own in-house engine/drivetrain engineering, so that an Oldsmobile was actually powered by an Oldsmobile engine, a Buick by a Buick engine and a Pontiac by a Pontiac. A 1976 Trans-Am like mine is a very different animal from a 1976 Camaro, for instance. But after 1981, the Camaro and Firebird were mechanically the same car.

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Originally Posted by Eric

That has been true at GM since about 1981... however, before then, each division had its own in-house engine/drivetrain engineering, so that an Oldsmobile was actually powered by an Oldsmobile engine, a Buick by a Buick engine and a Pontiac by a Pontiac. A 1976 Trans-Am like mine is a very different animal from a 1976 Camaro, for instance. But after 1981, the Camaro and Firebird were mechanically the same car.

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I had an uncle in Lansing, MI, who worked his entire career at the Oldsmobile engine plant, which now makes engines for all GM cars. When it was an Olds plant, the union actively discouraged the union members from buying cars with the engines they built there. They wanted the members to have loyalty to the union, not the company. He owned only one Olds, which his wife wrecked when she hit a deer going about 100 mph.

(She was still sitting in the car, facing the wrong direction in the ditch, when the local policeman arrived. He asked her how fast she was going when she hit the deer. "One hundred," was her honest reply. "No, you weren't, you were going 60. Remember that when anyone else asks the question!" was his instruction.)

The last I knew, he was driving a Buick with one of the supercharged engines, built at the Lansing plant. The union eventually saw the self-destructive nature of their policies.

I miss Oldsmobile. They made a lot of great cars back in the day. Remember in the early 1980s when the Olds Cutlass Supreme was the #1 selling car in America. How they went from that, to the ugly space age cars in just a decade, is hard to believe.

Oldsmobile was doomed the moment Roger Smith made the decision to convert most Oldsmobiles to front-wheel drive (in the mid 1980s). After that sales dropped faster than a 747 that's lost both its wings.

I think one of GM's biggest mistakes was launching Saturn, they should have gotten rid of that division years ago. It was a gimmick (trying to trick import buyers into buying a GM car), that never worked.


Eric,

1982 was the first official year for the GM Corporate engines.

I forgot to mention on my last post, I think GM can survive without sacraficing Buick or Pontiac in the future. GM, in my opinion is beginning to turn things around. Toyota on the other hand seems to be head for some rough current in the next few years. Toyota has been very successful in the last 20 years however, their quality control is begging to slip:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...a_quality.html

I admit Ford is in bad straights but Toyota in my opinion is headed for some rough waters. GM is back.. the next five years are going to be good years for GM in my opinion.

What do you see as GM's positioning for their various brands?

Chip H.

Chip,

The real turn-around for GM will be the Zeta rear-wheel drive platform which the new Pontiac G8 will use. This platform will be the basis for the 2009 Camaro, 2009 Impala, and many other cars. Where GM shot themselves in the foot was the 1980s "Roger Smith" front-wheel drive platform which most GM cars went to and sales have been sliding ever since. The key to Chrysler's turn-around in the last few years is the movement to a rear-wheel drive platfrom for its bigger cars - it has proved a mega sales success.

I see GM's postion of each division as the following:

Cadillac: luxury division to compete directly with BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.

Chevrolet: budget division - cars for a reasonable price

Pontiac: performance division

Buick: division for over 60 year old crowd - the people who used to buy Cadillacs, Olds, and Buicks

Saturn: division needs to bite the dust - its cars can be sold in Chevy dealerships

Hummer: upscale 4x4 off-road vehicles

Chevrolet Trucks: trucks and SUVs for the average buyer

GMC Trucks: upscale trucks and SUVs

GM in the last two years has consolidated in its dealership network Buick, Pontiac, and GMC so they are now usually sold at the same dealership.

I thnk with the newer rear-wheel drive cars coming out in the next 2 - 4 years you will see sales increase for all GM divisions including Pontiac and Buick. The above model could work however GM needs to make cars that will sell at the different divisions. I now think they are starting to make those cars again. The 2009 Camaro is a perfect example of this.

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Originally Posted by Pete

I forgot to mention on my last post, I think GM can survive without sacraficing Buick or Pontiac in the future. GM, in my opinion is beginning to turn things around. Toyota on the other hand seems to be head for some rough current in the next few years. Toyota has been very successful in the last 20 years however, their quality control is begging to slip:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...a_quality.html

I admit Ford is in bad straights but Toyota in my opinion is headed for some rough waters. GM is back.. the next five years are going to be good years for GM in my opinion.

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Might could be... I do agree GM has really come around, product wise. Have you seen the new Chevy Malibu?

Toyota has had two big blows in the last couple of weeks. They have fallen from #1 in reliability polls, and their predicted takeover of the #1 manufacturer of vehicles in the world did not happen as expected.

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Originally Posted by Eric

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Originally Posted by Pete

I forgot to mention on my last post, I think GM can survive without sacraficing Buick or Pontiac in the future. GM, in my opinion is beginning to turn things around. Toyota on the other hand seems to be head for some rough current in the next few years. Toyota has been very successful in the last 20 years however, their quality control is begging to slip:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...a_quality.html

I admit Ford is in bad straights but Toyota in my opinion is headed for some rough waters. GM is back.. the next five years are going to be good years for GM in my opinion.

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Might could be... I do agree GM has really come around, product wise. Have you seen the new Chevy Malibu?

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I like GMs new cars a lot. I like the Malibu, the Aura (to a lesser extent), and definitely the G8. If I could afford the gas that would be my car, but for one thing -- I just hate GM for reasons already stated in other columns. Their little trick with OnStar has really done it for me. I will not give my money to a company that doesn't give its customers a choice whether or not to stuck those big brother devices their cars.

It is interesting to note that Acura had a contract with on-star as an option. Most honda customers didn't want it, so they canceled their contract. Most honda drivers don't need help with opening their doors.

swamprat,

I agree, I can't stand Northstar and I disagree with GM shoving it down their customers throats like they did with the day-time driving lights.


Eric & swamprat,

The new 2008 Malibu looks like a winner. Have not driven one yet, but I look forward to it.

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Originally Posted by Pete

swamprat,

I agree, I can't stand Northstar and I disagree with GM shoving it down their customers throats like they did with the day-time driving lights.


Eric & swamprat,

The new 2008 Malibu looks like a winner. Have not driven one yet, but I look forward to it.

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GM has aggressively embraced Big Brotherism - and just falls all over itself to appease the "mommy and chylllldrun" lobby... which I find suffocating.

I love old GM stuff - and much prefer it to any new GM stuff!

I sort of 'miss' Oldsmobile - the first American car I drove, on my first trip to the US, was a Cutlass Supreme:

http://web.onetel.com/~davebrand/wCutlass2.jpg

I suspect you mean OnStar; the Northstar engine is pretty darn good.

Dave-

What a car!! I remember when every 5th car was an Olds Cutlass Supreme.

Too bad they were crippled with 70s era smog controls. They would kick major butt with one of today's engines....

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Originally Posted by swamprat

Dave-

What a car!! I remember when every 5th car was an Olds Cutlass Supreme.

Too bad they were crippled with 70s era smog controls. They would kick major butt with one of today's engines....

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Remember the '84 Hurst Olds with the Lightning Rod shifters? It was a damn good-looking car that had a lot of potential. Still had a real Oldsmobile engine (307), too.

Last of the line....

I'm an Olds fanatic. I grew up on Olds and my father's an Olds fanatic too.

I loved what Olds stood for in the past. When in house engineering stopped it became a shadow of it's former self. My father ponied up the cash and bought an '86 442. He also scraped together $5735 in 1971 and bought himself a fully loaded Viking Blue '71 442 convertible (he still owns it).

I got bitten by the bug and bought a tired but running 91,000 mile Garnet Red '66 442 in high school for a paltry $1200 on the outskirts of Saskatoon. It was one of 2,400 that year equipped with a 4-speed transmission. God that was an amazing car. I was forced to sell it to a cop when he caught me doing a speed far in excess of the limit. Being a scared teen who was about to lose a licence that was just recently acquired, I relented and sold it to the police officer. I believe I got $8800 for it. I thought I made out like a bandit.

I should have taken the suspension. That car would be worth $60K+ today.

I've been through over a dozen Oldsmobiles all from the mid 60's to the late 80's.

Another one of my favorites was an extremely rare 160,000 km '78 Cutlass Calais with an Olds 260 V8 motor and a 5-speed Opel sourced transmission. I bought it from a trailer park resident in the middle of nowhere. The price? $600. It had a lot of other strange features. It had a Sanyo am/fm cassette player with a 'record' button on it and a jack at the rear of the unit in which I could plug a microphone into. I later learned that I could dictate into it or hit the record button and save anything that was playing on the radio to a blank tape. I was astonished. The car also got amazingly good fuel economy for a car of that vintage. I was getting 32-34 mpg on the highway without any problems.

I even stumped my father as he was quite the authority on all things Oldsmobile. We went down to the local GM dealership and they insisted that the Cutlass never came with a 5-speed manual trans (especially an Opel sourced one). I had to bring the car in to convince them otherwise. They ran the VIN numbers with GM Canada. It came back as one of 11 Cutlass Calais cars used in a Canadian Economy Test Program in 1977-1978. Apparently they used the radio to dictate and record results as they were driving.

I wish I had kept that car too. I sold it in a moment of weakness for $2000 as the frame was in poor condition and I needed the money to finish my last year of technical college.

I think GM should have axed Pontiac instead of Oldsmobile.

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

I think GM should have axed Pontiac instead of Oldsmobile.

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Why?

Pontiacs (in general) at least sell. I haven't been a huge fan of recent efforts, but the division has had a number of models trhat did ok in the market - whereas Oldsmobile didn't have a successful model for years before the ax fell.

Also: Pontiac makes some sense as GM's "upscale performance" brand. But Olds no longer had a niche...

"Another one of my favorites was an extremely rare 160,000 km '78 Cutlass Calais with an Olds 260 V8 motor and a 5-speed Opel sourced transmission. I bought it from a trailer park resident in the middle of nowhere. The price? $600. It had a lot of other strange features. It had a Sanyo am/fm cassette player with a 'record' button on it and a jack at the rear of the unit in which I could plug a microphone into. I later learned that I could dictate into it or hit the record button and save anything that was playing on the radio to a blank tape. I was astonished. The car also got amazingly good fuel economy for a car of that vintage. I was getting 32-34 mpg on the highway without any problems."

That is amazing! You guys Up North get (and got) some offbeat stuff from GM that we didn't (and don't) get down here...

My family had one big Olds after another when I was a kid; 1971 Regency with 455; '77 Regency with 350; 84 Regency with the 307..... all great tanks. Lots of fond memories of those cars....

As you can see by the dash, my car was equipped with both idiot lights and a gauge package. When you used the radio, a green idiot light would illuminate that read "RADIO". On the left you can see the tach redlines at a measly 4,400 RPM. To other owners of a '78 Cutlass: were these cars equipped with both idiot lights and gauges?

The radio picture shows the Sanyo AM/FM cassette player with the "RECORD" feature. Beneath the green light it reads "TAPE" and below the red light it reads "REC". The buttons "PAUSE" and "FFWD" are on the left and "RWD" and "REC" are on the right. You could plug a microphone in the back and record whatever you want to say or you can record whatever was playing on the radio and play it back. I used to get girls to give me their name, number and 30 seconds to tell me why I should call them. I recorded the information and saved it for later so I never had to write down numbers. I still have some of those tapes in storage today.

Once, I used it to exonerate myself from a militant police officer by recording our entire conversation. The tape was enough evidence to prove my innocence and all charges were dropped. The officer wound up with a suspension. It was a life saver.

I wish I kept this car.

Here is an interior shot. As you can tell, the short throw European Opel based transmission looks very out of place with the rest of the car. The shift pattern is unusual in the fact that Reverse is located where 1st would be , and 1st is located where 2nd would be on North American cars. To get into reverse you had to move the shifter to the far left and forwards and not to the far right and rearwards. The first few weeks of ownership were confusing as I instinctively kept trying to put it in reverse and found myself in 5th gear, stalling out.

The car was strangely optioned too. No power windows but power side view mirrors and a power trunk. No air conditioning but a power moonroof. Fuel economy was outstanding as mentioned before - somewhere in the region of 32-34 mpg. I had a couple of friends I went to school with who had a '78, '79 Cutlass and an '80 Cutlass, and my gas tank would always last 50% longer than theirs. They just couldn't understand it. Even the local Oldsmobile club spent an entire hour crawling over, under and around it. I had no problems letting them test drive it either. Every time I took it to GM for service the mechanics were all over it.

These are the things that I miss that were associated with Oldsmobile. Technical innovation, experimentation, and the boldness and daring to 'play around'. It's a real shame.

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Originally Posted by Eric

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

I think GM should have axed Pontiac instead of Oldsmobile.

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Why?

Pontiacs (in general) at least sell. I haven't been a huge fan of recent efforts, but the division has had a number of models trhat did ok in the market - whereas Oldsmobile didn't have a successful model for years before the ax fell.

Also: Pontiac makes some sense as GM's "upscale performance" brand. But Olds no longer had a niche...

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Until the announcement of the G8, and the recent re-labelled Holden, Pontiac hadn't had anything resembling performance except the T/A, in a couple of decades. It was the division of the Grand Am. The idea of a 4-door Grand Prix was enough of a reason to axe the whole division. They are redundant with Chevrolet.

"Until the announcement of the G8, and the recent re-labelled Holden, Pontiac hadn't had anything resembling performance except the T/A, in a couple of decades. It was the division of the Grand Am. The idea of a 4-door Grand Prix was enough of a reason to axe the whole division. They are redundant with Chevrolet."

Actually, both the Grand Am and the Bonneville (to name two) sold in very large numbers. Boring? Sure. But they did sell - which Oldsmobiles of the same period did not....

Question for ReasonOne -

Is that speedometer in km or miles? I can't quite see it.

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Originally Posted by ReasonOne

To other owners of a '78 Cutlass: were these cars equipped with both idiot lights and gauges?

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Not an owner, but I drove one in '58 (see my earlier post). Being a hire car, it was no doubt pretty much as low-specced as they came. From memory, it just had speedo, tacho, fuel & temperature gauges - and, of course, being a US-market car, it had an 85mph speedo!

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Originally Posted by Dave Brand

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Originally Posted by ReasonOne

To other owners of a '78 Cutlass: were these cars equipped with both idiot lights and gauges?

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Not an owner, but I drove one in '58 (see my earlier post). Being a hire car, it was no doubt pretty much as low-specced as they came. From memory, it just had speedo, tacho, fuel & temperature gauges - and, of course, being a US-market car, it had an 85mph speedo!

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In '58???

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Question for ReasonOne - Is that speedometer in km or miles? I can't quite see it.

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Hi Henry,

The speedo is in km. You can make out 85 MPH at the top end as well as 135 KM in smaller letters. Being a Canadian car in 1978, the display of the speedometer in miles and kilometers were mandatory. Note the feeble 4500 RPM redline. At the time this picture was taken this car only had 168,000 km (it had only rolled over once; the mileage was confirmed through service records). That's just over 100,000 miles. I kick myself for selling this one.

Canada was forced to do the metric changeover around the era this car was built.

I must have been looking at the wrong set of pictures. I see it now.

4400 rpm redline? That's hilarious.

135 kph speedometer? Ugh. At least in Canada, you didn't have to highlight the "55" (88 kph), although that regulation didn't come around until 1980.

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Originally Posted by Henry

I must have been looking at the wrong set of pictures. I see it now.

4400 rpm redline? That's hilarious.

135 kph speedometer? Ugh. At least in Canada, you didn't have to highlight the "55" (88 kph), although that regulation didn't come around until 1980.

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That was common in the late '70s/early '80s. Engines were just strangled by smog gear and weak cams. As I recall there were only a handful of cars that had engines that could be spun beyond 5,000 RPM; mosthad factory redlines that began in the 4,500 range. A few - like the Corvette L-82 - could rev higher, but not by much. Maybe 5,200-400 RPM.

6,000-plus was risky - assuming it would even spin that fast. 6,500? You'd blow it up for sure.....

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

In '58???

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Oops...finger trouble! Make that '78! :-\

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Originally Posted by Dave Brand

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

In '58???

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Oops...finger trouble! Make that '78! :-\

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Either way I'd be surprised if it had a Tach.

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

Either way I'd be surprised if it had a Tach.

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I can't be sure - it was 30 years ago!

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

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Originally Posted by Dave Brand

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

In '58???

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Oops...finger trouble! Make that '78! :-\

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Either way I'd be surprised if it had a Tach.

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GM offered a tach as part of a Rally gauge cluster that was optional on many mid-late '70s cars.

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Originally Posted by Eric

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

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Originally Posted by Dave Brand

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

In '58???

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Oops...finger trouble! Make that '78! :-\

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Either way I'd be surprised if it had a Tach.

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GM offered a tach as part of a Rally gauge cluster that was optional on many mid-late '70s cars.

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And how many cars in the rental car fleet do you think were equipped with that option?

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

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Originally Posted by Eric

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

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Originally Posted by Dave Brand

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Originally Posted by misterdecibel

In '58???

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Oops...finger trouble! Make that '78! :-\

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Either way I'd be surprised if it had a Tach.

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GM offered a tach as part of a Rally gauge cluster that was optional on many mid-late '70s cars.

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And how many cars in the rental car fleet do you think were equipped with that option?

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Probably not many - but was that the question?