From a personal standpoint, I’m not likely to be an Oldsmobile buyer. Regardless of ad campaigns, my own memories of the Olds is that it was the car of choice for my mom’s folks. First, and one of my earliest memories, a huge white olds sedan (a Ninety Eight?), with red seats you could lie cross-wise across, and the coolest speedometer ever (a green bar marching horizontally across the dashboard, which then turned orange when you passed a certain dangerous speed).
That car eventually went away, replaced by a smaller red with a white landau top (a Cutless Supreme?). Sportier, I suppose, but still The Grandparent Car, into which golf bags would be loaded.
Eventually they stopped buying new Olds. And now nobody will.
(via Daimnation)
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I did own one Olds…
After my Mazda 618 (bought third hand, and imported from West Germany by a guy in the Army…all metric…yay!) decided to throw a rod on the way home from the insurance adjuster (my first of seven rear endings at stop lights), I bought my Step-Fathers old Cutlass (waterfall grill, 442 package with no badging, and fire-engine red…yay!). Scary fast, when we used to race on 128. The cool thing that it had was the “Captain’s” seat for the driver and the passenger (I would presume it would be good for short-skirted women or men in Kilts getting out of the car).
The Olds died because of the stupid, decades old GM marketing strategy. Your first car would be a Chevy (cheap), or a Pontiac (sporty), then you would move on to a Buick (family guy), then to the Olds (old Family Guy), and finally to the Cadillac (retired Family Guy with Masonic badges on bumper). But since the American carmakers only make the same car for every division (only trim level changes being the difference) there has been need of some severe limb pruning in the car industry (Gm could afford to lose at least one or two more divisions).
And I went from my AMC Gremlin to an Oldsmobile DelMont 88! That thing’s engine was about the size of the whole Gremlin. A friend of mine liked to watch the needle on the fuel gauge drop as I drove; it used that much gas.
Yeah, but, hey, at least it wasn’t a Gremlin …
It’d really sad since the first (major ) Olds was a go anywhere, SUV of its day. And since there were very few roads, it had to be. The Curved Dash Olds was a real star. And it had a great, 1 cynlinder engine and a tiller with a bell. If you ever get the chance to hear one running, you should. Ch-paw, Ch-paw and away they go.