Photographed by Colin
I know, I know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Blah blah blah. Is there really anybody that likes the looks of the downsized 1985 C-Body Buick Electra and Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight coupes?
The sedans are handsome even though they were introduced with one of GM’s increasingly ubiquitous formal rooflines. The Electra’s detailing was clean and elegant while the Ninety-Eight managed to wear its traditional styling cues quite well on its new, smaller body. Then there were these coupes with their tacky, puffy vinyl roof and odd rear quarter window.
GM’s shrunken full-size models may have been more efficient and more manoeuvrable and easy to drive, but unfortunately some of them, like the DeVille, suffered from looking noticeably smaller. All three of the C-Body coupes looked not only smaller but also rather malformed. Their sedan compatriots, in my opinion, were far more elegant.
While the Ninety-Eight coupe came standard with a vinyl roof, the Electra was available without one. Surprisingly, that didn’t help the styling much. The car looked like a two-door sedan at best, a rushed 11th hour design job at worst. “What, we were supposed to design a coupe too?!”
Oldsmobile print media conspicuously avoided showing the Ninety-Eight coupe from the rear. In comparison, its predecessor was regularly photographed from behind. Ah, that’s nice.
The market was moving away from coupes and moved especially fast from the Ninety-Eight coupe. Sales ticked up from 7,855 coupes in 1984 to 14,438 in the new FWD coupe’s debut year. But sales would crash in 1986—while Oldsmobile shifted well over 100,000 Ninety-Eight sedans, it managed just 5,810 coupes. Oldsmobile sold 4,207 of the cars in 1987 before pulling the plug on the Ninety-Eight coupe; the Electra coupe was also axed, while the Cadillac Coupe de Ville survived well into the 1990s.
Now, tell me: am I projecting my pro-sedan bias here or is there widespread agreement that the 1985-87 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight coupe was ugly?
I liked the first FWD CdV without the vinyl top.
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/img/pictonorzw/cadillac/1985-cadillac-coupe-deville.jpg
I though it looked pathetic, with its awkward proportions and those tiny, tinny wheels. It actually makes that little Tercel look big.
My first car was 1987 Olds 98 Regency Brougham Coupe , I learned to work on cars on it , went thru 2 motors & 3 junk yards transmissions , after I turned 18 I had enough $ saved up to buy 14” Dayton wire wheels & had 4 12” kicker comps in trunk running on Original Punch 150 amps. I loved that car , till motor knocking noise when it had close to 300k miles , sold it to a friend , he wrecked it , I bought back for $100 then would sit in it & smoke blunts to remember the good times till I sold for scrap in 2000.
That 3rd photo doesn’t make the coupe look so much like a “rush job” as it looks like a picture of a sedan that was photoshopped.
I actually sort of like the slightly smaller 2 door Le Sabres, someone had a Le Sabre T-Type on a local Craigslist for awhile about a year ago.
The sloping roofline of the LeSabre/88 makes a huge difference. I felt he same for the 1981-84 2 door B/Cs as well. GM felt formal rooflines were mandatory on the Luxury oriented “c”s but sportier rooflines were ok on family oriented “h”s. Unfortunately they didn’t ask me. The formal rooflines only are acceptable on 4 doors.
Thus the 85 “c” bodies are on my list of cars that look better as 4 door sedans.
The sloping rooflines were part of an effective/cynical (circle one) plan to sell the same car for two prices. The vertical roofline allowed the rear seat to be moved back in the Electra and Ninety Eight for the traditional extra rear seat room, despite the C and H cars being the same overall size.
Several of the Ninety Eight coupe factory photos have obviously airbrushed-in vinyl tops.
The Ninety Eight coupe was not only ugly but coming from GM, the company that gave us so many desirable coupes over the years just made it even worse. They needed a totally different roofline. The formal roof just barely worked on the sedan, it didn’t work at all on the Coupe.
This Olds coupe is ugly. The sedan is far better looking, but I do wish they had used a thicker, more substantial C-pillar to give the rear of the car some more visual “weight”. These Olds cars were better looking than their Caddy counterparts, but one of the main problems I think is that the rear end styling just looks unfinished, like the designers just gave up by the time they got around to the back end.
I very much agree. The roofline and giant rear windows just didn’t work on these coupes. A similar roof treatment to their RWD predecessors likely would’ve done wonders, though the generic look of the body was still a hindrance. By contrast, the H-body coupes (LeSabre, Delta Eighty-Eight) looked much better with their roofline.
These ungainly beasts added fuel to the decline of coupe sales. Other example is the FWD A body 2 doors. They look like they took a 4 door, sealed it shut, and voila! a “sportier” coupe!
The restyled 1988-91 rear windows of the Century and Ciera looked better, but was too late.
BTW: The last Coupe De Ville was 1993.
It didn’t help that the stylists for the Buick and Olds coupes were forced to use the sedan rooflines and window openings.
Without the vinyl top/opera window/coach light combo I don’t think the C body coupes were really that bad. A more sloping roof line would have helped, but I remember from experience that the A and C body cars of these years had just about enough space behind the rear seatback (what used to be referred to as the “parcel shelf”) to house the rear speakers, which were 6X9’s, I believe, so in other words maybe 7-8″. A more sloping rear roof treatment would probably have killed rear headroom completely.
The bigger issue from a sales standpoint was probably that the coupe market had started dying off little by little when hardtops went the way of the dodo, and the demographic for these cars skewed old enough by the mid 80’s that folks were probably about finished with the inconvenience of stuffing friends and family into cave-like back seats. I always thought the Coupe deVille had as long a run as it did simply because it was a rather iconic nameplate unto itself vs its Sedan sister. Besides, Cadillac buyers were bigger slaves to fashion than Olds or Buick buyers, thus would be quicker to forego practicality in favor of “the cool factor”.
It feels like a chicken-or-egg question to me. Either…
{a} GM believed the “big coupe” market was dying, but they didn’t want to lose the few coupe sales remaining, so they just slapped something together on the cheap.
or
{b} GM was just being cheap, so they slapped the coupe together, exacerbating the death of the big coupe.
It reminds me of the Panel Delivery. Ford and Dodge quit making them in the early 60s, because the new cargo vans rendered them obsolete, while GM kept making them because there were a few sales left to be had, and GM could make them more cheaply than Ford or Dodge, because they were essentially a derivative of the Suburban.
Here’s the thing though. The H-body (Lesabre/88) coupes were based on the same platform, sharing many of the same hard points, and yet those had an attractive, sloping roofline that was not shared with the sedans. One wonders why they spend the money on the lower-priced (albeit higher volume) version, leaving the higher-end models to suffer with an awkward shared roofline?
Who knows what GM were up to in the 80’s though, perhaps it was just a matter of “let’s try all different things and see what works” by that point. These coupes just ended up being one of the failures, while their 88 and lesabre cousins were far more successful in 2-door format.
You get the feeling there was no really strong design leadership in those days. Your picture shows they COULD make an attractive coupe but then they produced the Ninety-Eight, which looks so awkward you really wonder what they were thinking. Or whether anybody cared. Why did they bother?
Harley Earl would never have let a shape like this go out the door.
This roofline, and this LeSabre, are genuinely good-looking, IMO. That FWD Ninety-Eight coupe looks like it was styled by Fisher-Price.
I have a pro 2-door bias and even I agree, the proportions are just completely thrown off, they look short and stubby despite identical dimensions (110.8″ wheelbase/196.4″ length), which is very odd since shared wheelbases tend to make coupes version look LONGER than their sedan counterparts.
Plus the only proper way to pull off a formal roofline coupe is with a very fat C pillar and a lower roof height, just as it was on the prior C body 98s, or the 79-85 E bodies. The tall airy greenhouse formula really only works in a more organic/aero/bubble like shape
I liked the 88 coupe better.
I love the 98/Electra coupes, but only because of their rarity, not their aesthetics. I’ve never seen one IRL.
I wonder how many sets of the aluminum vent visors were sold for the longer coupe doors…I can’t imagine there were many.
I am always the odd man out. I may be the only one that likes these in the coupe version as much as the sedan, not only because of the rarity, but because in person I think they actually looked good. And they were quite roomy for a coupe, too. Coupes in general in the 80’s were diminishing in sales and no longer such a big seller, so it may be why these were eventually discontinued. I think that coupes in general back then always seemed to have smaller production numbers in comparison to their sedan counterparts – it was showing the changing needs of the American family and consumer of the 80’s.
There is one of these still roaming the streets of Providence, a 1986 I believe. I have seen it several times when I’ve gone downtown – an older gentleman is driving it and it appears to be in great shape. It is a medium blue color with a matching blue vinyl top and interior. It even has the rare non-spoke aluminum alloy wheels that were very rarely ordered. Quite possibly he is the original owner and ordered that car straight from the factory – it wouldn’t surprise me!
Just . . . no. The sedans were attractive. These were not. And I generally preferred the proportions of 2 door cars before the 90s.
These always reminded me of another particularly ungainly 2 door sedan . . .
I think all the downsized FWD C-Bodies were unfortunate looking. Yes the sedans were better, but that is faint praise…
Frankly, given the relatively low (and declining) sales for the previous RWD C-Body 2-doors, I’m surprised GM even bothered. Logical Product Planning would have dictated that the E-Bodies assumed the role of the flagship 2-doors.
The 2-door H-body was the best looking of the bunch, but that too was really a car without a market, as most coupe buyers at the time wanted something smaller.
I think the redesigned C/H-bodies for 1991/92 would’ve looked great with coupe versions, but by then, the full-size coupe was dead and buried.
I like the airy glassy look of the Buick, but that vinyl top on the Olds is way too fussy for a car of that size.
I did never understand why GM had the C and H bodies separate anyway. How different were they under the skin? Was it just a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing?
I don’t like the sedans or coupes of the downsized GMs. Especially compared to the last of the RWD biggies, the contemporary Lincoln commercial always comes to mind.
I think it was an attempt to made the higher priced models “different” from their cheaper siblings.
Theory; Plans had been made for the Buick-Olds C coupes to share the H coupes’ roofline but they were cancelled at the last minute (due to complaints about other models’ lack of distinctiveness?) in favor of the sedans’ formal roof. Olds padded the heck out of it, Buick braved it out with a tintop two-door sedan.
Mentioning the padded top, its’ windows seem to be an attempt to keep fans of the opera-window look and people complaining about lack of visibility happy with the same car.
That roofline is horrendous. The H-body Lesabre/Delta88 had a much better roofline. The best of the bunch would be the Lesabre T-Type. Swoon!!
Been thinking about it, and that roofline just about gives the Ninety-Eight’s styling a period Eastern European vibe. Trying to copy the West’s trends, but not managing to pull it off…..
I think the coupes look better than the sedans, but I don’t like them either. My opinion is these would have done better as a cutlass ciera/century replacement and not as pretend big cars. I mean really if you had a rwd98 or Electra and went to get a new car one of these makes you feel cheated and robbed. As a ciera or a century it would be a world class upgrade. The truncated trunk and short front and thin roof screams economy car.
Maybe if the 88 and LeSabre only got the new FWD bodies and they had kept Electra/Park Av/98 on the older RWD C, would have been better off.
I know what you’re getting at warren but in person they were actually a nice size car – very spacious and comfortable. With the proper options and colors they were actually very luxurious. They didn’t look, feel or drive like an economy car at all. I think of the downsized 1977’s in relation to the 1976’s and these provided customers the same thing – a trimmer, smaller package with more interior room and much easier maneuverability. I know many people that owned them and absolutely loved them. And aside from the coupe versions they sold very well, too. If you drove one of these and then the RWD version they replaced back to back the difference was drastic. They made the older cars seem that much older and very dated in comparison.
Rusher fodder
Were these significantly cheaper than their rwd older cousins, in adjusted terms?
Any of these “formal roofline” cars are hideous but these two doors are actually repugnant.
I liked the original ‘formal’ roof on the mid ’60s Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. And I was OK with the first Seville. But by the ’80s, after years of bean-counters making cars cheaper & shoddier, it was like they were saying, ‘Hey, our cars are crap, but a Rolls roof on everything makes it alright!”
On many cars from this era, it was also cheaper to cover with vinyl, than to properly fill & finish the seams and welds that the roofs were made of.
Sedan or coupe, I really hate most of the formal roofs, but especially with the almost-mandatory, puffy, half-vinyl coverings. At least some of them finally got toned down around ’89-’90.
Happy Motoring, Mark
Echoing everyone else – this looked horrible, but the 88/LeSabre coupes looked decent.
I love the poofy vinyl kitch and quite frankly the lines are fine.
The real problem with this thing is that it doesn’t look like a 98, it looks like a Ciera or LeBaron. It’s not grand enough for the flagship nameplate.
I much prefer the sedans in general. The 1986 LeSabre and Delta 88 coupes pulled the look off much better as far as coupes go. I always thought these downsized C-body cars were a much better effort than the silly K-car New Yorker which debuted a few years before. The C-bodies thankfully could be had without vinyl top, looked more elegant, rode a longer wheelbase and made better use of interior legroom. And they still used V6 and V8 engines which were far more appropriate for a luxury type car at the time. I loved my 1985 brown Park Ave that I spent 2 years with. Everybody always commented on the rear seat legroom, the ride and how punchy the 3.8 PFI V6 felt around town.