A-Bodies are of course a very common sight here, and we’ve professed our love for the Roaches Of The Road™ numerous times here. But those have almost all been sedans and wagons. Actually, I did find a Century coupe for my A-Body CC, but that was quite a while ago. And now I’ve caught this Ciera version. So we’ve got both those bases covered now. Just need to find the ultra-rare Ciera convertible now…
“Just need to find an ultra-rare Ciera Convertible now.”
Soon Paul. Soon
Why am I not surprised?
Because you have insider access as an author & editor.
I thought they were handsome cars in a very conservative way. Made we wish for a Sable/Taurus coupe
Aunt of one of my best friends bought a 1991 Internatonal series of the Ciera Coupe.
Nice car but her kids [my buddy’s cousins] drove it into the ground quickly.
It was a V6, white with grey interior and “performance” suspension. I think it lasted 3 years beofre it was dead.
WOW! What a great feature to find on a late Friday morning.
This appears to be an early 1987 model; put the 1987.5 and above front end, with the composite headlights, on it and this would be the spitting image of the first car I ever drove all by myself, in the parking lot of my 6th grade school.
I still remember the color – Medium Rosewood Metallic – and the interior was rather plush in matching velour. Ours was oddly equipped with the gold-spoke crosslace wheels, Iron Duke four, tilt wheel but no cruise, power windows but manual locks and mirrors, and the base AM-FM Delco radio.
It was a beautiful car in its day, and far beyond the craptacular 1986 Cavalier wagon it replaced.
+1 on the year. I rented one in late ’86 with 3K miles with the same color and interior. I put on another 1000 miles driving home. 4 cylinder with automatic and really tall gearing gave me 33mpg at 70; once up to speed a nice highway car. I think it was an early ’87.
Looks like an 86 to me. The only way to really tell is to look at the grille. The 86s had rectangles around the grille while the 87 thin horizontal bars.
For 1987, the Brougham models got the composite headlights while non Brougham models got the sealed beams.
I think the roofline was new for 1987, though?
I found the photo of the car I rented. Silly, eh?
Anyway, yes this car had the horizontal bars in the grille. Today’s feature car color but not the coupe.
Spotted another very rare A-body in the parking lot of Panera Bread today.
Cool find. I remember my dad having one just like it as a loaner while waiting for his Skylark to come in.
When do we get a CC on the really rare A-body like this one?
Once I find the beater one I haven’t seen at the local HS since 2012 reappears (is an STE, not AWD).
Yes! Yes! STE AWD!
I’m bound to run across one any day now. Found a 90 GrandPrix Turbo coupe in the U-Pull-It holding lot last week. I find that car karma is very good to me. Which means that something interesting will cross my path any time.
With my luck that means I’ll find a Celebrity VR. complete with bright red carpet.
I’m telling you I have the touch. Look what I found parked at one of Omaha’s fine chain burger joints over the weekend.Not a STE but an even rarer 1990 AWD SE! I couldn’t find an exact number on how many(6000 AWD) were made between 88-90 but I should have played the lottery after finding one still prowling the streets almost 25 years later. This one looked rough on the outside but the interior was holding out quite well. Didn’t catch the odometer as I’m sure a few people thought it was strange to see me taking a few quick pics of this car and they might have called “the man” on me if it appeared that I might be to anxious by peeking inside of it.
Nice find. I had a nice email exchange with a GM engineer who was involved in the AWD project (he said there were a few AWD J-bodys and one STE Turbo running around as part of the project) and he said that they made more SE’s with AWD than STE’s. It makes sense since the SE was almost 3K cheaper than the STE when fitted with AWD.
Don’t feel bad about people look at you strangely. I was at the local Chevy dealer with my wife last week looking at a 2014 Impala, well she was looking at it while I was taking camera phone pictures of a Spirit R/T to send to my Dad to stir up the memories of his….the sales guys gave me some strange looks!
Lets assume that the Riviera in the background is yours…
I would have been curious to see that J car AWD as I do not remember it anywhere. When I was involved with the J cars there several Turbo 3.1s built like the GP/STE but the biggest issue was the transmission. The 125 could not handle the torque pull from a turbo V6 so the 440T4 was beefed up some and released as a heavy duty variant. The 440T4 could not fit into the engine bay of a V6 J car without heavy modification. I have seen turbo J cars but they were installed with manual transmissions. Seeing as the 60*V6 is built off the same design architecture, up until the 3900 can be retrofitted fairly easily. Most of the modifications have to do with rear exhaust crossover clearance and minor sensor wiring plug ins and using a new computer chip. The 125 and 440T4 were eventually supplanted by the 4T60.
Not all was lost, while the AWD cars of those years did not sell in huge numbers the technology was used for the AWD minivans.
I owned that exact car in that exact color. It was an STE with AWD. Was stolen and totaled and stripped, but was a cool car while I had it.
Sorry for your loss. I would love it have one of those as a first car (and baby it I would most definitely do).
I love it, I had an ’86 STE!
This is the newer one. An aunt bought one of the earlier coupes, much like the one below. For someone like me who had been raised on the idea that 2 door cars looked better than 4 door cars, the Cutlass was a jarring sight. The newer version featured here was a huge improvement.
Didn’t see the vinyl roof until I clicked on it. That sure made me blanch.
That is a HOLIDAY COUPE, available 84-86. That particular picture is of an 84. The first models had a unique two-tone interior. They were an RPO for the Brougham coupes and usually well equipped. Originally the Holiday was the first four door hardtop produced eventually available just on coupes and eventually non hardtop coupes on the Delta 88s. The downsized B-body Holidays are interesting as they featured bucket seats, floor shifter with console, and super stock wheels, very unusual for such a car.
It’s odd that GM opted to change the A-body coupe roofline in 1987, by which time the formal rear window was an established styling trait throughout the A-, H-, N- and E-body lines.
If you wanted a 2-door Oldsmobile that year, your choices were the nigh-identical Calais and Toronado, or a somewhat-distinctive midline Ciera.
The Delta 88 and the 98 both offered 2 doors for 1987, although neither sold well. The 98 coupe was dropped after 1987, while the Delta 88 coupe lasted until the 1992 redesign.
Ah, that’s right… and as of 1988 (I believe) they also featured a faster rear window angle.
Don’t forget the seldom seen Grande. Even though it was available on both 2 and 4 door models on the 1986 98 the coupes usually had the some what tacky padded Landau roof which made them stand out in traffic.
Now this feature car would really be interesting if it was a Ciera GT. Complete with bucket seats and floor shifter.
Hmmm? I guess Olds must have had an indentity crisis in the 80’s. Aren’t Grande and GT associated with Ford?
First there was the ES, then the GT, then the International Series. It was Oldsmobile’s answer to the T Types from Buick. Each division (except for Cadillac) had sporty models during the 80s. The reason for the switch to the International Series (which pervaded the Calais, Ciera, Supreme) was that with the introduction of the FWD Supreme, GM was trying to position Oldsmobile to something of a mid-priced import fighter. When the 4 door Supreme came out for 1990, the Ciera was repositioned as something of a value sedan all of the feature models like Brougham, etc. were dropped.
This is probably the best Oldsmobile site out there for general all around information.
http://encyclopedia.classicoldsmobile.com/
Even Cadillac tried to cash in, too. Starting in 1986 one could buy a Deville-based Touring Sedan or Coupe, soon to be followed in 1988 with the Seville-based STS and in 1990 with the Eldorado Touring Coupe.
The latter two eventually developed into fairly respectable cars, but I could have lived happily without ever seeing an 80s deVille sporting color-keyed ground effects and cheap stick-on fog lamps:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smokuspollutus/7693984922/lightbox/
Yes I am well aware of those, I could do a whole piece on those since they were recently discussed, but Cadillac was never given a division wide performance program (per the modeling & scheduling chart that I have from 1993). Cadillac maintained a separate marketing & engineering office while the other divisions were folded into a corporate group as a result of the 1984 reorganization. It is splitting hairs a bit but it was what was laid out for each division. When I moved over to Cadillac in 1993, the focus of the division began to be shifted from “Tradition American Luxury” to a compete more effectively with the premium imports, leaving the Buick division to fill that role and Buick’s performance models were dropped. Eventually Oldsmobile dropped the International Series when the marque was redirected to being more of a value role. Pontiac continued to stress performance and Chevrolet economy.
Your pedantry is appreciated, but if there was any real-world difference in the results, I fail to see it. The deVille DTS was every bit the “sporty” car the Cutlass Ciera International Series (or, for that matter, a “T-Type” Electra) was — which is to say, hardly at all. Some firmer suspension bits and body cladding, that’s it.
The Grande had a swank pigskin suede and leather interior with a console and extra trim on the seats. There was one rolling around here driven by an old lady, it was a sedan, I have not seen it in a while.
I took a pretty nice Ciera GT coupe in on trade once, I didn’t realize how rare they were even back then, it was burgandy with burgandy leather buckets.
The Grande was a bit over the top and rare, but ironically the first Oldsmobile model to have composite headlamps in 1986.
The GM dealer I worked for (a mercifully short time, fortunately) had a regular customer with a I believe a 1991 International Series, black with red leather. I still love the look of these cars and the interiors kicked ass. The leather was real quality and all the materials were top notch. At the time GM was trying to improve quality and with the age of the A Body, real coin could be spent on the interior. The Ciera with the gauge pack is still the best instrument panel I have ever seen.
I had a 1989 Ciera beater for about a year and I really liked that car a lot. Mine was an SL and it was really worth the extra money. The IP was a large tach, large spedo and then four small, round gauges for water temp, oil pressure, voltage and gas. The 3300 engine is really a scream and the 460LE (maybe I am wrong on that) works brilliantly with it. The feel is vintage GM, loads of low-end grunt and low gearing make the car really punchy in the city and it has now problem at 130 km/h on the highway in overdrive and would get 25 miles per US gallon. In the city it only averaged only 15 mpg since it’s really a pretty powerful car with a big motor. Of course, I couldn’t resist gunning it as often as I could since it had a fantastic hole-shot. With FE3 it handled great, too. The only bad part was the brakes, again typically GM, were nothing to write home about at all and wore out quickly.
It is cool that GM still stuck with coupes as long as they did and tried to be everything to everyone. In the end it didn’t work for them. GM had easy half the market in 1975 and now it runs like 13%. What they need is a good, cheap, roomy family car with reasonable quality for under $20k. VW dumbed down their Jetta and made big sales gains. The only way GM cars can compete is on price, period. That’s how Fiatsler moves metal, too. Anyway, Chevrolet needs like two cars, or maybe only the Cruz, which isn’t anything to write home about in quality but they really could fire sale them and still make money.
When the Ciera left, so did the last really good GM American family car. A car with no pretensions and the later ones were very good cars.
One thing I remember from this era is that Oldsmobile had really nice owners manual packets, they were these big burdandy faux leather with all the booklets in a leather bound pouch.
From that angle i first thought it was an AMC Hornet.
Sawzall meets Ciera Coupe = convertible
Hey!!!……do you want to hear about my Volt???
HaHaHa Completely missed that!
I’d bet money the Ciera will still be running long after the Volt. Like the red, though.
Tan Ciera! Tan Ci — uh, sorry — RED Ciera! Red Ciera!
Fargo?
Indeed.
I need to find a tan ’88 Ciera so I can do a Tan Ciera Outtake. I have seen one or two (or maybe it’s the same car) in town that is identical to the car in Fargo.
You can verify that by checking for the Tru-Coat, Tom!
Never seen one FWD GM stuff never escaped north America.
I’ve seen many, many Cieras when I was living in the US, but I don’t think I ever saw the 2-door version. I don’t even know they once made them.
The local kijiji has an 89 international series for sale for just under ten grand, IIRC it has somthing like 109k km and is near as nice as new. I dont know what the guy is somking witha price like that it must be some good stuff. He even goes on to list production numbers for that year and he says they are somthing like 5xx coupes and 9xx sedans built that year.
My uncle bought a Ciera convertible new. I never warned to it. I was really drawn to the looks of this coupe when it was new – that roofline really transformed this coupe.
Said Ciera is a 86 1/2; Rounded rear window with sealed beam headlights.
CraiginNC, nice pic of the’85 T Type, been looking for a early example like that one to compliment my ’87.
I’ve owned 4 of these A-bodies. My first was a rare black 1984 Century Limited Coupe. Loved that car, hated the 3.0 V-6 engine. Needed to be rebuilt twice and by the third time with 80k on the clock I called it quits. I bought another a few years later for only $500 bucks – it was a stripped light blue 1984 Century Custom 4-dr with only 46k on the clock but a blown 3.0 V-6 engine. Figured I could get it fixed cheaply and make some $$ on it but I ended up selling it for what I paid. Never saw it again. I must have a secret love for these cars – in 1995 I found a mint condition, loaded to the gills 1987 Century Limited 4-dr., white with blue interior, 3.8 V-6, every option Buick made as it was special ordered by the owner who had previously only driven Cadillacs before and wanted something smaller. It even had rear seat reading lamps and Twilight Sentinel – I had never seen another Century with those options! Loved that car, drove it for several years until rust started attacking the bottoms of the doors and floor. Lastly, an elderly neighbor of mine had a dark blue 1989 Ciera with only 57k on the clock – garaged until she couldn’t drive any more. Family sold it to me in 2009 for only $500 bucks! It had the 2.8 V-6 but really weird options – tilt, no cruise, alloy wheels, cassette, power locks but no power windows, power trunk release, power driver’s seat…..kept it for about six months. Sadly it was a money pit – all the original parts were failing and it became very unreliable. Sold it for more than twice what I paid ($1200 bucks) but I had put a ton of money into it. I still think these are fantastic cars. There is something about them that makes me still desire one, even today!!
Did your ’87 have the digtal tach? I used to have an ’85 T-type coupe and a rusty ’87 “T”, both gray.
Had an aunt with one of these. She decided that she had driven enough when she left if running and locked in Krogers parking lot. Had to call a locksmith when she came out with her groceries. She gave it to her younger sister with the understanding she would be driven anywhere she wanted. Then we buried the younger sister (my MIL) and the car went to one of my SILs who decided it wasn’t fancy enough. It went to another SIL who decided it wasn’t manly enough. To my grandson who was enthusiastic but ineffective and finally sold for $200 to someone who knocked on the door. I suspect it became part of one of those mexican convoys and is living somewhere below the border right now.
By this time I came to the opinion that the car deserved a lot better than it got from a bunch of prima donna punks. I should have bought it. If there is a moral to this story I think it’s that if you give someone something it seems to have little value. I pretty much quit doing that.
Even rarer is the 1989-91 Ciera coupe. There was one in the background in my 1969 Cougar CC, as seen below.
I have seen another one around town in much nicer shape, in navy blue with the lacy-spoke alloys. I hope to catch up with one or the other some day!
Tom, the lower rust damage on there is astounding! I sort of miss the salted-roads-in-the-winter damage. Not. Come to think of it, I haven’t replaced a single exhaust piece during the 30 years I’ve been in Texas…
Junqueboi, yes it has the digital ribbon tach. Make I ask the fate of the Ts? That coupe was a rare bird between the a-body club only two have been know to be seen
I have owned no less than 5 A-body cars including a 1983 Ciera Brougham sedan with 3.0 liter V6, 1984 Ciera Brougham sedan with Tech IV, 1989 base Ciera sedan with 2.8 V6, 1993 base Ciera sedan with 3300 V6 and then another 1993 base Ciera sedan with 3300 V6 but with a driver’s airbag. If every there was any advice to buying these cars it would be to stay away from the 1982-85 Buick 3.0 liter 2BBL V6 equipped cars unless you liked swapping motors out every several years. The earlier cars also used under sized 13″ tires, under sized brakes rotors and the steering racks would bind up when making turns. I would also avoid any early build but rare 1984-85 THM 440 equipped overdrive transmission A-body. The best were the 1989-96 versions with any of the available engines starting with the 2.5 Tech IV, it’s replacement in 1993 the 2200 Cavalier engine, the Buick 3300 V6 and then later the Chevy derived 3100. You could also get the Chevy 2.8 in 1989 which was replaced by the 3.1 on the Celebrity/6000 cars and the Ciera offered the 2.8 in 1989.
Dad had the 1984 Ciera Brougham with the Tech IV and always used to say that with 120K on the clock that it was barely broke in. The second owner that bought it from us with 150K thought he was buying a new car as his Grand Am with the tech IV was approaching 225K miles!
Every time I see one of these they seem to look like the feature car, just used as cheap transportation, looking ragged and run down on the outside. I much prefer the Celebrity with it’s cleaner, simpler styling. The one thing I thought was neat about these as a little kid in the late 80s was that multi-flag emblem on the fender. I doubt I’d remember them otherwise!
Hey fellas, I have a 1984 olds cutlass ciera brougham coupe. 73,000 original kms (45k miles). Father inlaw bought it from an old lady for 500$ a few years ago who had it in her garage for years. It was mint when he bought it, he drove it hard to work and left it outside. I got it now and started thinking this thing must be rare. Can’t find anything about it on the net, hoping someone knows some details.