Note: We re-ran all of the GM Deadly Sins on these dates in 2016, so here they come back again, one more time.
(first posted here on 3/21/2011 at CC. Please note that the GMDS series is not numbered according to any ranking of greater or lesser deadliness. The numbering is random.)
Good morning, class, and welcome to GM’s Deadly Sins 101. In this seminar we will review and analyze some of the most critical blunders GM made over the decades, focusing on the ill-conceived, unreliable, ugly, and just plain mediocre products that destroyed the company. I struggled mightily with the decision as to the first example, given all the many boners available to me. But here it is, GM’s Deadly Sin #1: The 1986 Buick Riviera.
Please take a close look at the image above on the overhead projector. You see two very similar looking cars, both Buick coupes from the year 1986. They are very close in size, concept, shape, and even surface details. They share the same basic engine. There’s only one really material difference: the price. One of these two cars cost more than twice as much than the other one.
The car on top is a Somerset Regal coupe, which appeared in 1985 and competed with such other august GM compact products like the Pontiac Grand Am and the Olds Cutlass Calais in the popular priced segment (approx. $9k; $20K adjusted). The fact that it was fairly difficult to distinguish these N-Body cars from one another will undoubtedly be the subject of another GMDS.
The car below it is the Riviera, which GM released in this form one year after(!) the much cheaper Somerset. Its list price started at $20,000 ($45,000 adjusted). Since all of you spent $249 to buy my mandatory Curbside Classics textbook and DVD, you undoubtedly remember the chapter on the 1963-1964 Riviera.
It was one of the finest, if not the ultimate, post-war American cars. The Riviera and its later stable mates Olds Toronado and Cadillac Eldorado were a belated response to the category that the 1958 Thunderbird first defined: the premium personal coupe.
While the T-Bird eventually lost its way and morphed (several times) into something else, the GM coupes came to own that market segment and generated healthy profits as well as the halo effect for the premium divisions. The success of the Riviera, Toronado and Eldorado were one of the key vital signs of health in GM’s far-distant profitable past.
That’s not to say that there weren’t challenges presented by the changing times, especially the energy crises. While the Riviera started out a reasonable sized 208″ length, it suffered the same obesity crisis along with all of GM’s cars. By 1973, the boat-tailed Riviera was up to 223″.
But the successful downsizing of 1979 resulted in a fairly handsome coupe, now with FWD and an available turbocharged 3.8 V6. It wasn’t as stunning as the original, but stunning is hard to replicate. But it was back to the original size, at 206″ overall, and substantially more efficient.
It sold well, too. In its final year, 1985, Buick moved 65k Rivieras, the all-time high. And then, disaster arrived. The downsized E-body coupes for 1986 were the knock-out punch after the set up of the 1985 C-body sedans, shriveled shadows of the former DeVille, Electra and 98.
All three of GM’s former cash cows suddenly developed cold cow syndrome, with the Riviera’s udders drying up the most. In its first year, 1986, sales were down a stunning 70%. And the drop didn’t stop; by 1988, unit sales were a mere 8,500, an 87% reduction from 1985. I challenge all of you students to find a comparable or worse drop in sales in direct response to a restyle, not economic conditions. Keep in mind that these years were during an economic growth cycle.
(I forgot to mention the Riviera’s new all-electronic IP display – how many are still working?)
The Eldorado gave the Riviera a good run for the money in the first year sales drop, with a 69% reduction. But after another small drop in ’87, Eldo stabilized, for a while anyway. And Toronado came in third, with a mere 62% drop in ’86.
But all three models were mortally wounded by the mummified 1986 re-design, and the ludicrous efforts in subsequent restyles to add overhang to the front and rear of these automotive midgets became ever-more embarrassing. Bill Mitchell must have been mortified in his retirement.
Buick made a last-ditch attempt to revive the Riviera with the dramatic 1995 model. The G-platform was shared with Olds’ Aurora, but they were one-year mini-wonders, at best. After a brief wave of interest, their auto-pilots were programmed to terminal dive mode. The 1999 model managed just 1,956 units, before the breathing tube was finally pulled on the Riviera.
It wasn’t only the loss of sales of these once glorious coupes that was such a mortal blow. It was what these cars once represented: GM as a purveyor of excellent design, desirable image, decent build quality, and a stranglehold on the mid-upper premium market segment. All these were utterly destroyed. Olds is long gone, Buicks are driven once a day to the senior special at God’s Waiting Room Café, and Cadillac is trying to start from scratch. (Note: this was written in 2009)
We’ll see you again for GM’s Deadly Sin #2. Any questions or comments? Class dismissed.
Somehow after doing a decent job on the proportions of the sedan versions of the X-cars and J-cars, GM completely lost the plot and couldn’t build a single FWD sedan or coupe without an awkward looking roofline for somewhere around a decade. Starting with the A-cars, GM insisted on putting this terrible ‘formal’ roof on everything. It was a pretty good indication of the quality of thought that went into every aspect of the GM cars of the era. I can’t help but to assume the same things about every new car I see with today’s stupid, rear seat headroom depriving arched roof line.
Speaking of cars taken out of the game by bad product planning, how does the current VW Passat sell? The 1996-2005 Audi A4 based models were all over the place, but either nobody buys the ones they’ve made since or they’re invisible.
Regarding Passat my guess would be that now a grown-up Jetta does the job for those who need a sedan/wagon, and Passat does not offer much extra in comparison, while its price is firmly in small SUVs territory. So there is simply no market for it.
Oh, and quality ratings do their part too.
I suspect they’ll be the topic of a CC some day.
I recall checking one out at a dealership in the Bay Area around 2006. It was stickered at $43K. It was ugly and the gas mileage was atrocious. Even the salesman was unimpressed. He told me, “Well, I guess some people like them. At least it’s got a good sound system.”
Seeing those cars in profile, one begs to ask: What was really the difference between them? They seem to be basically the same car? Technically, they were on different platforms, but with that much visual commonality, there couldn’t have been much of a technical difference?
The Somerset is an N-Body, shared with the Oldsmobile Calais and the Pontiac Grand Am. The Riviera is an E-Body, shared with the Oldsmobile Toronado and the Cadillac Eldorado. But what was essentially shared? To me, it just looks like an altogether common parts bin between them.
Not to mention the other cars in the same segment. The only difference between the L-Body and the N-Body seems to be that the L was engineered by Chevrolet, while the N was engineered by Oldsmobile. Both were essentially successors to the Citation X-body cars. And then there’s the whole debacle of the GM10 project cum W-Body. What the hell was GM up to in those days? Considering all the cars was basically the same size?
The E-bodies were a much more substantial platform than the L or N bodies.They were a well isolated chassis meant for a bigger 2 door only car with near luxury features, but front wheel drive. The L & N-bodies were meant for a less expensive car as a 2 or 4 door, could be powered by four cylinder motors but had a V6 available. I was never a fan of the ‘formal’ roof line as it was called, I’ve thought for years it was some sort of weird overreaction to the slant back or fast back mid sized GM’s that were released in the late 1970’s.
The E bodies were meant to function as the halo cars of their respective divisions, and the L & N-bodies were styled closely to try and gain some of the prestige. The L & N-bodied cars did not have a good reputation unfortunately. However, the tactic of the styled-similarly cars backfired in a very large sense, as the styling was too similar and people (I think) tended to believe the E bodies were just large L & N body cars.
I drove an Olds Toronado of that era for a while and it was far nicer than any L & N- body you could find. It was lot nicer than the Toyotas I was selling back then, too. But, it had it’s build issues, with loose hardware & etc. I was highly disappointed, because it was a really nice sized car with good room and overall performance. But, one of my coworkers sold it, and I was on to the next one.
I guess the other big factor with these cars was that gasoline prices had stabilized by 1984 or so. They were trending down by the time this car was released, so the impetus to downsize had been lost by then. As soon as fuel prices stabilize or drop in the US, people go right back to the big cars. Being that this car was roughly the same size as the previous generation but looked smaller, it took another hit in prestige.
I too, would like to see a Trofeo. Particularly a late one, like of the ’90’s models…
A while back I read the transcript of an interview with Irv Rybicki, probably the guy most in charge of GM styling when all these mid-eighties and ninties cars were designed.
Irv comes across as an absolute prince of a guy, an energetic, interested man in the best sense.
But he also comes across as what I have always called a “company man,” someone who always did as he was told, despite what his instincts or common sense might tell him.
GM wanted a pushover, and man did they ever get one in Irv.
I really believe there is more indication of the causes of GM’s downfall in this one interview than maybe any other single spot. Yes, GM’s failure was a long time coming before Irv took “control,” but he yessirred them into oblivion.
Here’s the interview:
http://deansgarage.com/2010/reminiscences-of-irvin-w-rybicki/
Thanks for the link. I’ve read that interview, and your impressions are the same as mine.
Reading interviews with Wayne Kady, who was also a GM Corporate Stylist during the 1980s and in charge of the Cadillac studio at the time that the 86s debuted is another interesting read. I did not get the same impression as you guys got with Rybicki. I talked with him quite extensively when I met him back in 2002 at Cadillac’s 100th anniversary. Alot of cars during the 1970s through the 1990s bear his hand but 1979-1985 Eldorado/Sevilles are classic designs.
One man’s “classic design” is another man’s Deadly Sin: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1980-cadillac-seville-gms-deadly-sin-no-17-from-halo-to-pitchfork/
It’s the nature of car design, especially so with such a polarizing one as the gen2 Seville.
You probably won’t be too wild about my piece on Wayne Kady either: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/the-cars-of-gm-designer-wayne-kady-slantbacks-and-bustlebacks-from-beginning-to-end/
I did read the article on Kady. I am not fond of most of the 1980s GM designs, at least the ones that were actually designed in the 1980s and debuted towards the end. The 79-85 Eldorado is generally well regarded by most people. The 80-85 Seville is controversial, but I will say this, unlike the later models, it was distinctive for the era and everyone knew it was a Cadillac. Sales were about on par with the 76-79 (in relation to the rest of Cadillac sales) the Eldorado/Seville (and by extension the C bodies as well) dropped after their late 80s redesign. In my opinion that did more damage to the brand than the bustleback Seville the diesels the V864 or the HT4100. I say this based on the customer reactions I have seen throughout the time period and the effect.
I am certainly not a Kady apologist or anyone else for that matter but the early 1980s were certainly a challenging time from a design and engineering standpoint. Most of the bad designs choices came from upper management directives and not the stylists themselves. There is a book in the AACA library that interviewed the various major designers at General Motors during the 70’s and 80’s that talked extensively about the challenges faced by the OEs between CAFE insurance regulations and potential future energy concerns.
My 1978 riviera Buick came with tires that would not stop on a wet road .Driving 10mph you have to run into a curve or something to stopit. I took.it every shop a d Dealer in my area, they would say the breaks are fine and the car stop good too. When I offered to let them drive it for a month or so, no one would take the offer. There were other cars that had those tires and after watching many car get totaled aND most people didn’t make it. These cars didn’t have e a fender in the salvage yard, you could’try fine anything…no parts at all. I still love have mine, the computer was working but the transmission was slipping. I had put new tires on it but was glad to get out of it. No one cared how many people were going to be killed and hurt.The insurance company wouldn’t say any thing about it either. I was lucky to.stay out of it until I got new tires. I HAVE SEVIRAL TIRE SALES FROM GOOD COMPANIES TO BACK WHAT I AM SAYING, ONLY AFTER THEY DROVE IT DURING THE RAIN AND MADE IT BACK TO THE SHOP OK
Hmmmmmmmm wonder how hard it would be to find a “pristine” N-body and drop a 3800 and matching trans in there? That would be a true SLEEPER.
Oh I know, better yet, a turbo ecotech! Power and economy!
Forget the N-body, go to http://www.v6z24.com and see what those guys are doing with the J-cars. Most of them are dropping Chevrolet 3400 V6s but I have seen a few 3.8s. The biggest issue with dropping the 3.8 is that mated to the 4 speed overdrive the 440T4 it wont bit without modification.
I’ve had two N bodies, and found them to be decent cars and rather pleasant on the interstate on long trips.
It certainly was a big mistake to release the new look on the N cars first. The thinking was to upgrade the image of the N’s by styling them like the E cars. It may have worked if the E’s came first. Instead, The E’s image was dragged down at the same time their prices skyrocketed, a terrible combination for the personal luxury segment. GM leadership thought that the leap in electronic content would offset the size and justify the price hike. Those E/K cars had (6) or more microprocessors communicating on a UART serial bus loop. The market disagreed.
Make no mistake, though, the E cars were very fine automobiles and much different than the N cars. The E’s were still very comfortable and pleasant to drive on trips. They had about the same front seat room as their predecessors, but lost all the rear seat knee room. It didn’t matter to a driver and one passenger.
I had always chosen previous generation Toronados as a company car, often saying it wasn’t exactly what I would pick, but it sure looked good parked in my driveway. That stopped after the ’85 model year.
I would love to see a write up on The Toronado & Trofeo of this generation. I had one for all of 2 months after wanting one for years. They have all but completely disappeared. I have a feeling Electric Problems and or those computers had something to do with it. I have said it before, but I considered it a Grand Am in a Tuxedo. I loved the look, but sure didn’t think it was worth twice as much. As rare as it was in 1999, occasionally I’d get someone looking at it as if it was a custom car. I would have loved a 1989 Riviera, I liked the formal roof line.
I’ve got them shot; we’ll put it in the hopper.
Log this as a second vote for a Trofeo. Always loved those.
Did this car have the crt touch screen in the dash board? If it did, any chance it still works?
Kind of ahead of its time though in that respect.
The ’86 Riviera introduced the touch screen CRT. In 1985, GM contracted drivers to evaluate initial production E/K cars on a drive loop near the Hamtramck plant. The goal was to uncover any problems and correct them before the cars were shipped to commerce. I had the opportunity to spend a day with them. I remember one of the “problems” uncovered by the activity. A young driver had the radio volume turned way up in a car that happened to have inoperative power windows- the kind of build quality problem the audit was intended to find. When he opened the door to respond to someone asking him a question, the CRT displayed the door ajar message, disabling the touch screen so he could not turn the radio down! It was memorable but not a typical customer problem- most would put the car in park before opening the door. The Toronado CRT was released as an option a year or two later. It had redundant bottons around the CRT to address that problem found in the Riviera. Toronado’s CRT had full color as well, but the option was not very popular, as I recall.
I was selling those cars new at the time and that touch screen was a major turn off to the older buyers. It was a little bit of a nightmare to operate especially when you’re driving. I remember one customer that was back in often to have me reset something on his screen. It was like operating 3 cell phones at a time while driving today. I think the “screen” went away at about the time they lengthened the body.
I always thought the 1986 Riviera was surprisingly Bland, particularly the tail end, It could not have been plainer, almost like they forgot to jazz it up some. Even the Somerset Regal’s Full
width taIL lamps were better. Perhaps the Touchscreen development and inclusion ate up much of the allocated budget. I did always want one, if only for that reason. I seem to remember on the 1989 Riviera I test drove, when you started the car, It graphically gave you the Riviera Script in a signature… it’s rather silly, but I did love that. The seats on the one I test drove could be reversed if you preferred suede to leather. I thought that was rather neat too. I still like the idea of owning one of these cars someday.
Your comment about the bland styling reminded me of my aunt Susan, who drove a previous generation Riviera, probably an ’84 or ’85, back when that was still a REALLY nice car to a lot of people, in about 1987.
Susan is and was not a car person in any sense, but I recall her and my uncle arguing the merits of his similar-vintage Cutlass Ciera company car versus her Riviera after I said (as a kid of about 10 years old) how much I loved that Riviera. (The flat floor, that great big dashboard with fake wood all over the place, the smooth ride…I love those things.)
She said, rather sternly, that his Ciera “isn’t worth a dime” next to her Riviera, and she would have bought a new one, but “look what they did to it!” I still remember that exchange like it was yesterday.
Susan may not be a car person, but she knows what has clout and style and what doesn’t, and the ’86 had neither.
That reversible seat was standard on the T-type, these cars were an interesting juxtaposition, how do you attract new buyers, while trying to maintain you current buyers, while you increase MPG, while losing mass and trying to keep the same interior dimensions. The average age of the E-body buyer was steadily increasing throughout the 80’s, GM want to try to lure in younger buyers by smearing on the technology.
All the “gee whiz” electronics, while they may seem a bit cheesy now, were really state of the art back then, GM had a ton of dough, and they spent it, right or wrong, on what they thought would lure buyers in, think about the touch screen that is available in almost EVERY mass market car today, they all can trace their roots back to the Riveras GCC.
A very fugly bag of bolts easy to see why US cars have no export markets nobody would want to be seen it a shitbox like this. The designer must have had his eyes painted on.
I was a fan of these as a teenager when they were new, mostly because they were just interesting to me. I thought it was amazing how far they went to downsize, while still keeping a lot of the recognizable styling cues. My favorite was the Toronado, which actually had a front end and grille that was clearly an homage to the original ’66. I don’t really buy the often repeated argument about all the cars looking alike. You can really say that about any period, and even about other cars in the same period. If you take, say, 1986 BMW 320 and 635 coupes, and look at side view photos of examples in the same color, I think you’d see something very similar to the Somerset/Riviera comparison above. Of course they’re similar — they’re both coupes from the same marque, in the same year. But c’mon — the Riviera had much more sweeping lines and it WAS longer by 7.8 inches than the Somerset, and even more important, it was a lot wider (5 inches). I don’t see how these are remotely the same car. I understand that the car missed the mark and sales went way down in 1986, deservedly, but a lot of the comments here are overly simplistic. As a previous commenter noted, it probably would have worked out better if they had introduced the Riviera first and followed up with the Somerset.
“While the Riviera started out a reasonable sized 208″ length, it suffered the same obesity crisis along with all of GM’s cars. By 1974, the boat-tailed Riviera was up to 223″.”
208 is a big car, by way of comparison, the Mecedes S long version and the BMW 7 long version are 205. I think the only current cars in the 223 (Deuce & a Quarter) category are RR Phantom and the Maybach.
Reasonable for its time. The most popular sedan, the Chevrolet, was 210″ long. So that makes for a yardstick for that time.
#1 – ’73 was the last year for the boat-tailed Riv.
#2 – Any length comparison between ’66 and ’74 models ought to point out that the latter includes 5 mph bumpers. Yeah, the Riv suffered some bloat, but it wasn’t *that* extreme.
I distinctly remember attending a car show in 1986 (Moscone Center – San Francisco) with my Dad and we made a comment to one of the Buick reps present that they should at least move the Riviera out of eyeshot from the Regal.
We did think the cathode ray display/info panel was cool. 3.8 Buick V-6’s – bulletproof; mid-late ’80’s GM electronics not so bulletproof.
Best of the later Rivs – the ’95 to ’99. Handsome car that performed quite well. Buddy had a black ’95 Supercharged coupe. Unfortunately, the GM too litle too late reprise.
If the ’86 was released in 1981, the car media would have lauded GM for bringing out such an efficient car for the day. The N bodies were meant to fully replace the RWD G body. Car and Driver was eager for GM’s upcoming downsized cars and wanted them to move quicker. Who knew gas would go back to near 70 cents by 1986?
One of the dire predictions of Gas Crisis 2 was that cars would be smaller and only interior styling would matter. This was it. But the TV dash was to far, and the switch gear was too chintzy feeling. Too bad the old E body didn’t stick around as the ‘classic’.
Paul, Thanks for the timely and appropriate re-post for our Turkey Day.
I never get enough of re-reading this GMDS series and the CCCCC as well.
1986 Riviera was the last new GM I bought. Deadly sin? You bet and I’ve never been back
I have nothing but rave reviews of the Toronado’s I had the pleasure of knowing in the 80s/90s!
You were lucky and it wasn’t just mechanical, after a year and a half the headliner needed to be replaced. It simply fell down. How often does that happen on a car that’s less then 2 years old? Quality=Fail
Didn’t you have a warranty?! Wasn’t it fixed free of charge for you? Is that your only issue, falling headliner? Our GM headliners didn’t show signs of falling until about six years at a minimum. The only one that actually fell was the ’83 Fleetwood’s, in 1995 (twelve years old), because it was handed down to my sister’s ***** ***** husband to drive. The a/c went out and instead of getting it fixed, he drove with all the windows down all summer, 80 miles an hour down the interstate.
A deadly sin with knobs on.A Riviera in name only,once again a hallowed name debased and degraded.
I grew up with ’80s Hondas and I will say this about GM cars of the era: there was enough torque to get you up a hill and the automatic transmissions didn’t bang into each succeeding gear and the suspensions didn’t run out of travel in routine driving.
The small cars might have sucked but I think the downsized front-drivers had their appeal. Maybe not for people who came from big-blocked full-frame cars or people eyeing 740 Turbos, but they weren’t awful. And while I like turbo K-cars, a lot of people surely did not.
That said, I understand the article’s emphasis on the cars’ general lack of appeal.
Perry, it is my sincere belief that you have not driven an N body. The cars, quite frankly, sucked. The Quad 4 was an abomination and the Iron Duke a boat anchor. The THM125 was horribly unreliable. The interior materials were a new definition of “cheap.” Things broke and fell off. It was products like this that sent GM down the dumper as people who bought them never bought another GM car again. If you think these “downsized front-drivers had their appeal” talk to the people who bought them. Scads of GM customers were lost with these cars, buyers GM never got back.
The Iron Duke many have had “enough torque” to get you up the hill, but it would shudder, wheese an vibrate all the way. As for “suspension travel,” well, the beam axle at the back was super hi-tech and made for, ahem, excellent handling.
Oh no, but I rode in many N-bodies. They were agricultural, but they were like automotive duncan hines, and my parent’s ’86 Accord was like pickled ginger. It was much cooler, but it didn’t have buttons everywhere (like some versions) and the N-bodies with the 3.0 V6 were much gutsier. Our Honda, FWIW, always had issues with the carburetor and ate brakes.
I don’t want to start a shitstorm, but I find ’80s GM appealing. If it adds perspective, I was never allowed to eat Wonderbread. It was all Food Co-op stuff for me. Sometimes, quality doesn’t take priority.
I wouldn’t say the 3.0 was “much” more powerful but it was at least better than the Iron Duke. Later models got the FI 3.3, which was much better.
Canuck – the 3.0 in the N-bodies was an MPFI version – 125HP, which was quite a bit more than the Iron Duke in those years.
But yeah, in my experience the 1st generation N-bodies had the absolute worst build quality of any GM product during that time. The J-body cars were only slightly better, and probably only because they’d been in production for awhile by this point and gotten some kinks worked out.
The THM125 horribly unreliable? I gotta disagree with you on that one. I’ve had many A-body cars (maybe 15?) with 200K+ none appeared to have ever had their transmissions monkeyed with.
The lockup torque converter pressure switches & solenoids sometimes fail over time and the repair is not very invasive. Most people just unplugged the thing & kept rolling.
Some maniacs have bolted sbc 350s and 4.9 Cadillac engines to these in Fiero bastardizations & claim the transmissions actually hold up. That’s probably not a great argument as those vehicles probably don’t get driven daily…
+1 – I’ve known quite a few of them and they seem to be pretty resilient as far as FWD transmissions go. The biggest thing “wrong” with the THM125 was just that it only had three forward gears and was often matched to engines that really begged for at least one or two more than that. Not a big deal when it debuted in the early 80s since everyone else had the same thing, or with the more powerful V6s, but mating the Quad4 to this thing was cruel – plus I think they were still selling it pretty deep into the 90s in Cavaliers. Why?!
Your question may be rhetorical, but I’ll give you a factual answer. Competitors offered 3 speeds and GM wanted to be price competitive with those offerings, which is the reason for the longevity. The delayed implementation of more gears resulted from GM being strapped for liquidity for Product development and capital investment in new manufacturing facilities. GM was struggling to avoid bankruptcy after spending more than the $50B cost of the Apollo Moon Landing program to meet emissions requirements for vehicles, assembly plants and to meet CAFE requirements forcing a compression of the band width from top to bottom of the market. Innovation is not without risk, and the scope and breadth of innovation driven by bureaucratic regulation, in the end can be summarized. Congress banned Buick, Olds, Cadillac and most of Pontiac in 1973. It took a long time for them to die off, while Buick and Cadillac seem to finally growing back from tiny stubs that remained of them.
doc olds’s point is largely true, if over simplified. As I wrote about extensively in my piece from back in May, CAFE and the whole OPEC crisis and the resultant market shift hit the domestics, and particularly GM, the hardest. In my years, firstly, we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to “compromise” the cars already in the pipeline (that is why you got too small standard engines in cars that were best suited and originally designed for a small-block V8), comply with emissions regulations, and various emissions and other regulations in addition to the ordinary practice of keeping up with styling trends, which is what used to consume most of GM’s time and why almost all GM cars prior to the mid 1970s are classics. A 1965 Chevrolet Impala is a pure expression of what GM was in its heyday, unencumbered by external threats.
Meanwhile, the competitors, whose market share was miniscule at the time, were busy to concentrate on fine tuning their narrow band products and expanding slowly outward. The Asians, who at that time only built small cars, were largely unaffected by CAFE, and thus spent little money on compliance outside of bumper regulations. The larger European makes, again who had relatively tiny market shares, simply decided to pay the CAFE fines and buy credits, a practice which persists to this day. An intentional, but often overlooked, byproduct of the Daimler-Chrysler merger was that, for purposes of CAFE, D-C was treated as a single entity for CAFE, and thus the Chrysler product line improved the mileage situation with the Mercedes line. Mercedes got away with a lot of fines in the early 1980s by having a diesel heavy mix but by the mid 80s when they were selling gasoline cars 2 to 1 over diesel, they began to offer the 190E and 2.6 motors in the E bodies to help compensate. That practice may have started in Europe, that is even more fuel conscious, but carried to the US. The same happened with Ford-Jaguar, Ford-Volvo, and GM-Saab. The Asians brought out their premium lines by 1990 and while an LS400 or Q45 were gas hogs compared to their lesser brethren, CAFE was calculated jointly so Toyota was not fined for Lexus sins.
In many ways, GM, and to a lesser extent Chrysler and Ford, were like the Big Three television networks while the introduction of Asian and European competition parallels the rise of cable channels. Today, while the Big Three (and Four if you count Fox), still heavily influencing television, they no longer dominate it. Domestic makes still account for 50% of the US market, especially so in the light truck market, but we have more model choices today than probably at any point in history.
So while I am biased of course in my own personal experiences, as a learned individual, I can see the bigger picture for what it is. It is very likely that, had GM, and Ford and Chrysler, executed virtually perfect vehicles during the those critical transition years, that to expect them to have collectively retained 80-85% market share would have been lunacy, especially given the rise of world economies and chances in trade regulations and whatever else. While my days are largely numbered, at least in terms of being involved in car manufacturing, I hope that there is still a place for a domestic-themed vehicles, which live on mostly in trucks right now. Some people still like cars that have a certain style, panache, with an emphasis on classic cues and extra comfort. If cars were purely functional, we would only need 3-4 models. But since cars, hopefully, will continue to be an expression of personality and feeling, choices should and must abound.
As for the use of the 3 speed transmission, at the time of the X and J body introduction, a 4 speed transmission was not anticipated in these vehicles. Consequently, when the 440T4 was finally rolled out in April of 1984, it would not physically fit into the sub-frame and engine compartment of those cars. The transmission can be made to work with a lot of engineering, you can visit http://www.v6z24.com and see examples but it is a tight fit. The A bodies eventually were adapted to the 4 speed with a little effort. The N cars got the 4 speed with the 1992 redesign. Eventually the J cars got the 4 speed with the 1995 redesign.
As far as reliability goes, the THM125 had a fairly low warranty claim rate for most years. Claim rates were, not surprisingly, higher on higher performance cars like with the Quad 4 engines, etc. but not excessively so, and nothing like say the head gaskets on early Quad 4s. Claim rates were about 6-11% (with 6 being the statistical mode and 11 being the outlier for certain applications) while 7-8% what considered standard and typical for most makes in the 1980s. By contrast, Honda had claim rates for their automatic in V6 applications in the 1990s that approached 20%. Odyssey was even higher.
The 440T4 had a higher claim rate early on for the first couple of years, partly due to capacity issues, and valve adjustment issues, and sticking shift solenoids. Some of these had to due with technician unfamiliarity, a common problem with rapidly changing technology in the early 80s, a 440T4 is not a transmission that tolerates under-fill easily. After a few years, though, claim rates fell and by the early 1990s, was in the 3-4% range. It is widely noted that the post-1988 Buick 3.8V6 and OD transmission combination is once of the best all around drive train packages both in terms of performance, cost, and reliability.
@Craig–enjoyed/agreed with the comment, especially the last line!
doc olds – There was only one competitor still offering a 3-speed automatic in a small, FWD car in the late 90s and it was Dodge/Plymouth with the Neon. Which was likely a better bet than getting the godawful Ultradrive transmission, come to think of it. I don’t want to harp on it too much though, because as I said I think the THM125 was a decent piece of equipment and by this point most GM models had an O/D automatic anyway. If the US government “banned” Buick, Olds, Cadillac and most Pontiacs than they banned the kind of cars Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Volkswagen, BMW, etc. sold in 1973 as well, but somehow they managed to adapt.
CraigInNC –
So while I am biased of course in my own personal experiences, as a learned individual, I can see the bigger picture for what it is.
Craig, though I love reading your comments and the few articles you did here (wish you would do more of both!) and think you’ve got incredible insights, I believe that your perspective on this is a case of standing way too close to the picture to be able to see it for it’s whole. I understand that CAFE sucks and we all love the classic stuff GM did earlier on, but how can anyone claim that they weren’t capable of adapting to the new federal regulations just as well or better than any other manufacturer? In fact, being the world’s largest, most profitable and most influential maker of automobiles at the time I would argue that they were much better equipped than anyone else to accomplish this. We’ve been over this many, many times – we all agree that CAFE and similar programs were implemented very poorly, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were applied across the board. Other manufacturers had to deal with their own issues, for instance imagine telling someone in 1946 that we’d be happily buying cars from the Germans and Japanese a few decades from now? Or how about the fact that any imported car had to adapt to US guidelines that didn’t even exist in the markets where they did their highest volume (back then, anyway)? CAFE is undoubtedly part of the story, but it’s not an excuse for GM suddenly forgetting how to build a decent car outright.
@sean Cornelius- My memory agrees with the neon being the last competitor with the 3 speed. You are also right that Ford and Chrysler had serious burden of re-engineering the fleet to meet CAFE, but the Japanese did not have to do anything but continue importing the cars they already sold in a home market and others that demanded high fuel economy and small size. In fact, they built up huge CAFE credits that the used to offset their growth into much less fuel efficient vehicles. In the 80’s GM had the fuel economy leader in 75%-80% of the segments in which they competed. The domestics were forced to spend $billions to engineer cars for regulations not consumers. My comment is simplistic, but in essence, true.
doc olds – Most Japanese and some European manufacturers had fuel economy regs covered by virtue of the type of automobiles they built, but what they were selling in 1973 was just as “outlawed” as the fullsize B-O-P-C models from that year by safety and emissions regulations. Regulations that didn’t even exist in their home countries and primary markets, and when they were implemented overseas they were a completely different set of rules (and still are, for the most part). They not only had to build cars to a several different specifications and divert resources from their home turf, they had to step way outside of their comfort zone and past experience in terms of design in order to build cars that meshed with American tastes and driving conditions. They managed to overcome major negative stereotypes that still persist in some parts of the country, they managed to overcome very well deserved criticism of being rust buckets/death traps, import quotas, chicken taxes, flimsy dealer networks, “unintended acceleration”, etc. – and yes, when Japanese and European cars grew to match the size of their American counterparts, they also managed to overcome CAFE. They even managed to build cars with American labor that (usually) matched the quality of their products assembled overseas.
Is one set of challenges worse than the other? Hard to say, really – but even if CAFE was somewhat tougher for GM to cope with, they were still the biggest, baddest, richest mofos in America, with a fiercely loyal customer base and lots of friends in high places. They had been building cars to take on the imports since 1959 and had plenty of experience with how to build good, small, cars via Opel, Vauxhall and Isuzu. I have a very hard time believing that GM couldn’t, or didn’t know how to, adapt to the regulations and still make cars that were both desirable and fuel efficient. They had every resource and advantage a manufacturer could have hoped for.
Sean Cornelis- I wonder where you were and what you were doing in 1973? I was finishing an engineering degree, had 4 years experience in the industry as well as a father who had been a product engineer at Olds since 1961. I lived it, saw the impacts.
You are right that safety regulations were a hurdle for all makers, but the issue that distorted the market such that the traditional 15%-20% “truck” share from 1931-1973 grew steadily to 50% of more of the market where it remains proves Americans like bigger vehicles. And don’t care about mileage until style, size and capability needs are met.
The things you miss, no fault of your own with all the disinformation out there, are the hard business and technological facts.
First- Emissions regulations changed from PPM to grams/mile. This meant a 5.7L V8 had to be nearly 3 times as “clean” as a 2.0L. If you were around then or review the history you will see that most all Japanese imports were even smaller than 2.0L. The Europeans didn’t have much larger engines. MB 280 SL for example.
Second- Regardless of the combination of reasons Japanese & European consumers chose small, fuel efficient vehicles. They just brought what they sold at home into the NA market. Even Toyota Camry, a step up for them, was still just a compact until 1991 when it was “upsized” to be a midsize car.
CAFE forced US makers, especially the large and mid-size car segments that GM dominated to be completely re-engineered. It was extremely damaging to the industry and GM in particular for these reasons.
@Doc Olds & CraiginNC
You’re kind of making GM sound like a victim in the early 1970s. The engineers that had to scramble, were the victims. They like the other makers of big cars, got caught with their pants down. Plain and simple. They profited selling big, impractical cars for many years. Europe had to already make due with the Austin Minis and Citroen 4CVs. Most of the rest of the world had to practice frugality and conservation already. If you eat at Burger King every day, a heart attack is inevitable. The writing was already on the wall.
I appreciate engineers have to move mountains to correct these problems overnight. But the profit driven management put you in that position largely, by selling ocean liners in the first place. Did they really think it could last? These issues did require pensive planning. The mid 70s through the 80s seem like catch up to me. I think that’s what you are saying?
GM had a huge head start in terms of brand recognition and a legacy of classic cars. In the 70s, Toyota had limited legacy. Pearl Harbor was only 30 years in the past. The Big Three got busted. Credit to the engineers that had to fix it.
It seemed a similar scenario played out right before the bankruptcy.
@Daniel- In fact, the entire US domestic Auto Industry was severely harmed by adversarial government policies, CAFE probably the worst. GM was hurt the most, being dominant in the large cars that were “banned”. GM was also hurt the most by the financial crisis of ’08 because they were by far the biggest player in the US market that collapsed due to the crisis.
You are repeating a myth that Americas did NOT want large cars. They in fact loved them and still do! It’s just that they are buying vehicles classified as” trucks”: Pickups, SUVs & CUVs today because of CAFE.
At Oldsmobile, we feared the first wave of “downsizing” in the late ’70s would turn our customers away, but it turned out we couldn’t build enough of them! The changes were significant, but we still had fair bandwidth from smallest to largest. CAFE standards were rolled out over some years, forcing continued downsizing such that, by the mid ’80’s, the next, even larger “downsizing” and rapid changes in technology pinched us between customers rejecting them as too small, and, at the time radically new technologies. Shame on us for fumbling some of the execution, but the forcing function was government intrusion, the 800 lb gorilla among the drivers of our US domestic industry decline. All three were hurt, and the Japanese got a free pass.
This myth is one of the most frustrating and pervasive. Oldsmobile knew how to make cars that customers wanted. We enjoyed unparalleled success, selling more units per each of our 3000 dealers than any other maker at relatively premium prices. We didn’t suddenly “unlearn” how to do it. I am not much for victimology, at the same time striving to bring reality into the mix. GM leadership certainly made mistakes as well.
People repeat the myth that US cars were dinosaurs that were supplanted by fuel efficient Japanese cars The Japanese did get a temporary boost in interest with the shock of the Arab oil embargo, but in the end, their success has been founded more on superb quality. The Americans are finally matching and beating them, but it has taken a long time.
@Doc Olds
OPEC and government (CAFE) forced the 1977 Chev Caprice on GM.
I believe GM would have sold the 1976 Caprice until the consumer eventually demanded better economy, less pollution… less waste. That sensibility was delivered to the Big Three like Cod Liver Oil.
I was there and experienced all of this. All the documentation that history shows us, tells me that the CAFE helped save the Big Three from themselves. Or they would have been in an even worse position to compete with Honda and Toyota into the 80s. It wasn’t just superb quality… it was greater efficiency, greater reliability, greater refinement, greater performance in Toyota and Honda cars. EVERYTHING an average person, could want in a modern car. That tipped the scales and lead consumers to embrace and love these cars. If a person loves their Toyota, and all that it offers, what incentive do they have to leave them? History states all of this. The Big Three would have continued to court it’s traditional base of buyers with 1976 Caprices, until they dried up. Blaming government is like blaming the Breathalyzer for a drinking problem.
I think partially because they were at death’s door, Chrysler somehow made a better car in the K-cars than the X-Car, with less resources available to them. I think it’s this threat caused by the imports and government regulation that made the Big Three better companies, making better cars, that are able to survive today.
Daniel-“The Big Three would have continued to court it’s traditional base of buyers with 1976 Caprices, until they dried up.”
Do you feel even a little presumptuous claiming the company that dominated the industry by selling what people wanted suddenly lost that ability coincident with the roll out of very tough CAFE standard?
What do you know about how CAFE standards required domestics to build here at huge losses?
What do you know about CAFE credits and how they shielded the Importers for years?
Your comment reminds me of an idiotic TV News claim that Toyotas were popular due to fuel efficiency I caught some years ago. The camera zoomed in on a Sequoia badge. At the time it compared with Tahoe which got 25% better mileage!
Fuel efficiency is a minor reason for their growth. “Quality” (including reliability, durability or just “dependability”) is the reason for their customer loyalty, but their growth has been into larger and larger vehicles.
“All the documentation that history shows us, tells me that the CAFE helped save the Big Three from themselves.”
Replace “documentation” with “propaganda”, and I will agree! 😉
For evidence- study the actual sales of various makers and the rush to trucks coincident with CAFE over the years. The story is far more complex and different fron the simplistic narrative most accept.
I am interested in knowing what you mean when you write I was there? What vantage point do you bring? Did you work in the industry?
Don’t accuse me of hiring doc olds to take my place while I was away!! 😉
As far as Boomer’s and their uptake with imports, I also put credence into the idea that it was also a generational thing, and effect in some respects from the turbulent 60s and the social revolutions. GM cars, and domestics in general, were and still are popular with the WWII set and other “traditionalists” in the country. I am careful not to oversimplify or overgeneralize but some evidence points this out. GM cars, at least the bread and butter sedans and volume vehicles, were always viewed as being in the same league as two-parent household, white picket fences, and Leave It To Beaver. Imports represented “higher order thinking” to many, a break away from that previous generation that valued conformity and sacrifice and that one “waited their turn” to get what was coming to you. Cadillacs were bought by 55+ who worked a lifetime of labor, kept their nose clean, and feared God and that was their reward. By the 1970s, with the explosion of college educated Boomer’s, white-collar jobs, and general social reorder, there was a perceived need in the market by these younger buyers, to look for something that represented a new way of thinking. Driving a BMW or Mercedes for the nouveau riche meant they were exotic and refined in a way that driving a Cadillac or a Lincoln was strictly provincial. On the same token with smaller cars, early on despite their austere accommodations and Soviet-era styling, many Japanese car buyers represent intelligent vehicles where functionality always took precedence over form, quirky and unusual designs were ok if they achieved an intended purpose and that kitsch was to be avoided at all costs.
This theory is borne out even today where marketing research indicates that buyers of foreign nameplates are typically more educated and/or employed in occupations that are either more unusual, academic, or eccentric than mainline occupations. Of course nothing is linear, I have known plenty of “scientific” types that drive obscene vehicles, but there is validity to the stereotype.
This theory always explains a lot of behavior patterns and loyalty towards different marques and models despite objective data that might make a third-party observer question.
As far as the B-bodies are concerned in the 1970s, planning for those models began in 1972 with advance designs being passed around in 1973 before OPEC hit. There is no question that OPEC had a large influence in the final designs of the B-bodies, but they were going to be trimmed anyways. If OPEC had not it, they might have ended up a bit larger than they ultimately became, but the obese, tumble home design of the 71-76 models were becoming passé. As we know, Mitchell was always a fan of the “sheer” look and he and many designers longed to get the intermediates and full sizers back to a more angular look. Had OPEC not happened, the B cars probably would not have been fitted with V6s and many of the other ills that came about in that era (like the use of the THM200 in large cars) would not have occurred. Unfortunately, there were a lot of forced errors during that time where compliance and regulatory concerns with a segment of the market looking for value and economy coupled with a limited time frame and limited options. My point in saying that is not to absolve GM or anyone involved from mistakes and problems that occurred, but to point out the context in which decisions were made. Unlike in cards where you can fold a bad hand and wait for a new deal, you have to play the hands you are dealt even if you are not happy or are not satisfied. No car maker is going to make the announcement “we are going to stop building cars until we find the perfect solution to the problem.”
Unfortunately, many of those days felt more like a “reaction” than pro action. Engineers felt more like they were putting out fires and responding to one crisis after another instead of establishing foundations for the future. After 8 years of product development with the X, J, A, F, and C cars, gasoline felt to a buck, prime rate went to 7% (which was incredible then unbelievable now), and CAFE was froze at 24.5MPG. It almost felt like we fought a war for a prize of an empty box with no goodies in it. As much as I personally enjoyed seeing gas go to a $1/gal, in a way had it gone and stayed at $3-4/gal like it is today would have been some vindication.
I joined GMI at a time when the US could do no wrong, a few years after we landed on the moon, when John Beltz told us building cars “made you feel like God,” Ed Cole was General Patton, and the next day would always be better than the one before it. Then it all went away…
@Doc Olds and CraigInNC
Thank you both very much for your very thoughtful, and heartfelt replies. I can fully understand and empathize with your passionate feelings towards the industry and your employer. Especially given you were on the front lines, designing the product itself in such limited time frames, as opposed to being marketers or lobbyist.
Hindsight is 20/20, but perhaps GM should have tackled a more thorough revamping of the X-Body in the early 70s. Besides the B-Bodies. If only GM had made a Fairmont from the Nova in 1975-76 or ’77 with a wagon, not the partially revamped one they put out. They would have perhaps laid the foundation for future Pontiac and Olds sales with great entry level cars.
Doc, I was a very impressionable and well read teenager in the 70s. I was a future consumer at the time. Who was FULLY partial to GM and a BIG fan. I was well informed on current events from 1973 onward… So I missed the glory years for the Big Three. I was a very late baby boomer, with limited exposure to the GM glory years… I believe this is a huge factor. My entire family bought GMs and Chryslers mostly since before I was born. I would have readily bought GM too and WANTED to buy them.
As someone about to get a car, I was exposed to the negative press GM was getting in the early 80s from the X-car recalls, then the Olds 350 Diesel issues. Followed by the multi-displacement Cadillac V8… Here in Canada, there was the issue of the 1981 Malibus destined for Iraq, that were returned. It wasn’t the car mags… it was the newspapers and networks covering this material. As someone who had no bias, it was affecting my perception. They started calling the X-Car the most recalled car ever… I still remember the articles. The Civic, Tercel, Corolla, Escort, Omni, Aries, Reliant… I rarely ever saw articles about them in the front sections of the papers. But in the new car reviews in Section D.
As a teenager I read my dad’s Newsweek and Time magazines and daily newspapers. I read back issue articles from 1973-74 about the Big Three resisting safety regulations, emission controls and mileage requirements that the government wanted to introduce. The public loved powerful engines and big cool cars were great… I hoped the Big Three would put out cars that got better mileage and just come on board. I was teenager afterall, naive and thinking of the future. But many people thought this way in the 70s. Kids and teenagers in the 1970s were exposed to more environmental awareness. Most North Americans wanted the BIG Three to adjust and make better cars, if that’s what it took.
Family members owned every variety of GM in the late 70s and 80s. I had very close exposure to many models and owner experiences. Many of them bought imports by the 90s. I think by then, it was word of mouth for Honda and Toyota The Big Three started to get so much bad press from the major networks and newspapers in the 70s. Resisting government regulation with lobbyists… that’s the impression the press gave to me.
I only knew what many family members and friends experienced, and what I read in the daily newspapers. My first two cars were Ford then Chrysler. Combined with the 1981 recession, high gas prices and high interest rates… folks just wanted the best cars they could trust, whomever the maker was. Lots of factors worked against the Big Three then.
Really bad luck besides poor timing as well…
The THM 125 was horribly unreliable! Thats a new one. if anything this was one of the better 3 speed automatics of the 80’s and 90’s. You are confusing the RWD Metric 200C 3 speed automatic that was fitted to many larger sized RWD GM cars of the 70’s and 80’s. That had a record of early failure rates on anything other than a low calorie V6.
“I grew up with ’80s Hondas and I will say this about GM cars of the era: there was enough torque to get you up a hill and the automatic transmissions didn’t bang into each succeeding gear…”
Of course, the buff books only tested the manual versions which were beautifully precise and would happily rev its’ way up any hill. Not Honda’s fault non-enthusiasts buy slushboxes by default – and it’s not like they needed to cater to them, or anyone else, when they were selling all they could build in Marysville and import under the VRA quotas.
I love Hondas and own one today. It’s just that I don’t understand all the GM bashing.
In the ’80s you get a manual transmission version, it’s all fine. Excellent and fun, even. You get combine a carbureted version with an automatic? Have fun, I guess; it was pretty awful in many ways.
Bash GM all you like, but in many ways, their cars did deliver.
If you had owned a GM FWD car of the 1980’s, you’d understand.
Indeed their cars did deliver: bankruptcy.
Yes, the Buick Riviera brought GM to bankruptcy. Not.
I’ve owned a lot of 80s GM FWD vehicles. In fact I have one right now. There is a large quality variance between the platforms. I think it is incorrect to lump them all together.
“Yes, the Buick Riviera brought GM to bankruptcy. Not.”
It helped
Sometimes Paul…..you won’t be missed.
Indeed. GM’s smashing success speaks volumes. Cars like the N body made it the profitable behemoth it is today.
Whatever, this is like going to relatives house and they keep repeating the same old embarrassing story about the time you pissed your pants or something. OK WE GET, it sucked, lets move ON…….
I make it a point to invite new folks for Thanksgiving every year, and many seem to enjoy hearing the old stories, the first time for them. I didn’t re-post it for you; sorry 🙂
I do enjoy the way Paul always presents strong juxtapositions in the models he presents. Often in back to back articles. It really makes a point, in the case of the Riviera, for example. Same car, 22 years apart… a timeless classic and the version GM would like to have back. Plus, it keeps the site so entertaining and interesting. You can’t anticipate what’s going to be posted next. If things get slow, he’ll send out the brougham editions, to spice things up…
I remember the first RIV I ever saw, a brand new “63” in black …. I was 12 years old,,,,,,Whoa whats this….I was a Ford Guy….but this was a serious automobile…what GM did to its legacy is astonishing…STILL!
Its a Thanksgiving miracle…an old GM DS article starting Paul and the Canadian. This Thanksgiving I’m thankful and hopefull that this whole BS series will be going away even if I am a little sad that the author will be leaving.
Take two of these and call me in the morning.
One…
And two!
That’s better, thank you! 🙂
If you decide you don’t want to pay for the brand name label… there’s always the generic brand prescription… : )
Not a Toronado.
Oh no, OD!
Say what you will about this generation of Riv, but compared to the competition of its day, it seems like they are able to stay on the road despite their loathed public image and often indifferent fourth owner.
That has to be worth something.
I’ve said it before, not a Deadly Sin by itself, but part of a Deadly Sin of too many, too similar sized, too similar looking GM cars in the era. Which lead to some original, but painful styling exercises when the mandate was to avoid look alike cars.
Solution, cancel a few platforms – which took a bankruptcy to truly accomplish.
Thanks Daniel. Craig notes the low gas prices and, for the time. low interest rates. My awareness about regulatory involvement started earlier after my dad joined Olds Product Engineering in ’61. I remember large tower structures being built at the engineering building and asking him what they were for. “Emissions testing facilities, he replied. Almost all of our engineering budget is going to emissions development.”
One of the biggest harms CAFE did to the US industry is the forced production of small cars in country. GM, Ford and Chrysler all had such models in production elsewhere, and could easily have imported them to meet CAFE. The UAW saw this potential and lobbied successfully for requirements that imports be averaged separately from domestically produced vehicles. The import companies all had lower cost bases and local demand for small cars in their home market and just brought those cars here. The Americans had to tool up to make small cars and shrink all of them to meet domestic fleet average requirements. All that time, the imports built CAFE credits they would eventually use up. Honda recently, for example, certified the Accord CrossTour as a “Truck” for CAFE.
I recall GM’s small car group, in 1998 produced 1.6million vehicles, more than Chrysler Corporation’s entire volume. Production costs exceeded the revenue and caused an average loss of $1,600 per car ($2.6B/year!). CAFE forced the need to build them for the corporation to offer larger vehicles with some potential for profit. No one has ever made money on small cars produced in NA until Chevy Sonic began production.
You cite a number of product stumbles and there were more. I wanted to be a product engineer but took a detour to field service and eventually product quality which mad me painfully aware of some. Those problems impacted image, along with increasingly diverse and capable global competitors. Adverse government policies, some going back to the ’30s help created the business reality that our car companies had to produce loss making vehicles here by requirement, and virtually had to provide income and health coverage for any UAW employee ever hired and his family forever. In the end, those costs mounted to nearly $10B/year. The industry traditional response to a weak market, reducing product development investment, just put them farther behind.
I am delighted that you are here, and you (and Craig) bring a fascinating first-person perspective.
It has always seemed to me that the guys in the trenches at GM were very good engineers. They had certainly built some first-rate product over the decades. However, in the 90s, the fortunes of GM and of its domestic competitors diverged fairly sharply. Everything that I have read on the topic (and it is certainly not exhaustive) would indicate that some decisions as to organization and structure made by top management as early as under Chairman Donner (from the late 50s) slowly ate away at the company’s abilities to do what it did best – design and build great cars.
Too many layers of managers with too little experience in a given area with their fingers in the product planning pie was not without cost. The accounts of John DeLorean and Elmer Johnson, though 20 years apart, describe the very same phenomenon, only Johnson shows it more fully developed. GM never had its back to the wall early enough to help. Our of that kind of experience came the Chrysler Minivan and the Taurus, both of which cleaned GM’s clock in the 80s.
I would love to see you write some firsthand accounts here – lots of people would love to read them.
And FWIW, I agree completely that CAFE has been an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. auto industry, and your comments further cement my opinions.
Thank you again Doc,
I do appreciate your very thorough and accurate answers. I fully agree that the CAFE standards set by the Obama Administration are very demanding on the domestic manufacturers. On the positive side, this will employee many engineers and encourage innovation towards alternative fuels like hydrogen or alcohol. Third party firms supplying technologies will thrive.
After all, oil is a finite resource. And foreign sources are not secure. Of course the investment costs will be astronomical. Plus, GM’s pension costs are a huge drain, with people living longer as well I know. Add the fact that Europe has a lower fatality rate, with smaller cars, helping rationalize smaller cars here.
GM may have to reinvent itself again.
As a consumer, I know cars will cost a fortune likely, but the reduced cost of gas will help offset that. But alternative fuels need to be explored.
But it’s similar to the 70s/80s in that government measures are forcing the automakers into innovation and better cars. Looking back, I appreciate the development of catalytic converters, air bags, etc., and changes that meant vastly better built and safer cars. The Big Three fought hard some of the safety, air quality and economy measures with lobbyists back then. They resisted change.
I fully agree, that standards for 2025 are very high. But there’s only so much oil in the ground. And the industry will only get more competitive, given how much innovation is out there, with firms like Tesla.
I do speak as a consumer with a full interest in the domestic industry thriving.
Thanks gentlemen.
When these cars came out, I couldn’t believe the styling – or lack of it. I thought GM’s attitude was “We need a Riviera, so this’ll do.” GM seemed oblivious to the fact that customers had a choice, and still seemed to think in terms of the Alfred Sloan philosophy – get a customer and they’ll stay with you, moving up the status chain. That may have worked in the 1920s, but the world was radically different in the last quarter of the century. Seems GM just didn’t see that.
Also, while once GM commanded the lion’s share of the market, and could set the pace in styling simply by having more cars on the road, by the eighties this simply wasn’t so. By then their cars stood out all right – like a sore thumb! I seem to recall a quote from one of their designers when justifying these odd shapes saying that they didn’t believe in going from bricks to jellybeans overnight. That may be so, but that doesn’t excuse such ugliness.
Other companies existed. Other countries’ products existed. The public spoke with their dollars. And GM died.
Oh, how it pains me to see the Riviera called a Deadly Sin. The ’86-’88 with that ass… it looked like the stylists quit before they finished the car. The refresh in ’89, though, made the Riv a genuine looker.
I had an ’89 Riv, powder blue exterior with midnight blue leather interior. 1989 was the first year of the revised look, that added the sloped trunk and extra length, and the last year of the touchscreen that controlled everything. I bought the car in 2005 with 194,000 miles for $400 from a friend when I was down on my luck, and it was the helping hand I needed to get back on my feet.
Even at that age, after it had been beaten down, picked up, and beaten down again, the thing ran and shifted like a dream. The touchscreen still completely worked (although it failed about two months after I bought the car). The air suspension still worked. Even the power locks and keyless remote (yes, the ’89 Riv had keyless remote entry) still worked. The thing rode smoothly, in spite of the sloppy steering from all the worn-out bits up front.
Really, the car, in 1989 terms, was a sci-fi car. Digital everything, power everything, touchscreen that had all the gauges but gas and speed. The touchscreen was especially amusing when it failed. It was a green-screen cathode-ray TV tube with the touch unit mounted in front of it. The TV failed, but the touch still worked perfectly, so changing the radio or climate control involved poking a black panel and waiting for the beep to confirm that something happened. The digital dash still worked just fine, though. The locks broke shortly after I bought the car, but the thing was beat up enough I could leave the keys in it in Detroit without anyone bothering it.
I loved that Riv, and they still catch my eye when I see one on the roads. I’d actually love to find another ’89 and fix it up right. Had GM made the ’86 look like the ’89, they probably would have done a lot better with it. I mean, sales jumped from 8,600 in 1988 to 21,000 with the ’89 refresh. The ’86 had that ass, but the ’89-’93 Rivs were beautiful cars.
I’m only 29 so I wasn’t around for the dark days of Roger Smith, corporate reorganization, and the GM-1O debacle. I’ve often wondered why the handsome last-gen Rivs didn’t sell well. I’m now curious whether it had more to do with changing tastes or the lingering bad taste this blunder left in the mouth of customers. I’m new to the site and currently voraciously consuming the archives. Thanks for having this site.
Welcome to CC!
The final Riviera was a cool car, but the interior didn’t live up to much in terms of materials and was too austere. The Riviera name was also definitely hurt by the 1986 version.
All things considered, the biggest challenge for the final Riviera was the general decline in popularity of coupes, and the ascension of the sport utility in its place. My mother was a case in point. She had hit that age and place in life where a Buick coupe would have been a natural choice for her, instead she picked out a loaded Ford Bronco II Eddie Bauer Edition 4X4. I don’t know for sure, but it was likely priced in Riviera territory.
2 door coupes fell drastically out of favor during the 90’s in favor of trucks and SUV’s. Note the discontinuation of the Lincoln Mark, the T-Bird and Cougar in the late 90’s and eventually the Eldorado and Monte Carlo during the 2000’s.
I imagine it was difficult to pick the first rig to be a GMDS. I personally might have started with the 1980 X-Cars, as their genes spawned much of the fecal matter that was GM in the 1980s.
There’s no significance to the numbering of the DS series. It’s random.
Well, pretty much anything anyone could say about these appears to have been said since the first run of this piece, but FWIW from my perspective this is a perfect choice for Deadly Sin #1.
It’s easy to point to the Vega, the X-Cars, the penny-pinching that screwed up the Corvair, or even the ballsy decision to use insta-fade plastics on door panels in Buicks and Olds’ marketed to the upper middle class buyer, but these really were like spitting in your loyal customer’s face.
My family owned a 1980 Toronado that was one of the most fondly remembered cars of my youth, and despite a few loose fittings and interior quality issues it really was a solid feeling, impressive looking car that never made anyone question its place in the automotive hierarchy. It exuded class, and it delivered what its looks advertised.
My friend’s mother bought an ’86 Toronado new after coming into some money, as she had wanted one since the ’66’s came out and she was smitten with what she thought of as its “racy” styling. The car was impressive on first sight, but on a weekend trip to the Jersey Shore when it was about 3 months old its true colors came shining through. Electronic glitches were already making themselves known, switchgear felt cheap, with poor tactile quality, and even though it was a new car and a new design (and IMO the most attractive of the ’86 E’s) it just didn’t have the swagger factor that the 79-85’s did.
As a 19 year old car fanatic I was not only unimpressed, but a little shocked and disgusted. And I never gave a new GM product a second look thereafter (and have never owned a GM product myself in my 33 year driving history) I doubt I’m the only one of my generation to have formulated this view, and judging by GM’s sales trajectory until recently I’m pretty sure I was in a near-majority.
I get that it was a tough time to design and market cars, and I’m sure the good folks at GM agonized over every decision that went into producing these things, but at some point somebody had to see, touch, drive and live with one of these before they were foisted upon the buying (or NOT buying, as it were) public. How in the world could ANYONE have looked at, sat in or driven a 1985 Riviera and think that THIS THING was a worthy successor? It’s unfathomable
Well said! You and I are about the same age, and I could write almost the same thing.
I see that since I made a simple comment here a few years ago, some very eloquent writers with GM experience made an excellent case on why and how GM got to where it was.
But, the 1986 E bodies just didn’t appeal to almost anybody. That, if not a Deadly Sin, is certainly deadly for sales.
Some would argue that you and I were not the demographic for these cars, income wise among other issues. But, we could have been buyers of lightly used versions – and neither of us was going to. Some original buyers do take resale into account, and the smart money looking for a big American coupes in these years was typically found in a Ford or Mercury showroom.
Slightly off topic but I love the shot of the Somerset with the missing as well as crooked side trim. Speaks volumes about GM’s ’80’s quality.
It was a roughly 25-year-old car at the time of writing, so it probably wasn’t that way from the factory. Could have been, though.
Well you know, in all fairness, I thought that too. The Riv however looks pretty straight.
Wow, I missed this the first time around.
I thought the X-bodies were Number One. They sure are in my book.
Anyway, you look at that classic Riviera and I rest my case how I feel in my passion for a proper two-door car: a pillarless hardtop with ALL glass rolling down! That Riviera has to be one of the most beautiful cars ever built.
That style screams quality to me, whether it was or not. The fixed-glass specials that have been around for over 40 years now scream “cheap” to me, including the faux-hardtops with fixed rear glass, meaning the late 70s and mid-80s models.
My observation on fixed-glass coupes means: “Sailors, dogs and rear-seat passengers keep out”.
Even as an admirer of american cars and older GM cars, this era Riviera/Toronado/Eldorado/Seville was not what it used to be. When you can buy a Celebrity that looks like a Seville, something is wrong. Roger Smith era.
Not sure how I missed commenting on this earlier on. Every time I see these two cars posed together like this I scratch my head. And the cheap one came out first.
It is difficult to overstate how afraid Ford and Chrysler were of GM around 1980. GM was this juggernaut that could do nothing wrong. It had money, money and more money to throw into new product development. Iacocca at Chrysler were just waiting to get plowed under unless something changed fast. This was why he killed the big R body and the Cordoba/Mirada – he didn’t have the money to compete in those segments, and decided to concentrate resources in markets where he had a chance.
This is what is so sad – from 1980 to 2000, GM came out with so many new products and platforms that I can’t keep them all straight. Sadly, many of them were either the wrong product (unappealing or wrong for market conditions) or the right product done half-assed in a way that would have satisfied GM diehards of 1970 but not younger people who had more and better choices.
Can anyone explain to me why the previous ’79-’85 Riviera (and pre-’79 Toros and Eldos) were able to have an almost perfectly flat floor while the ’86 and later and later had a floor hump only slightly smaller than in a RWD car? The flat floor (as several above have pointed out) was one of the things that made the ’79-’85 E-body feel special. The longitudal engine and body on frame (i think) construction did too as did the Unitized Power Package engine/transmission module. I remember first sitting in an ’86 Riv and ’86 Toro. You couldn’t get a bench seat anymore (still popular at the time, and most ’85s had one), just as well since they’re be no room in the front center. Not much in the rear center anymore either, and the whole back seat had much less space than the roomy ’85s. And everything inside now looked and felt economy grade while the ’85s were luxurious.
I’m not sure why they lost the floor hump but in the late 80s when my dad test drove a used Toronado (and I was a not yet 16 year old) I was pleasantly surprised to find out there was no hump in the floor. Even our FWD Celebrity had a decent hump in the floor.
Mostly to route the exhaust line through, but also for torsional rigidity.
Yes but what changed that Exhaust couldn’t be routed the same way it had been in the past to provide the flat floor?
I predict that the automaker who figures out how to restore the flat floor to FWD vehicles will see their sales take off. That is one of the advantages that CUVs have over their sedan counterparts, lack of floor hump.
I think that even the 79-85’s were body on frame vs unibody designs for the 86 model year. Why exactly this makes a difference is not clear, but the unibody C-bodies also had a hump.
Honda Civic’s have had flat rear seat floors for some time and has helped sales.
What changed was available ground clearance going from BOF to unibody, presumably. When you have a BOF car, the exhaust can be routed anywhere because the depth of the frame is taken into account. A unibody car with the same exterior ground clearance will be lower inside because there’s no frame to take up height, meaning you have to route the exhaust through the tunnel, or else it would be nearly dragging on the ground. With CUVs, this is not as necessary.
Also, unibodies get a significant amount of strength from that tunnel in the floorpan. It’s like a frame rail, but it happens to extend the other way.
The Camry comes close, and its sales have been kinda, sorta almost good.?
My suspicion is that taller architecture has a lot to do with a flat floor. My decidedly RWD F-150 and the archaic Checker Marathon have flat floors. Longer, LOWER and wider are the true enemy of the flat floor. BOF designs don’t hurt either.
These things were sad shadows of the previous models-all across the board.
I remember seeing this era of Eldorado and Seville when I was a kid and wondering why anyone would have bought such a thing. They looked just like the Pontiac Grand Ams (2 and 4 door) clattering and rusting away around me with stereotypical Cadillac gingerbread downsized and stuck on. With all the concurrently produced RWD Fleetwood Broughams still floating around, it just blew my mind.
…and it’s not like the Caddy econosized Eldos and Sevilles were bargain entry level offerings, they were supposed to be the halo cars!
Yuck…
I always thought the formal roofline with the smaller N-bodies wasn’t right for their market positioning, especially given that the least broughamy version, the Grand Am, was far and away the best seller.
“Gas will be $5 a gallon in 1985, we will be ready with smaller cars” is what GM said in 1980. 5 bucks then was 10-15.
Sounds almost like today with predictions of 10 bucks a gallon in 2008 for the 2010’s.
While there are many comments, including Paul’s, about the N car being introduced before the E, taking away any bang from this new look when the E came out, there is not much discussion of the muddled marketing that was part of GM’s platform proliferation in the ’80s.
Beginning with the 1982 A bodies, GM had completely lost the swagger it had with bold new product introductions beginning with the 1977 B and C body cars. Some sort of fear gripped them that they might cancel a mechanical or marketing success in favor of a car that might not do as well, and by 1985 Buick had hedged its bets to EIGHT platforms that featured a ton of investment in unique sheet metal and interiors, even if the result was look alike cars. Buick had started the ‘70s with four platforms (arguably three as the B-C was really almost one), and ran most of that decade with six, the bottom two being mostly badge jobs of small Chevys.
The N body was a car that was probably needed to refresh the Skylark, but ended up in Buick’s own marketing as a “car slotted between the slightly smaller Skylark and the slightly larger Century.” Was this even remotely necessary?
The N was introduced as a coupe only in 1985, and I seem to recall that it was possibly originally planned as a replacement for the G Special RWD Buick Regal coupe – hence the Regal name being attached to the car. I’m not sure that a four door was in the original plans.
But, the well amortized G Special RWD Regal was a top seller, and the X body Skylark would need to go soon, and the W body was waiting in the wings. So, the N body Somerset Regal gradually settled to the better recognized Skylark name, and the W body picked up the Regal name.
Watching this play out at the time, and the chortling in the press, was painful to go through.
I’m not sure if the clarity of the pictures or the actual text is more painful to read…….:
I recall the N bodies being slated as G-special replacements too, and it’s worth noting all three of them were given names that were tied to previous GM midsizers (Grand Am, Calais/Calais Supreme, Somerset Regal). But I wonder if this was ever really the case, or was it just clever marketing to dissociate the N bodies with the disreputable X bodies that they really replaced. The N was really just the second generation of the FWD X body (compare the size and shape of the front doors of the 4 door X and N and you’ll see what I mean). In the end, only Buick would eventually re-use the X-body’s Skylark name and likely that was because (a) Skylark had a long history with Buick and (b) the Skylark was amongst the better selling FWD X bodies, even outselling the Citation in its last year.
Agreed that Buick went through some machinations that the N body was not a Skylark replacement after it decided it was not a G Special Regal replacement. I’m sure the stink of the X was in their minds, but, as you say, the Skylark remained a persistent seller, mostly with the older set that wanted a cheap way into a Buick. As abused as it was, the Skylark name retained some equity over several generations.
My parent’s elderly neighbor promptly sold off a fleet of cars when her husband passed, including her nearly mint 1970 Skylark coupe. She replaced the fleet with a single brand new N body Skylark. Not exactly what Buick was going for when the N body was originally planned, but as muddled as things were, they were fortunate to find any buyers.
To further complicate things, remember that the Oldsmobile Omega and Pontiac Phoenix were completely phased out at the end of the 1984 model year, while the Buick Skylark four-door continued for another year, until the end of the 1985 model year.
The Skylark coupe, however, was discontinued after 1984 to make way for the Somerset Regal coupe.
The W-bodies, meanwhile, had actually been scheduled to debut at least one year earlier than they really did. The late Chuck Jordan has claimed that the delay was in part because they looked too much like the Ford Taurus, but I wonder if the real reason was the organizational chaos sparked by Roger Smith’s infamous reorganization of GM in 1984.
I don’t think there’s really any real logic to GM’s 1980s lineup. The boss yelled “Flood the market! We can afford it and they can’t! Let’s drive ’em out of business!”
And so GM ended up with dozens of models that mostly overlapped each other. And looked almost identical to boot. The marketers tried to create some logic around it. Sorta. If you squint hard enough it might make some sense. But in the end, GM ended up with a plethora of X, J, N, L cars, and they all got their butt kicked by the Honda Accord.
It’s a function of making decisions one product at a time instead of by looking at the business as a whole. I’m starting to see signs of it coming out of Ford. Looking at the newly-refreshed Fusion, for instance, I’m seeing the same mistakes they were making 10 years ago, as in you can still lux up a Fusion to a degree nearly indistinguishable from the MKZ they’re selling for more money. I’m starting to see styling cues diverge from a theme to whatever they felt looked good; said another way, styling across the Ford brand seems to be getting less cohesive. I’m starting to see… how do I say it? For instance, the sporty black-out waffle grille and some of the other details (shifter, for one) on the Focus were exclusive to the ST. Now there’s a gazillion low-spec Focus SEs running around with the ST-style grille.
I’m absolutely certain that’s what happened at GM. I’m even willing to assert that the decisions they made individually were probably good ones, at least in the vacuum in which no other product or consideration existed. Taking the Ns up-market was probably a good decision for the Ns, but it was a bad decision for the Riviera and the rest of the Es, and that harm outweighed that good.
At least Ford, for now, seems to be managing that a bit better. Fusion’s a bread-and-butter car and does reasonably well in the market. Lincoln all-in sells less than 100,000 units per year, so it doesn’t hurt Ford that much in the end if they cannibalize a couple MKZ sales, especially given that Mulally laid out all the groundwork and had planned to kill Lincoln at the same time they whacked Mercury.
I don’t see ultra-deluxe Fords as a mistake, particularly with the crossovers and SUVs. I’ve read that a surprisingly high percentage of Explorers sold, for example, are the top-of-the-line editions.
In the rural areas of Pennsylvania, you will see people who, for various reasons, are reluctant to drive a car with a luxury badge, even though they could afford it. They will, however, drive a loaded Ford, whether it’s a Fusion, Explorer or even an F-150.
I read somewhere that the new highest trim level Fusion Platinum was being made so that when the Taurus bowed out of NA production that would take over as Fords premium flagship model. But Ford can’t seem to make up there minds on NA Taurus.
I wasn’t even of driving age yet, and this was my personal GMDS #1. Even at that age I could see that the redesign was a monumental screwup.
I had been out of the states for a few years when these came out and hadn’t been following the motoring press. When I came home, a friend who was in the market for a new car asked me to come car shopping with him. We went to the Buick dealership and I was literally shocked when I saw this, this thing they were trying to pass off as a Buick: an executive’s car . Really, GM, really? I have never been able to get past my initial impression that the front half of the car and the rear half are in different scales… with the rear end economy car size.
We both sneered, and walked out and he ended up with an Acura(?)…
A few years later, GM finally made the rear of the car match the front but by then the word was out about the quality….
Looking at that picture comparing the Somerset to the Riviera says it all—-the accountants had taken over GM. It was paint by numbers all the way.
It’s tough to pick the number one GMDS as there are so may good candidates, but this one is as good as any. A crying shame what they did to Bill Mitchell’s 1963 masterpiece.
I think that the 86 Riviera was the low point for styling. Even though it does look like the Somerset, there are differences. The Somerset did not offer Automatic Climate Control. While one might think sales of the Riviera fell off due to styling, I think that the Luxury Personal Car/Coupe was fading by the late 80’s. The Lincoln Continental Mark series was fading too.
From the standpoint of style, I think the 63’s were best, then the 79, but the 95 was good. The interior of the 95 had quite horrid plastics though. By the mid 90’s luxury personal cars like the Riviera were declining, so it was probably a mistake not to have made the 93 model the last Riviera. On the other hand, I think that the 95-97 or so Riviera did about as well as the Aurora did.
One thing I can say is that the 86 Riviera’s visibility was much better for the driver than the later restyling, which made visibility about as bad as a convertible.
Hey now, the Mark was riding pretty high in 1986! And that was a particular banner year, as Ford responded to GM’s debacle with an in-your-face SEFI 5.0 HO engine introduced to the Mark’s lineup which upped the VII’s output (introduced in 1984 with only 140 some horses and still sucking air through a bowl) to 225 hp. The sales were good enough to guarantee the VII would soldier on (with no major mechanical changes) on its cushy air suspension until 1992! I bet quite a few of those customers migrated from the Riv/Eldo camp…
Check this out –
http://rivowners.org/features/Ev_Stats/productn.html
http://www.cadillacforums.com/forums/cadillac-seville-cadillac-eldorado-forum/91641-eldorado-production-numbers-start-finish.html
https://www.thelincolnmarkviiclub.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=239
In 1986 the Mark VII in its 3rd year built almost as many vehicles as each of the new for ’86 Riv and Eldo. After a slight dip in 1987 (in which the Mark outsold the Riv nonetheless, if the production numbers indicate the demand, and fell just slightly behind the Eldo) the Mark had its best production years in ’88-’89 followed by its 4th best year (this is for by then a 7 year old 1984 model year vehicle) in 1990. It slaughtered the Riv in ’88 and beat the ’89 redesigned Riv handily. It beat the Eldo in ’88 and tied the ’89 redesign. It tied the Riv and the Eldo in ’90 (but again, consider that the Mark VII was in its 7th year and those two had just been redesigned a year earlier). The Mark’s production numbers finally fell behind those of Riv / Eldo in 1991-92 as Ford focused on transitioning to the Mark VIII.
Now I know I’m biased and all… but that car did really well against its domestic competition over the first 7 years of a 9 year model run. And there was no evolution mechanically or sheet metal wise after 1986 which was before it experienced its peak years (the 1990 had a major dash redesign, that’s about it). Hardly fading just yet. The Mark VIII was where it faded to black…
A large part of the VII’s success of course had to do with the fact that, contrary to popular myth, they were ultra reliable well-built cars when they were new. Once Ford worked the kinks out of its TFI ignition module (which was around 1986-87) they became bulletproof. All the air suspension trouble happened to the second and third owners in the 90s, when the airbags needed to be replaced (they are like tires, but lasting at least twice as long) the cars went to neighborhood mechanics, not the Lincoln dealers. And of course those mechanics had no idea what they were supposed to do. And so the sad sagging cars began filling the streets, creating the myth of nightmare air suspensions etc. When they were new, the suspensions were not an issue. Plus, electronically they featured basic, simple on-board computers many of which still function without having been rebuilt today…
Comparing the Mark series with the Riviera in 86 to whatever year after only confirms what I thought, which is that sales are falling. The Mark series should have picked up the lost sales from all the E – bodies, so sales should have been well over 50,000 or even 75,000.
The Mark series was terminated before the Riviera I think (not sure of that).
The Mark VI averaged about 33,000 annually, the Mark VII did about 21,000 and the final Mark VIII averaged 21,000 too, but was fading at the end with under 15,000.
If only the 1989 style came out in 1986 this car may have stood a better chance. It was a different and more substantial platform as stated with a std 150 Hp 3.8 V6 compared to the Somerset’s 92 Hp Tech IV, a std 4 speed automatic vs the smaller car’s 3 speed or stick setups, more interior volume and space, automatic climate control and power equipment std vs optional or not available and of course the GCC. The 1986 styling was just not special or different enough from the N-body to justify the double price tag and that was one of the biggest reasons for dramatically lower sales.
Miss contributers like Craig in NC. Lots of people share a belief that something sucks because it looks like something else. Craig in NC had the depth of knowledge to put the car in the context of why they happened that way. Glad he was here because Paul didn’t bother to put any meat on the bones of why the Riv was so terrible.
I won’t post a picture of a miscalled picture of a MB 300 also new for 86 to show how much it looked like a cheaper smaller 190E. Buicks suck and Benzs don’t. We get it. Saco was a winner and Kady was a loser. People in the know drove MB and low info people from Kansas were fooled into driving Rivieras. When something is part of a religious belief, it needs no proof. No point arguing something different.
Craig in NC was quite eloquent, but that doesn’t mean that the ’86 Riviera wasn’t a pretty awful car.
It’s exactly because some previous Rivieras were stylish and desirable that expectations were high for this car, and they clearly missed the mark with this effort. The market doesn’t care about GM’s internal and external issues, it cares about good product.
I’m a former ’65 Riviera owner, a low info person from flyover country, and myself and my corn shucking neighbors all took a pass on this Riviera. Even if it took us a long time to read it, we got the memo!
1986 for sale best car i ever owned its just time for another project
They were one ugly looking car. Didn’t they employ designers, styling clinics, focus groups. The blind arrogance of imposing such an awful looking car on the market and assuming it will be bought because we’re GM is boggling. Like nobody in the organisation dared say this is a dire and no one will buy it. Speaks volumes about everything that was wrong with GM.
Reminds me of a Nelson class battleship.
My wife once owned the longer 1991 version. The extra length and passing years seemed to make a difference. Enjoyed the leather seats and pearl paint. Great riding car and the self leveling rear really helped when we had it loaded up. Remember having trouble with the trunk “pull down.” Removed the unit and wound up with a regular trunk latch. About the only automatic transmission car we ever had that I really enjoyed driving.
I can hear the salesmen trying to push these cars.
“Look at that beautiful script on the side announcing its prescence – Riviera!”
“Look at those wire wheels it comes with!”
“The body shape is MUCH different than a plain old Regal (said in an insulting tone)!”
“We have many more colours for the Riviera for the man who knows what he wants!”
“You’re going to love it!”
To which I respond, they are the same car. See you later. Apparently most people did just that.
In the early 80s, conventional wisdom was that gas prices would keep rising to $2 and higher after the US govt largely ended price controls. Instead they dropped quite a bit in the mid 80s while the economy was growing quickly. Would this dinky Riviera still be a DS if gas had been $3? Was anyone else selling expensive coupes in large numbers by then?
I think the HT4100 should have been DS #1. Many of those burned customers never came back to GM. It’s bad enough to be grossly underpowered or to be notoriously unreliable, but to be both for 6 years was deadly to Cadillac. Or the Citation, since there were so many burned customers the first year or two.
The Regal looks like an early Riviera prototype in camouflage, you know – clunky detailing, bits bodged on here and there to hide the true lines, good enough for the engineers to get their numbers on test, close to the right shape, good enough to throw the spy photographers off.
GM actually expected people to buy cars that looked like this?
Either that or the Riviera is an updated Regal, Regal 1.2 – let’s smooth this transition here, bit less slant on the B-pillar, curve this bit a little bit more there. First major facelift, you might say.
What this Riviera does not look like is a separate prestige car, worth a massive premium over the Regal. (BTW, did people actually call them Somersets, or Somerset Regals – or just plain Regals?)