Can you imagine being an Oldsmobile product planner during the height of “Cutlass Fever” in the 1970s and ’80s, and being told by some prescient being that Oldsmobile would be the first of the “classic” GM brands to get the axe? When exactly did Oldsmobile lose its magic touch? It might have been around the time that their stalwart Cutlass Supreme sent Curbside Classic writers on an hour-long research journey in an attempt to nail down the model year (I’m still a little hesitant). Regardless, Hyperpack left some pictures of this base 1990 (fingers crossed) Cutlass Supreme on the CC Cohort, and it’s not only interesting for being a car that has fundamentally disappeared, but also for having a five-speed manual. Who’d have called that?
The interior of our Cohort Cutlass very closely matches this low-mileage example sold on Bring a Trailer three years ago, although the upholstery is a little different. I really wish that the owner of this Cutlass would have opened the hood long enough for Hyperpack to snap a picture of the engine, because it would narrow down our search (the BaT car has “Quad 4” badges that this one is missing). The 1990 base Cutlass Supreme had a standard “High Output” Quad 4, a potent yet raspy little engine with a fairly lofty (for 1990) 10:1 compression ratio. The “HO” produced 180 horsepower and 160 lb.-ft. of torque when channeled through the five speed, so it might have surprised a few more overtly sporty cars at the impromptu stoplight drags when driven well.
It’s wrong, however, to think that Oldsmobiles of the late ’80s and early ’90s couldn’t be sporty; they had a surprisingly active racing presence. In 1987, A.J. Foyt broke the world closed-course speed record with not one but two Oldsmobile Aerotechs, and both were powered by turbocharged variants of the Quad 4. The short-tail version (pictured here at the R.E. Olds Museum in Lansing) recorded a two-way average of 257.123 miles per hour, and the long-tail car reached 267.399 (averaged in both directions).
Photo Source: Hot Rod Magazine
Warren Johnson was always competitive with his Pro Stock Cutlass in NHRA competition, although this one didn’t have a Quad 4 under the hood.
Photo Source: Frontstretch
Handsome Harry Gant drove his Cutlass to a four-race win streak in Winston Cup competition in 1991, and you might say that his Cutlass helped him earn a spot in the NASCAR Hall of Fame (he’ll be a 2026 inductee).
Unfortunately, all this success on the track didn’t sell more Cutlasses in 1990, as Oldsmobile’s market share continued its decline (to 7.9 percent according to my Standard Catalog of Oldsmobile: 1897 – 1997). The Cutlass’s aerodynamic styling helped out at 200 miles per hour, but maybe it was a little too austere on the street.
Still, it’s sometimes fun to go back and look at the details of cars you haven’t regularly seen in person for decades. Yes, the Cutlass was austere, but to be austere is to be uncluttered, and the Olds is refreshingly clean.
My favorite angle is the rear three-quarter view, where the quarter glass and rear window meet. Combined with Oldsmobile’s traditional upright taillights, it’s not a bad look in the “jellybean” idiom.
The nose may be a little nondescript, but at least there’s an Oldsmobile badge to prove that you’re not driving a Lumina here. Like it or not, this Cutlass is 35 years old, and although a lot of us are not accustomed to seeing them at car meets, the reality is that people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s remember these cars fondly (and sometimes not so fondly). Nobody will be collecting Cutlass Supreme Internationals as they do W30-powered 4-4-2s, but we have to admit that a five-speed equipped Cutlass is worth a few pictures and words. Now, I just hope I got the year right.
Related CC reading:
CCCCC Part 13: 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – How The Mighty Have Fallen
Curbside Classic: 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – Rehabilitating The GM10 Cutlass
Cohort Pic(k) Of The Day: 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Convertible – Loop Handle
Regarding the engine: Beginning with model year 1981, I believe, the eighth digit of the VIN on GM vehicles indicates the engine choice. Use one of the many online VIN decoders applicable to your model to find your answer.
This is astoundingly well-preserved — even in the late ’90s, a lot of these didn’t look this good.
These were such odd cars. The Quad 4 engine was powerful, but it was rough and thrashy, and it was very unhappy with the three-speed automatic, and the Cutlass Supreme was pretty heavy for the time. The exterior styling was okay to a point, but the pieced didn’t quite gel and it suffered that ’80s/’90s GM plasticky downmarket look. (It was also a little bigger than a Taurus, which made the emphasis on two-doors seem behind the times.) The interior was fairly roomy, but not that comfortable, and the blocky dashboard and low-rent gray upholstery looked clunky compared to the cars it was trying to compete with.
The new-for-1990 Honda Accord wasn’t nearly as powerful, but it was so much more polished and tastefully furnished inside, in the same price range. It was like Oldsmobile understood where they needed to be, but their product planners were incapable of looking at anything other than previous GM cars, and you could see where all the pennies were pinched.
Clean looking car. Perhaps the styling might be bland, but i find it better looking that a Mercury Sable; the interior of the Cutlass on the other hand is uninspired and looked old already at the time.
From what I recall, the Taurus platform was generally considered a better “car” such as drive feeling and NVH, and the W-bodies always trailed behind sales numbers – despite the huge investment by GM
J’adore.. I would have bet it all on Final Jeopardy against these ever having been offered with a manual transmission.
“Alex, I’ll take “Odd GM Product Decisions” for $400, please.”
I’ve driven plenty of these as rental cars, but obviously not one with a manual. I’d be glad to give this one a spin and bet that I’d like it. There’s just something incredibly fascinating to me about oddball American cars with manuals. It’s like you’re getting access to some kind of easter egg driving experience that only the very lucky or initiated can have.
I fear for this well-preserved car with its “OL GOLFER” plates. If it’s indeed driven by an actual Old Golfer, then when Grandpa gives up the keys this thing is likely to wind up at the salvage yard toot-sweet. You kind of want to know if he “knows what he’s got” and sends it to BaT first…or that his kids/grandkids know to do so.
Maybe if you see it again you should leave a note under the wiper letting him/them know.
Whenever I attend a car show, I dream of finding a car like this. A genuine oddball, and amazingly preserved.
In addition to the rarity of having a manual transmission, this car has an unusual combination of options. It’s a base model, but isn’t stripped since it has alloy wheels, the optional electronic instrument cluster and the optional cassette stereo… but doesn’t appear to have power windows or air conditioning. Definitely a custom order. Great find!
I recall driving my younger brother up to Lime Rock and being fascinated by the sound made by V6 Oldsmobiles as they scooted around the track. Didn’t make me want to buy one on Monday, but sure sounded great!
The “OL GOLFR” license plate is the height of delicious irony given the ad campaign.
The only thing that might have been better is if it said “DADS CAR”.
The stickshift though is interesting, one wonders if it was offered solely to be able to advertise a lower base price? Or perhaps this car was the big prize on The Price Is Right. I cannot imagine the take rate to be anything more than miniscule and the fact that offering the option likely cost GM more than it returned based on how modern production offering decisions are apparently made is another example of GMs foibles.
Maybe one reason that Olds offered a manual for this car was to provide the thinnest of veneer that the new Cutlass was a “driver’s car.” (After all, GM did a similar thing with the advertising the Cimarron, which of course was very successful and therefore repeated…)
The ad below for the International Series prominently features the stick shift, though even on that version I’m sure the take rate was miniscule. I can’t image more than 1 or 2 percent of these base models came equipped with a 5-speed.
I remember reading that the main reason Buick survived and Oldsmobile didn’t was because Buick was enormously popular in China and GM overestimated Buick sales.
Olds was long gone by then. In 2000 GM decided to drop Olds and they made their last in 2004.
It was Pontiac that they sacrificed for China. The decision was made in 2008 and they made their last in 2009. Lutz said Pontiac was a far more viable brand than Buick, which he considered a dead brand.
China took what they needed to build their industry and is now showing GM the door. GM is losing billions in China and they are now a minority owner of the venture. SAIC is putting GM names on their product and shipping them around the world.
SAIC took GM and the US taxpayer to the cleaners. But it made GM executives look good for a decade a half. They sold US out.
If the Oldsmobile guy would be amazed that it would be the first GM brand to die, trying convincing people who didn’t live through the 1970s that the Cutlass Supreme was once an aspirational middle-class car they sold hundreds of thousands of. I’ve always looked upon final-gen Supremes like this one as improved answers to a question buyers had stopped asking.
Harry Gant! The last of the old-school NASCAR drivers who won four consecutive Cup races in September, 1991 in the Skoal Bandit. At age 51! Then went back to building houses after each one. Racin’ was a lot more fun to watch 30+ years ago.
I like that he made it into the Hall of Fame, although we’re going to start getting to the point pretty soon where we’re watering down the product because there’s a set number of people who make it in every year. Still, even though he only won something like 18 Cup races, the way he did it (as you mentioned) made him worthy of the Hall (I think).
Gant wasn’t ready to race until both fenders were mashed in and “the motor developed a skip”.
I was at Martinsville in 1991 when “Mr. September” was in action. They later discovered that the rear end housing was bent and that’s what made the car handle so well.
Being bland looking yet a 5 speed box sounds good to me .
I’d never look twice at this car but I bet driving it is pretty fun .
-Nate
It’s from the tail end of the era in which GM would build a car if the parts were in the bin. I recall seeing more than a few Chevy Lumina coupes with a stick, and N-body Olds with the Quad-4 and a stick, so the parts were in the bin.
If I were to take a guess, the 1990 Cutlass Supreme with a stick wasn’t significantly more rare than a 1967 Cutlass with a stick.
In 1967, Olds sold about 24,000 Cutlass Supremes with the 442 package. Many of those would have been sticks.
Olds Cutlass Supreme International 1991
I think the styling of these has held up really well over the years.
I had one in the ’90s and it was a great handling car, although I did once set the brakes on fire after a spirited country roads hoon. Mine was an absolutely loaded International with the 3.4 DOHC V6 and heads up.
I have fond memories of driving back to Detroit from Canada one night in a snowstorm where the only other vehicles on the road were 4x4s and we were still on summer tires. When we stopped at a rest area to get fuel I promptly fell over as it was so icy and realized just how well that car had handled the conditions.
I had a 1985 Olds Firenza with a 4-speed stickshift. The dealer was hesitant about taking the order because he said it would be impossible to sell if I changed my mind. I had the car for over 14 years. The shifting was terrible–stiff and clunky compared to other manual transmissions I had driven, but the car was FAST and fun to drive, especially on the highway. After 40 years it is still known as the Flying Firenza in our family. Unfortunately, I bought a 1998 Olds Intrigue (my first car with automatic transmission), which broke down, usually with transmission problems, so frequently that we called it the Junk Bucket. For almost 2 years the Firenza was my backup car for the Junk Bucket, until I sold it for $100 in 1999.
I’d buy this and daily it right now. I wish somebody made a car to these specs, still. Yes, I had a 2000 Eldo and loved it. Why can’t we have commuter cars anymore?
IMO Olds started losing its “magic touch” when GM got Olds and Buick market positioning exactly backwards from the mid-’80s onward. “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” sums up the predicament; it’s like saying, “Don’t think of an elephant”, evoking the very thing you’re trying to negate, and baffling that the professional PR/marketing staff at GM/Olds didn’t seem to realize that.
That slogan just reinforced the existing perception of Olds as a moderately aspirational marque for established middle-class mature adults — along with “old” right there in the name making it an uphill battle to convince anyone it had trendy sophistication or youth appeal — while also alienating the large market of traditionalist buyers who wanted to buy them precisely because their parents had owned Oldsmobiles.
I suspect they were even flirting with the idea of changing the entire marque name to Cutlass, the way they prepended that to nearly every model name in the range for several years there — akin to how there were cars badged as “Datsun by Nissan” for a couple years and even a Datsun Nissan Maxima for 1984 before they dropped the Datsun marque entirely.
Meanwhile, Buick had a somewhat stale but lingering perception as a “doctor’s car”, at a time when actual doctors (of the medical and advanced-degree professional/academic sorts alike) were increasingly yuppies trending more towards a preference for advanced and sophisticated import (esp. upscale European) marques.
Thus, Olds should have targeted the market for traditional American mid-upscale comfortable luxury, and Buick should have combined those attributes (minus the brougham-y traditionalism) with the performance and trendy-style attributes of Pontiac, which is ultimately what Buick became anyway once Olds and Pontiac got the axe.
That 5 speed would almost make me buy this. Almost. Because I’ll bet the shift action is nothing even remotely like shifting a Honda. But I love that it exists, and especially in this great condition.
That’s my buddy Jim’s car
That’s my buddy Jim’s car
Congrats Jim.
He probably owns the only 5 Speed one of these left in the world. Jeff, can you confirm what model year this car is.
Thanks Jim for bringing it to the waterfront.