After getting a stupid idea and a 2 door Buick out of my system, I was as happy as I had ever been with a pair of cars – the big Club Wagon was still doing primary family duty and my ’68 Chrysler became a sort of automotive escape pod from the modern world. But as had had been the case before, my days with the Chrysler came crashing to a halt when I was presented, once again, with another car and THE QUESTION – “Here is a car. Do I buy it? Yes or No?”.
I had known my friend Karl since we met in law school. Karl and his wife had introduced me to Marianne, and we had remained in fairly close touch. Karl was fond of telling people that he was the only child of two only children. His father had died when we were in law school, but his mother continued on for quite a few years. When Karl’s father became sick, he picked out a new car for his wife, one that would take good care of her after he was gone. It was a really nice one – a brand new Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency. Where this one was unusual was in the number of doors (2) and the amount of vinyl used to cover the roof (none). Although the lesser Delta 88 would run through 1985 on the old RWD chassis, the bigger C body Ninety-Eight (with it’s Cadillac and Electra 225 body-mates) would make that change one year sooner, so Virginia’s 1984 model would be the last of its kind.
Karl’s mother drove the car for 12 years or so. I had never paid much attention to it, but had seen it from time to time. At some point in the fall of 1996 I learned that Karl’s mother died. I helped him clean some things out of her house and adopted a few items that nobody wanted. And I never thought for a nanosecond about her car – I knew that Karl’s wife had a large extended family, and surely someone would want it. A couple of evenings later, Karl called to ask if I would be interested in her car. “She would want someone to have it who would take care of it, and I thought of you” was what he said. How do you say no to that?
But damn, an Oldsmobile? I was SO not an Oldsmobile man. Oldsmobiles were what I had rebelled against as a teen. Oldsmobiles had been, in my world, the most boring of boring cars. Oldsmobiles had made cars like Ramblers and Ford Falcons seem exotic. From the beginning of my life until 1978, I think there were but two model years of Oldsmobiles that played no role in my life beyond as background scenery – 1960 and 1962. Beyond those two years, I spent time around at least one (and often more) Oldsmobiles from each of those years. An Oldsmobile would turn me into the ultimate establishment man. They say we all eventually become our parents, but I had spent my car-owning life trying really hard to not do that. Oldsmobiles were fine for mothers, aunts, uncles and grandparents, but not for me, dammit. Besides, I had a car that I was quite in love with. But this was another moment when I decided that I needed to be the adult.
For starters, it was much newer than my Chrysler Newport and would be much easier to keep running from a parts and service perspective. It was also bound to do better than the 11-ish mpg I was used to in local driving (although gas prices were not much of a factor then). But most of all, I decided that it was the kind of car that would require less time for active management (like parts chasing and repairs) and thus leave me more time for lawyering or daddying or husbanding, as circumstances required. “Man up and buy the effing Oldsmobile” I said to myself. And so I did.
I will admit that it had its positives. After my narrow brush with Buick ownership, at least this one was the big dog C body. And what’s more, there were some things that set it aside from the Ninety-Eight mainstream. First off, it was a 2 door. I have always loved big 2 door cars, for one main reason. How much driving do we do that involves walking out of a store with a bag of groceries or out of the house or office with a briefcase? With that one big door, parcels go on the floor behind the seat and I get into the car without having to open and close multiple doors.
Also, the car had two examples of addition by subtraction: my Oldsmobile lacked those by-then cliche’ fake wire wheel covers and even better, lacked the ubiquitous vinyl roof. But that addition by subtraction was offset by its opposite – subtraction by addition, in the form of an automatic temp control system that never worked right.
There was also subtraction by subtraction. Everyone went on about how big the Oldsmobile was. But I had just come from a genuinely big car (a ’68 Chrysler) and owned another (the Big Clubber). The Oldsmobile was not a big car. A big car could accommodate three-abreast kiddie seats in a rear bench sofa. The Chrysler could handle them. The Club Wagon could handle them. But not the Oldsmobile. A car that size ought to be able to accommodate a family of two adults and three tots. But no. And in truth, those two doors that I considered a feature was also a bug when it came time to loading toddlers (only two of them, of course) in back. Open door, fold seat forward. One foot in the car to accommodate a squatting position, then heft the tykes inside to fasten them in. Not optimal, and definitely a young man’s game. But that just meant that the van became the vehicle usually taken when kids were involved, with the Olds left for adult use.
Other positives were that it started and ran decently, it rode smoothly and quietly, and those sumptuous velour pillowed seats were very comfortable. I also kind of liked that it actually sounded like an Oldsmobile. There was a kind of harmony in listening to the burble of the 307 while looking at the little rocket emblems placed here and there. Not everything about an Oldsmobile was bad.
But some things were. Like the acceleration (or lack thereof) from the 307 cid V8. Compared with the Chrysler (and the Club Wagon) the acceleration was glacial. OK, I had driven a Buick LeSabre with a V6 in the late 70’s and this was better than that had been, but not by a lot. Even my late, unlamented Crown Victoria had exhibited more grunt off the line or when merging onto a highway.
A bigger problem was the Turbo HydraMatic 2004R. When I first drove the car, the transmission shifting seemed a little off. I remembered knowing someone who had replaced a vacuum modulator valve in an older THM and I had done that job myself in my Marquis Wagon (the smaller one, like a Fairmont), so I figured that it was likely something simple like that. It was far more pleasant than my Crown Vic’s AOD and it couldn’t be anything serious on a car with only 54k miles on it. Bzzzzzt. Wrong. A little research (done too late) indicated that this transmission could not be so easily fixed. A trip to the transmission shop provided an education in modern General Motors. I used to hate GM because it was the 800 pound gorilla of the US auto market – so big and so successful and the builder of cars so maddeningly free of faults. 80’s GM, it turned out, was not the same thing at all. “Let’s make it cheaper!!” So my inexpensive car got a lot less inexpensive. My thoughts went back to Bill and Howard who had provided me with so much car advice, no small part of it about avoiding stuff from GM. They were not wrong, just ahead of their time.
Ninety-Eight Regency dash – photo by CC reader/commenter Dean Edwards of his own 1983 Regency.
The car also suffered a series of electrical gremlins. These apparently pre-existed my ownership, because some earlier wiring work had made the power windows independent of the ignition switch. I liked this, as I was reminded of my ’63 Cadillac. But other wiring shorts would blow fuses and my mechanic spent much time chasing electrical issues. You never realize how much you can count on a dome light until you don’t have one that works. This may have been the cause of the car’s most irritating fault – an automatic temp system that never worked right.
The Olds system was on the simple side, with manual controls for the fan and the mode (heat, a/c, etc.) and only the temperature blend being automatically controlled. But that was enough to louse up a perfectly functional control system. The only way to get really cold a/c was to run Max Cool all the time because the auto system always wanted to add warmth. Hot heat only came with the temp selector at the highest setting. I eventually got tired of trying to make it work and went to an Olds dealer to have the “programmer” replaced. Which was an interesting experience in and of itself.
Remember that I come from a world where Oldsmobile dealers were huge places, with acres of cars for sale and 20+ service bays in the shop. It was probably 2001 when I went to Ed Martin Oldsmobile, which by then was also selling Nissan. Only a great inversion had taken place – most of the facility (including the large service area) was devoted to the Japanese car which now supplied most of the sales and service volume, while service for Oldsmobile (which was still a going concern) was now relegated to the little 6 bay garage that had been built to handle the curious sideline the dealer had taken on eons ago. Times change. Anyway, the system worked after that, but I have long wondered if the fix was permanent or would be undone by the next errant short somewhere that would course through the electrical system, looking for a victim.
There was also the car’s need for premium fuel to avoid a persistent spark knock. I sort of convinced myself that my little Rocket must have been extra powerful due to some added carbon-induced compression. If premium was necessary to unlock the extra performance in my engine, well, it was a small price to pay. Yes, I said, let’s go with that. Gas was cheap and I didn’t feel like trying to figure out a real fix.
Less serious was that it was (yet another) white car. I was getting pretty tired of white cars, and if I had to have a white car, did it have to come with brown interior? Of all the drab, colorless combinations. In an Oldsmobile, of course. I found myself becoming a little misty about the light metallic greens I had hated so much in my youth. About that chocolate brown inside, I will acknowledge that it was a color that allowed me to put off cleaning the interior for an inordinately long time.
Another irritation was those non-wire wheelcovers. I was happy that they were not wires, but those big, thin, flat discs were also VERY prone to getting bent or sprung, and would then escape the car at every opportunity. The only fix was to carefully straighten the offender and put it back on (and to remove them myself before having anyone work on wheels). I was fairly successful here because I only had to buy one replacement.
Those nits aside (though Marianne refused to consider that transmission rebuild as a nit) it was a sturdy, comfortable, reliable car that did its job without drama (but, for that matter, without generating any joy, either). It was presentable outside and extremely nice inside and made a suitable rig for travel with the occasional client. One time in particular a client and I spent about four hours driving back north from a Federal court mediation near Louisville on roads that were shiny from the ice, where 30 mph was just about as fast as it was prudent to go. It was comforting to know that we had plenty of car around us if things went bad and we got caught in one of those chain-reaction crashes that can happen in those conditions. But I was well-used to the stability of big RWD cars, even on ice, and it got us back home in fine shape.
My Oldsmobile years were a good time for drama-free comfy transport because one of those years turned out to be my father’s last one. Many, many 2-hour trips were made up and down I-69 for family time during his extended bout with a brain tumor. My sister and I (his only local-ish kids) made sure one of us was there every Saturday to spell my step-Mom, who spent every single day with him, bless her. I had a lot of time to process memories and emotions during those many hours in the big white Oldsmobile. And making those trips in a big, white 2-door car seemed appropriate given that such was my father’s favored configuration on his own cars for a long time.
It was on one of those trips that I learned a great side benefit of the ungainly 5 mph rear bumper. I had stopped for a fill-up on the way out of Indianapolis. These were among the last cars with a fill pipe behind the license plate, which was a trade-off of convenience (I didn’t care which side the pump was on) and irritation (the low filler tended to cause the pump to shut off prematurely). A couple of hours later I arrived at the care center where Dad was living by then. I went around the back of the car and discovered the fuel cap still sitting exactly where I had put it on the top of the bumper. I wasn’t sure whether it was just fortuitous design or an actual miracle, but I didn’t care.
All in all, I got four years out of the car. I can’t say that I ever hated it, but I certainly didn’t love it either. Mostly, it always kind of felt like I was borrowing someone else’s car. It was the feeling I had as a teen or twenty-something when driving the big GM sled owned by an older relative or boss. I grew up around a lot of GM lifers, and got plenty of wheel time in their Bodies By Fisher.
At the four year mark, there were some wacky little issues like the bolts on the transmission pan that would work loose and start a red leak on my new concrete driveway. And those big fat pieces of trim on the lower body hid some nasty rust getting started on the underside of the passenger door. But at four years I was prepared to keep rolling with it – until the day I accidentally found its replacement.
I am actually kind of amazed that I have been able to write this much about that Oldsmobile. Because it certainly did not inspire much in the way of feelings while I had it. I sold it quite easily, to the delightful Afghani man who ran the coffee shop in my office building. One of his kids was going to medical school and needed a car. I later heard that it served him well until it met its demise on an ice-covered interstate highway, where it sacrificed itself for the safety of its occupant. Oh well, it wasn’t my car. If it ever really was.
My mother had three Ninety Eights during her life.
A 1977 Regency sedan, which turned into a 1978 Regency sedan, which, 4 years later, turned into a “top dog” 1983 Regency Brougham sedan.
All three a shade of red/burgundy.
The Brougham was loaded with the Tempmatic HVAC system, electronic stereo cassette which sounded pretty good for an Olds, and a moonroof. Pretty cool stuff for a teenage me. I remember them (dealership in Racine, WI) telling her it was the most expensive car they had on their lot and they wanted to “get rid of it” because no one wanted to pay the extra $1100 for the moonroof option.
Sorry to hear about all the issues you had. I don’t remember any of her 98s having to go to the shop for repairs. She never kept them long enough, I guess.
I always liked the looks of the 77-79 version so much better – the 1980+ with the heavily sloped front end never looked right to me. Plus those earlier cars probably had the big Olds 403, which would have been far more rocket-like.
Very unusual car. I don’t recall the last time I’ve seen one without a landau vinyl roof. I went through several pages of Google image search results looking for another one without a vinyl roof before giving up.
Also, white wasn’t nearly as popular of a color in the ‘80s as it is today. As I recall, these Ninety-Eights were most frequently sold in darker shades of blue or burgundy.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the only example produced that year in white with a steel roof. Certainly one of very few.
I had never looked into production figures on this car, but according to automobile-catalog.com, there were only 7,855 of the 2 doors built for 1984. With that kind of number for the total, you are right that mine could easily have been a one-off.
An elderly neighbor across the street had owned a sedan version of these. His was white too, but in the more typical configuration that included the vinyl roof and the wire wheel covers. I always thought these would have looked much better if they had kept the 1977-79 front ends.
I found that production figure fascinating in that GM had three cars in this segment that year; this, the Electra, and the de Ville. Curious to see how sales spread out between them, I find the Cadillac absolutely mopped the floor with the other two at 50,840 units (the Buick 4,075). Falling into a rabbit hole, I look for MSRP’s to get a feel for why, and the Oldsmobile and Buick are basically on top of one another at approximately $15,200 versus Cadillac’s $17,600. So I look at equipment, and it starts to become clear. The Cadillac was actually very well equipped to begin with (Auto AC, power windows/locks, proper stereo), while the other two? Absolutely sparse in comparison (you didn’t even get a clock until you checked an option box in the Buick). Illogical. No wonder the “lesser” two struggled.
The sloped 1980-84/5 front end was for aerodynamics, due to CAFE regs. To squeeze more MPG.
As I recall, these Ninety-Eights were most frequently sold in darker shades of blue or burgundy.
I wonder if that was a regional thing, because where I was living at the time (Baton Rouge and New Orleans) it seemed as though every other one was painted that rosy beige color that Oldsmobile called Light Briar Brown (code 62), with either a brown or burgundy vinyl roof.
And it seemed as though when the owners of those cars got older, a goodly number of them went to Camrys and Accords painted in an almost similar metallic beige.
I never thought much of these as a kid when they were everywhere, but now that they’re not everywhere, I think they look great for an ’80s car. As usual, however, I prefer the Buick version: There’s a really sharp blue two-door Electra still driving around town that I like a lot.
That 307 sure was weak. I remember my dad occasionally matting it in our ’83 LeSabre, and it just did NOT respond at all – I think I did an impromptu count from zero to 60. It was something like 16 seconds, and I think my Corvair can beat that. Unlike your 98, the LeSabre did not have overdrive, so the rear gear ratio must have been abysmally tall.
When I had this one I started noticing how the rear quarter window treatment on each of the C body coupes was slightly different. I liked each of them and never really had a favorite as far as the roof went. But I had a deep dislike for the 1980 Olds restyle that took a good looking car and stuck a nose on it that had a slope that made the car look like a doorstop in profile. The Buick and Cadillac got a sloped nose too, but neither of them was as noticeable.
My best friend’s late father had a 1983 Buick Park Avenue sedan with the 307 V8. He babied the car and kept it immaculately clean. My friend asked me to drive it home from the garage where his father took the car for service. Comfortable car but s-l-o-w🐢. Glacially slow. To be fair it wasn’t my car and I wasn’t going to “hoon” it, but it really wasn’t a road burner.
My Olds Custom Cruiser was the sation wagon version of your car, but with a blue interior. I had the wire wheel covers, which were actually a heavy high quality piece, but I replaced them with some mid 70s Olds wheel covers as the wires creaked as they aged. It was loaded and had the same Tempmatic HVAC system as your car. It was a mostly vacuum operated unlike Cadillac’s electronic system. Mine too was problematic, even after I replaced several parts. I had the service records from day one and it showed that it was a problem even when under warranty. I ended up bypassing the system to have manual control.
I owned several TH2004R transmissions I was always skeptical of its durability as I knew they were light duty, so I serviced them more often than required. I never did care for the shift quality, but I never had a failure beyond a bad TCC solenoid, which was a cheap and easy fix. My Custom Cruiser wagons transmission lived to highest mileage and I even towed with it, albeit I added an auxiliary cooler. Later TH2004R models were improved and they did live behind the high powered Grand Nationals.
Do you remember if your Olds had the electronic spark controlled distributor? Is so they had a knock sensor which is supposed to back off the timing, unless it failed. That could have been your issue. I never had any knock issues with my 307s (both electronically timed, or vauum/mechanical timing) but did have the lack of power. A good tune up and fine tuning the carb made a big difference and they actually could get really good highway MPGs. However, they never ran as strong as a Ford 302 or Chevy 305 of the same era.
I remember listening to the clinking wire wheel covers when old Mr. Brown across the street backed his Regency sedan out of the driveway.
The guy at the transmission shop told me that the problem on my car is that it had not been driven frequently enough. He said that it takes about three days for all of the fluid to drain down into the pan, so that the unit was too-often dry on start-up. It made a kind of sense, as the 85 Buick I had previously bought had about double the miles of the Olds and had never experienced transmission issues.
I had no idea about the engine management system in the car. It sounds kind of bad to say, but I never cared enough about the car to learn about anything under the hood. If it started and ran, that was all I cared about, and I knew that it would never be a strong runner no matter what I might have done with it. Some cars interested me enough to dive into under the hood and some did not. This was of the second kind.
J.P.
I have the same climate control issue as you did, with the system defaulting to leaking some heat into the cabin. Best guess so far is a blend door problem, but finding another one in a wrecking yard has eluded me so far. I think Canadian emission driveability makes for a bit more energy in the 307- I don’t seem to have to resort to prayer when accelerating onto the freeway, and I sort of rank it equal to my other early eighties rides in that regard. My car was owned by older folks, and I’d be surprised if it had done much highway driving in the first thirty years or so. I stuck my foot in it once, when I first bought it, and noticed a huge plume of brown smoke from the tailpipe and then did the full tune-up afterward. I also cheated a bit and plugged the EGR valve, which improved things considerably, and I’m guessing that your pinging issue was due to being carboned up.
The difference being my car is a nice weather cruiser, while yours was placed into daily commuting duties whilst trying to fit three child seats in a two door. Your Kia minivan was knocking at your door back then, but nobody was answering!
Attached is a shot taken after I had the hood/trunk repainted due to the usual GM “chalkiness” occurring.
That is a really pretty car, Dean! I stumbled across your shot of its dash when I was browsing online for a dash shot of one of these. You had posted the picture in a comment thread here on CC, and I laughed that the best example I could find was from someone I knew.
Your mention of the paint makes me ask this – did the hood on your car exhibit a really fine checking or crazing that made it hard to get a good shine? All three big GM cars of this era that I owned suffered from that. The Olds was white, so it didn’t show up so much, but it sure would on a dark brown one like yours.
I am now feeling pretty silly about spending the big bucks at the Oldsmobile dealer to fix the Temp Matic system – the consensus seems to be that trying to make one of these work (especially on an older car) was a fool’s errand. Oh well, I have gone on plenty of those.
Short answer on the paint work is yes, the shine went, and you’d get fine crazing, checking, etc. I think this was still acrylic lacquer, and all my GM’s of this period went the same way. I also had my fair share of body fillers go bad too, so I try to combine any touch-up with their replacement as well. It can be frustrating, because they look great one year, then they crack like an eggshell when pulled out of the barn the next season. Replacements are awful quality and hard to source, and the day of raiding the wrecking yards for good originals is over because they will crack shortly after fitting. Attached are a couple of working shots of the Olds- shout out to really skilled painters that can match forty year old paint so that it looks barely detectable.
Rear filler in progress.
I have no problems with the looks or sloping nose, and actually think that the varied GM C/D bodies carried off the formal look very well. I would have plumped for an Olds 98 or Electra over the equivalent Brougham in the day, mainly due to the troubled 4.1 engine in the Caddy. If they waited a year and stuck the O/D transmission behind an injected 368, we’d be talking about a horse of a different colour.
Nice story, at least you got enjoy some aspects of Oldsmobiles.
My mother had a 78 with a 350 which was traded in on an 81 with the same 307/transmission combination I believe. The big change was the 45 mph overdrive hunting that the 81 had. You could tell how fast you were going by the hunting of the transmission.
It did provide my mother with many years of light-duty service until rust started to creep in. She had a brake line burst in the driveway, luckily, and that was the last straw for her.
It was replaced by a dealer demo, a Canadian-built Volvo V70 wagon, which she really enjoyed for the rest of her life. It’s still in the family though now a weekend cruiser.
Our 79 had similar disc-style wheel covers, but the 81 had wire wheels. One god thing was the wires had a lock, so it would keep them on, unless someone came by with the wire wheel key!
Remember those places, selling wheel covers? Likely from the same people who had them stolen!
The print ad which takes place on a wet and dreary day down at the construction site is an interesting and really very good example of how GM would put car buyers in their proper place. “You may be mid-level supervisor, and even get to wear a tie, but you’re not quite Buick material. And certainly not Cadillac.”
The ’84 307 was a low compression smog engine. That you could get it to ping at all indicates some serious out of tune issues.
Can we assume that the gas cap not falling off the bumper was due to the 307’s acceleration? Let’s give that engine its due credit. 🙂
The ’80s were mostly not kind to the GM B/C bodies, which started out in 1977 as such appealing and quite dynamic cars.
That made me laugh, because it’s so TRUE!
Acceleration was definitely not the strong suit of the later RWD C-bodies. The only thing worse was the Cadillacs with the HT4100 engine. My Dad decided to “step up” from his usual Ninety-Eights when he bought his Fleetwood Brougham in ‘84, and it’s probably no coincidence that this was the last GM car that either he or my mother purchased.
Haha, so true on the powerhouse 307!
On the 80’s thing, I would go farther and say that the 80’s were not kind to ANY of the big, traditional cars that used to be America’s calling card. Perhaps this is why you and I have such differing views on CAFE – I spent a number of years driving the cars that CAFE squeezed every last drop of pleasure out of. It didn’t hit the smaller cars nearly so hard (if at all).
JP, I think a lot of that was because in addition to wanting to meet a fleet average target, GM (and probably Ford, as well) were hell-bent on avoiding the “gas guzzler tax” that would have been slapped onto their big cars if they got less than 15 miles per gallon. I meeting that mpg goal wasn’t so much of an issue with the smaller cars.
I recall that it resulted in some really interesting combinations of body parts at the time, depending on how a particular car was equipped. Something along the lines of some Delta 88s being built with an aluminum hood if their options pushed the weight over a certain amount, even by a few pounds or so.
Your gas cap staying put reminds me of a time in 1990, when for whatever reason I had laid a rubber band on the bumper of my S10 pickup. I then took a round-trip of about 1,000 miles and when I got home I saw the rubber band still there on the bumper.
Serious low air pressure area there I figured.
This fall I’ve been using our ’95 Thunderbird a good deal, including commuting to work. And I was just thinking about how I enjoy the convenience of stowing my backpack behind the front seat. Not a huge deal, but one of life’s little pleasures.
Oddly enough, we’re also experiencing similar types of electrical issues with that car right now. For instance, sometimes the clock doesn’t light. Sometimes it lights but is stuck at 12:00. Like your dome light, you never realize how much you count on a car clock until yours doesn’t work.
I’ve only known one person who owned one of these Ninety-Eights. A high school classmate was given one by her parents – it was her mom’s former car (of course) and her folks thought that a big slow car would keep her out of trouble driving. Hers was brown with that brown couch-like interior and wallowed like crazy.
But I can see how this car would be a great highway cruiser. I’m glad it served you (relatively) well for your four years of ownership, though at the same time I can certainly see how it could cause ambivalence. And goodness, I know what you mean about your white cars; I feel the same way about silver cars now… after having bought two in a row, I’d like anything but silver next time around!
Those big 98s were all over the place in Central Indiana in the mid-late 80s, though usually in 4 door form. As for driving it, the thing felt far heavier than its roughly 3800 pounds.
Of course, if the gas cap DID fall off and disappear, fortunately a replacement one could be either sourced from Pep Boys for $5…or from many nearby curbsides (having fallen off less grand bumpers than the Oldsmobile), or from atop a pump at any handy self-serve station. That’s one of those things that one doesn’t think about…the lack of loose gas caps that used to litter the roads and were always present at self-service gas stations. Just don’ see those any more now that we have those little plastic straps (or even newer, caps that don’t come off at all).
I too think that your 98 was a pretty attractive car for a big American car in the 80s. And it was almost certainly a unicorn with its absence of a vinyl roof.
I recall losing the cap on my Buick – with the behind the rear plate filler – more than once. Fortunately, I seldom was able to keep the tank full and therefore avoided the “spashing gas down the road” scenario that used to be frequently observed.
I must be lucky because I think that was the only time I came close to losing one of those caps.
GM’s wire spoke caps were of very high quality construction. The spokes had a nice, usually three layer laced pattern. The hub was heavy die cast metal with a nice badge in the center, and the outside rim was stainless steel. They really held up. Even the Chevrolet models were nice, but they got better as you went up the ladder. They weren’t cheap either, when the caps were stolen off my ’77 Cad, the insurance company coughed up 250.00 to replace them.
I guess people often associate them with the terribly cheap items that were available from outlets like Pep Boys. Those were awful stamped metal caps with one layer of thin wires spokes with the thinnest of chrome plating. These would invariably rust before they flew off going around a corner!
My Avatar photo is a ’78 Riviera wire cap on a 15 inch wheel with a painted whitewall. I have used it for years
I agree that some of the wire cap designs were nicely done, but once we were into the mid 90s I had tired of the look, much as I had tired of the look of vinyl roofs and opera windows. Today I can appreciate all of those things as being something of a particular era.
Great story about an imperfect car! In reading about your visit to the circa-2001 Olds dealer, a scary thought hit me. That dealer would have been stocking the 2001 Aurora, which with its DOHC 32 valve Northstar, automatic wipers and lights and temp control, OnStar, optional satellite navigation, relatively modern fastback styling, traction and stability control, CANBUS electrical architecture, etc., seems not that far off the pace of modern cars.
But that car was produced a mere 16 years after the lumbering, body on frame, solid rear axle, vacuum controlled transmission, pushrod and carbed V8 Ninety Eight you were bringing in, while it has now been nearly 23 years since that Aurora was produced.
This thought boggles my mind.
Even more shocking, the 16 year difference between the 1984 Ninety Eight and the 2001 Aurora is also the same number of model years Nissan manufacturered the second-generation Frontier, almost unchanged.
Excellent point. It’s just that sort of retro-thought process that always boggles my mind too.
I sometimes think about what it would be like to bring something like the subject 98 into a GM dealer today. I wonder what the majority of the techs, who were born well after 1984 (40 years ago) would be able to make of it. And yet, one would expect that today’s GM dealer would indeed still be able to service the car…
That was kind of my thought process. My mom recently took her 01 Aurora V8 to the Cadillac dealer she has used for years, and they declined the ability to service the Passlock III ignition system, which is a shenanigan I think, and ended up not being the problem, anyhow. But it struck me as odd they wouldn’t service a system still in use somewhat recently, yet it’s actually gotten quite old without me noticing.
The federal government only mandates an 8 year serviceability timeline for vehicles, with some exceptions for safety equipment and emissions equipment. Ford is notorious for adhering strictly to this timeline, dropping parts availability at exactly the 8 year mark for years now.
Even back when these were new, I remember rarely seeing two-door models of the GM C-bodies. Two-door 98s, Electras, and CDVs seemed to be solely the province of empty-nesters and older singles who presumably seldom carried passengers in the back seat, and for whom the Toronado, Riviera, and Eldorado just did not appeal or were judged to be not worthy of their loftier price tags. As a father of young children, this was really a left-field choice for you.
While I can’t say I would have wanted one of these in the 1980s or 1990s, I am now of the age that was the heart of the target market for the 98. I wish there was still a modern-day version of these big, comfortable sedans for me to consider now, but the market has largely passed this segment by. So, I’m stuck with either the soon-to-be-discontinued Toyota Avalon or one of its Lexus brethren, or some kind of cushy crossover, like an RX 350.
“I’m stuck with either the soon-to-be-discontinued Toyota Avalon or one of its Lexus brethren”
Don’t forget the Genesis – they still offer some appealing sedans, though certainly not inexpensive.
Weird to see one without a vinyl top. I thought the 88/98 lesabre/electra looked better as 4 doors.
2 doors always needed some flash in the styling, which the 80-84 Coupe Deville delivered in spades IMO(despite its myrid faults I love the styling) Or the Riveria or Toranado if you didnt want to spend that much. Those were faster and drove nicer as well. Defintely had the flash factor.
My aunt had a 4 door navy blue/navy blue leather 98, beautiful car and stood out at family gatherings cause everybody else was driving minivans or small cars. It defintely was the car of her deceased husband though, she traded it in on a new plain white Plymouth Acclaim.
I have yet to encounter one that does, even when it’s working exactly as intended. The task of climatising is fundamentally different in a mobile automobile than in a stationary building. A control of only temperature selection and ‘let the system do the rest’ is appropriate in a building, but it’s the wrong damn way to do it in a car. Just provide thoughtfully-designed controls and allow me to select particulars of how much air, at what temperature, from what location.
The one in the 77 New Yorker worked reasonably well. Ok, except for the 0 degree day on the highway when the heat temp kept getting cooler. But I agree with you that there is just no reason to deviate from manual control.
Yeah, “auto temp control” just screams for things to go wrong. Like those “electric , up/down”, radio antennas back in the late “60’s”. They didn’t even sound like a good idea.
The automatic climate control in my 2016 Civic works perfectly. Which does seem odd, as just about every one I’ve had previously never really did work that well.
Perhaps Honda got this concept right, whereas GM and Ford could not.
I just chalked it up to the technology having gotten better since those prior cars.
Maybe Honda got automatic climate control right at about that time… it works perfectly in our 2010 Odyssey as well.
What does works perfectly mean to you? Never have I ever, in a vehicle, wished for it to be 72°F or 17°C or whatever—I wish for it to be warmer or cooler, or for there to be less or more breeze from up here or down there. As far as I know, there is no automatic temperature control system that can meet these kinds of wishes.
What a shame. I’m of a fairly younger generation (class of 2000) than the author and I would absolutely have loved to own that car. I’m a die-hard BPO man with a particular affinity for Oldsmobile. It’s been hard to watch the prices on those old yachts climb in recent years. Locking me out of owning any more.
Quite an unusually optioned car, in the 80’s there were several Olds on our street and I well remember the tinkling wire wheels which was surprisingly loud.
A friend had a Regal with the auto climate control, his didn’t work at all. Luckily it never caught on, I just like the standard three dials.
JP, I have really enjoyed this article and your previous one on the LeSabre. (I currently own a 99 LeSabre and absolutely love it. It was my mother’s car, and I inherited it after she quit driving.)
Anyway, I wanted to comment on Buzzdog’s comment about how these Oldsmobile’s and Buicks were very popular in that unusual color which I think they called Rose Quartz. A lady at my church when I was about ten years old (1984) bought a new Ninety Eight two-door in that color. It was a very good car for her. It had the cloth interior in brown (which I think was the only interior color available with the “Rose Quartz”.
One funny thing was that Mrs. Neely always brought her niece and granddaughter to church with her, and they would sit in the back seat and play tick-tack-toe on the back of the front seat with chalk! She really got onto them for that.
She later traded that two-door for a four-door Ninety Eight in the same color, so I guess she really liked them.
Thanks again for these two great stories.
The particular color I referred to was code 62, and referred to as “Light Briar Brown” by Chevrolet (except for the Camaro, where it was called “Light Brown”), Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick; Cadillac called it “Woodland Haze.” Most if not all of the divisions paired it with either a brown or burgundy interior; my Dad’s Fleetwood in that color had a brown interior and Woodland Haze vinyl top, while my sister’s Grand Prix had a burgundy interior and top.
It’s possible that the lady at your church adopted that color name on her own, much as my mother referred to the color of Dad’s car as “Champagne.” Looking at my paint catalog resources, the only carmakers to use the “Rose Quartz” color name in recent years are Saab (‘85 to ‘90), Ford/Lincoln/Mercury (‘87 to ‘89), BMW/Rolls Royce (‘16 to present).