The Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was one of America’s most popular cars of the ’70s, and often the most popular automotive nameplate. A strong reputation and a handsome facelift kept the Cutlass Supreme selling well in 1981 despite a nasty economic recession, but the Oldsmobile’s era of sales supremacy was nearing its end.
If you look at the 1978–1982 sales figures for the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, you might conclude that U.S. buyers had abruptly tired of the popular Olds intermediate after 1979. Retail sales of the Cutlass Supreme dropped by more than one-third in 1980, and while they stabilized after that, they were still significantly below the level of Oldsmobile’s ’70s success. The Cutlass Supreme had also been bumped out of its former No. 1 slot as America’s favorite automotive nameplate. It’s easy to spin theories about what might have gone wrong. Had Americans turned away from the Oldsmobile formula of middle-class luxury? Was there a backlash about the styling or the reduction in engine options? Did buyers wake up one morning in 1980 or 1981, decide that domestic intermediates just didn’t do it for them anymore, and switch en masse to imports?
For the most part, the answer to all those questions is no. What happened was that the aftermath of 1979’s second oil crisis had led to high oil prices and very high inflation, soon followed by punishingly high interest rates. Wages hadn’t kept pace with inflation, so Americans’ money didn’t go as far as it had a year or two earlier, and cars had gotten a lot more expensive in a hurry: The base price of a Cutlass Supreme coupe had gone from $5,420 at the end of the 1979 model year to $6,815 for the final 1980 models and $8,025 for the final 1981 models, an increase of close to 50 percent in only two years. On top of that, the prime lending rate was around 20 percent for much of 1980 and 1981 — try financing a new car with rates like that! Things got so bad in 1981 that even popular small cars like the Chevrolet Chevette and Toyota Corolla took some hits.
Considering all that, the Cutlass Supreme was still doing quite well. It was no longer THE bestselling car in America, but it was still close to the top, and it remained the most popular intermediate, beating out its less-supreme Cutlass siblings, the Buick Regal, the Pontiac Grand Prix, and both the Chevrolet Malibu and Monte Carlo. Since the B-body Olds Delta 88 was also still one of the top-selling standard-size cars, Oldsmobile was doing very well. 1981 U.S. model year sales topped 880,000 cars and model year production hit 940,655, making Olds No. 3 in America. Shaky economy or no, it was still Oldsmobile’s game to lose.
For 1981, the Cutlass Supreme got a well-considered styling touch-up, which also improved its aerodynamics for better highway mileage. The Cutlass Supreme coupe, by far the most popular body style, had about 15 percent less drag than before, and it was quite handsome, losing the slight gawkiness the 1978-vintage A-body had previously had. The Cutlass Supreme was 200 inches long on a 108.1-inch wheelbase and had a curb weight of 3,300 to 3,400 lb with typical options, so what had counted as “downsized” in 1978 was starting to seem a little bulky for the new decade. However, a lot of buyers seemed to think the Cutlass Supreme was a good size, and they clearly liked the looks.
This presented Oldsmobile with a challenge, because with early-’80s engine technology, the Cutlass Supreme was heavy enough that its gas mileage wasn’t great. Achieving acceptable Corporate Average Fuel Economy (the federal standard for 1981 was 22 mpg) meant that the only gasoline engines available in the Cutlass Supreme for 1981 were the LD5 3.8-liter Buick V-6 and the LV8 Oldsmobile 4.3-liter (260-cid) V-8. Almost two-thirds of buyers chose the V-6, which was actually more powerful than the V-8, with 110 hp and 190 lb-ft of torque.
Depending on which sources you believe, the 260 V-8 produced either 105 hp or 100 hp in 1981. It had no more torque than the V-6 and returned 2 mpg less on the EPA city cycle, despite a lower numerical axle ratio (2.29, compared to 2.41 for the V-6), so it wasn’t much of a bargain, even for only $50 more than the V-6. The 260 was a durable engine, but there was nothing much to be done with it from a performance standpoint, so you had to be content to be stylish in the slow lane.
Although this Cutlass Supreme coupe has the racy-looking Super-Sport III color-keyed wheels and what looks like a little more forward rake than was originally specified in Lansing, it doesn’t appear to have the optional firm ride & handling package. With the standard suspension, these cars were tuned for a cushy boulevard ride at the expense of handling. That still seemed to be what most Oldsmobile buyers wanted — the sporty Cutlass Calais, which came standard with the handling suspension, full instrumentation, and bucket seats, was a very weak seller compared to the Cutlass Supreme.
You could get bucket seats in the regular Cutlass Supreme, but this one has the standard Custom Sport bench, which has a fold-down center armrest, but is not divided. Fancier button-tufted pillow-style velour seats — which were becoming an increasingly divisive love-it-or-hate-it point by this time — were still available on the pricier Cutlass Supreme Brougham, which could also be ordered with leather upholstery.
Personally, I think the standard cloth upholstery offered the best balance of plushness and restraint, but Oldsmobile was trying to accommodate several distinct sets of tastes.
For the most part, the Cutlass Supreme did that pretty well. With its restrained color combinations, woodgrain applique, and bright-edged trim, I’d describe the interior as “median American plush.” Most potential objections (like the lack of instruments beyond the ribbon speedometer and fuel gauge) could be easily addressed on the options list, often for not too much extra money. Even in basic form, the Cutlass Supreme delivered a decent level of comfort and overall refinement.
I should pause for a moment here to clarify a point of confusion about this particular Cutlass Supreme. The seller called its exterior color “Light Sandstone” (which Oldsmobile actually called “Sandstone Beige” in 1981), but that’s not what it looks like, and the trim tag pegs it as Pastel Sauterne (paint code 35), which I think was a one-year-only Olds color. So, if you’re confused that the way I’m describing this car differs from how the original sales listing did, that’s why.
According to the 1981 Color Chip and Fabric Selector, the only recommended interior color with Pastel Sauterne was Sauterne. (The seller calls this Sandstone, which was only available with vinyl upholstery in the standard Cutlass Supreme.) However, there are some interior components that seem mismatched, like the door armrests, whose pinkish hue suggests they might have been sourced from a car with a Sandstone interior.
In any event, Oldsmobile built a total of 187,875 Cutlass Supreme coupes for 1981, plus another 93,855 Cutlass Supreme Brougham coupes and 53,952 Cutlass Supreme Brougham sedans — 335,682 cars in total for the model year. So, Americans (and some Canadians) were still buying quite a few of these cars, even if fewer people could swing the new car payments in these recessionary years than had in the late ’70s.
For Oldsmobile, the trouble still lay ahead. By 1983, the economy was improving and new car sales were picking up again. The Cutlass Supreme, which hadn’t done badly even in the worst part of the recession, was still selling briskly enough that it soon became a victim of its own success: Rather than replace it immediately, GM decided to continue selling the RWD Cutlass Supreme alongside the new FWD A-body Cutlass Ciera. Two and a half years later, they did the same thing again with the N-body Calais, which was originally supposed to be the FWD Cutlass Supreme successor.
For about four years, from 1983 through 1986, this seemed like a great strategy — Oldsmobile sold more than a million cars a year in that period. However, the next time the market cooled, in 1987, it abruptly became clear that Oldsmobile couldn’t sustain its previous momentum. Where once it had a popular intermediate line whose name recognition and reputation kept it selling even through sour economic times, Olds now had two quite different products with confusingly similar names (three if you count the small Calais, which became the Cutlass Calais for 1988). Meanwhile, the once-hot Cutlass Supreme nameplate was now tied to an aging RWD platform in which GM had no intention of making any more significant investments.
The familiar RWD Cutlass Supreme survived through 1988, steadily declining in sales. For its final year, Oldsmobile renamed it Cutlass Supreme Classic and sold it alongside its sleek but underwhelming FWD successor, which only served to emphasize how little the two versions had in common. I can’t really envision a lot of customers who liked one of these cars having much interest in the other.
Oldsmobile had taken the path of most resistance: In trying to have things both ways, they had managed to hopelessly dilute the Cutlass name, reduce the Cutlass Supreme to a nostalgia act, and reinforce traditionalists’ resistance to the newer FWD platforms. One of the most basic rules of marketing is that prospective buyers need to know what you’re selling. By 1988, I’m not convinced even Oldsmobile was too sure about that anymore, and the division eventually paid a heavy price for it.
Even with its underpowered engines, I’m pretty sure there will be some readers who feel this 1981 Cutlass Supreme is what an Oldsmobile ought to be, and what it should have remained. At least from a marketing standpoint, they might not be wrong.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – This Is 40 (by Brendan Saur)
Driveway Find: 1980 Olds Cutlass Supreme Coupe – It Was Dad’s Favorite Car As Well As America’s (by Paul N)
CCCCC Part 12: 1982 Cutlass Supreme Brougham Coupe – A Classic Death (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham Sedan – Why Brougham When You Can Supreme Brougham? (by Tom Klockau)
When I was car shopping as a young single man, I really wanted to like all of these GM intermediate coupes. Many of my friends had Monte Carlos, etc., but non-reclining seat backs meant I couldn’t fit without bumping my head on the headliner.
My Mother had a 81 Supreme Brogham with the 231 V6…..light blue with the white half vinyl top. I also had the THM 350C trans witch made for bullet proof drivetrain. It was a gutless wonder but got good MPGs and was reliable as could be.
The steering wheel in the pics above looks like the one on my moms car (except hers had some fake wood trim) so it looks stock to me. Hers also had the split bench with the fancier cloth and also had Super Stock lll wheels, which still look awesome to this day.
The center part of the steering wheel looks stock, but I’m pretty sure the extra-thick wood rim and leather grip sections are not, nor is the wood shift knob.
The steering wheel rim actually has a fancy cover over the stock wheel. The wheels on those cars were made of the hard plastic that cracked from sun exposure. You are correct on the shift knob, it looks home made to me. I don’t recall exactly, but 1981 may have been the year of the restyled factory shift knob.
The lower door trim panels also look like the classic sun induced deterioration that brings out the pink in the plastic. After several years in the Texas sun those cars looked like they had a three tone interior.
Good article, Aaron. I dealt with many of these in my years at a Oldsmobile/Cadillac dealer in the mid-eighties.
Ahh, that makes sense.
Also, my Mom’s Brogham had the eggcrate grill inserts that looked (IMO) a ton better than the smooth wire inserts of this model.
I thought my 81 had the eggcrate inserts as well. Is it possible the subject car of this thread is really a 1982 model?
No, it’s not. The original ad listing includes a photo of the VIN plate. If this were an ’82, which it isn’t, the 10th digit of the VIN would be C rather than B. On 1981 coupes, the eggcrate grille inserts were on the Cutlass Supreme Brougham (M47) and Cutlass Calais (K47); this is a base Cutlass Supreme (R47).
My theory on the door armrest color mismatch…the GM plastics of that era tended to fade/deteriorate quickly – as many prior owners have experienced firsthand. I have a feeling that resulted in the color mismatch – not a replacement attempt…
And at the risk of over-elaborating on this…I just noticed in the picture that one vertical surface of the armrest – the door latch surround – is a darker/more appropriate color.
So the mismatch is most certainly caused by the algorithm of inferior GM plastics combined with time and light…
Here’s a more direct shot of the door trim. The top section of the armrest and the upper part of the panel are what I think is probably the right color for this trim combo, but the rest of the lower vertical trim panel is not.
It is entirely possible that it’s due to deterioration, as you suggest. The thing that’s giving me pause, though, is that the pinkish hue of the lower door panel and the rest of the armrest also seems consistent with the “Sandstone” beige interior, which is how the seller described the interior of this car. Sandstone was similar in shade, but more pink than yellow. So, did the lower door panels coincidentally fade to a different available hue, or did someone try to address previous sun damage by substituting the panels from a different car? The Sauterne combination was not very common, so if you needed to replace some trim pieces later, the correct colors might have been hard to find.
I dunno! You may be right, but I spent a long time puzzling over this the other day (time I apparently should have spent on proofreading, ack), for those reasons.
Actually…I see your point. But the thing I have noticed about those ‘quality’ plastics that only GM could create…different component parts of a larger piece deteriorated at different paces.
Our family Vega (sounds like a good title for a Netflix series…) had a green door panel…and the armrest went pea-soup while the panel itself evolved into a distinct avacado…
In my opinion, the ’78-80 A/G bodies had bad proportioning. The ’81 restyle was a big improvement, even though the proportions didn’t really change. It hid those proportions much better.
The second oil crisis and high interest rates slowed sales of the bigger stuff almost overnight. Instead of hauling A/B bodies, trucks and vans during the summer of 1979 out of Oshawa, I was sent to the Wilmington DE plant and hauled Chevettes. I also spent considerable time at the Tarrytown NY plant hauling the X bodies which were hot sellers. By the summer of ’81, demand was picking up again for the Oshawa ON plants products and I went back to hauling the bigger stuff and trucks/vans again.
Yeah, it’s a surprisingly good tailoring job.
The pace car photo seems to be misidentified as a Ciera 500 when it appears to be a Calais 500. So desperate of Olds to call so many different cars Cutlass just to keep the name at the top of the ranks…
Ack, really batting a thousand today. Yes, that is a Calais 500, and it even says so in the image filename and ALT text. I’ll fix the caption.
You do an amazing job here at CC and I/we am/are so glad you are here! You have plenty of passes!
Any idea on how many 81 cutlass supreme diesel were made? 2 door coupes?
Cutlass Supreme diesel production for 1981 was 33,675 cars. I don’t have any breakdown by body style.
Aaron, you say that “1981 model year sales topped 880,000 cars and model year production hit 940,655”. What don’t I understand about the 60,000-unit difference in those figures?
Also, while we’re on the subject of math, if the V6 final drive ratio was 2.41 and the V8’s was 2.29, then the V8 ratio was higher, but lower numerically.
Most likely the excess production was sold “overseas,” which for Oldsmobile means Canada and Mexico. Of course, Olds sales in Mexico would have been a drop in the bucket, so it’s really Canada.
Canada vehicle sales are typically about 10% of US sales, which for Olds would calculate out to about 88,000 vehicles, but Canadian buyers also prefer lower cost options so they lost some sales to Chevrolet in that market.
Two things: First, some of production went to Canada (or Mexico, but mostly Canada) and was not sold in the States by U.S. Oldsmobile dealers; I should clarify that in the text. Second, while in good years there’s a close correspondence between production and retail sales, that isn’t always the case when the economy is bad or if the company is doing very badly (like Chrysler in the ’70s), which can leave either the manufacturer or the dealers with a larger-than-usual stockpile of unsold cars.
Whoops, quite right — I’ll fix that in the text.
This article brought back great memories. Bought an 82 Supreme Coupe when I graduated college. Hard-earned money from working my way through college in a Sears Auto Center. Beautiful, excellent car. Similar to the pictured car with the Super Stock wheels. The re-styled 81 and newer Supremes were very nice cars to drive. Olds made their less-expensive models feel like the most expensive 98 or Toronado. That was the key to their success. I wish I still had it! One of my favorite cars.
Would you prefer a warm, soft color associated with sweet white wine, or a color associated with sandy rock?
At its peak the Cutlass Supreme was also the most stolen car in America, which is something of an accolade in itself.
It was also the top selling car so statistically it does make sense, assuming thieves were going for newish models
Yes, that’s customary. The popular Honda Accord has often been one of the most stolen cars in the U.S. as well. For one, there are a lot of them (more targets), and because they’re common, there’s an illicit market for cars that can be stripped for parts.
At my SEC school in 1979-1983, the Cutlass Supreme seemed to be the official car. They were everywhere, particularly among the sorority girls. Relatively inexpensive, smooth ride, and reliable. Good highway cruiser for those trips to football games or back home for the weekend.
They were designed to be inoffensive and bland, and they succeeded.
Looking at the instrument panel, I would be surprised if ANYONE accidentally left their brights on…
My first car was a 1981 Cutlass Supreme that I bought 2 years old with 16,000 miles. It was a good deal because it had suffered some cosmetic damage to the hood and roof from a bad hailstorm.
It had the 260 V-8, which was truly a miserable powertrain. No power at all unless you downshifted; partial throttle while doing down the road did almost nothing. Sometimes it felt like it was even slowing slightly, so unless you punched it enough to downshift, you got nothing.
As an 18 year old, this wasn’t going to fly for very long and I worked and saved up my pesos to trade it in and buy a brand new 1984 Mustang GT,
Nice article. As mentioned, I also thought the downsized 78-80 models looked “stunted” – and the 81 update was a major improvement; not only on the Cutlass but its other A/G body siblings as well. Still think the Cutlass looked the best.
My 81 Supreme was very softly suspended – I would have preferred a more firm setting but I’m pretty certain most buyers were happy with it.
I’ll have the “teal, blue” one.
My mom was in the market for a new car in 1979. I remember us test driving a few Cutlass Supreme coupes. They would have liked the brougham with the tufted pillow seats and all the bells and whistles. She ended up ordering from the factory a 79 Mustang notchback with the 5 liter V8, Ghia package, whatever the most upscale trim was. It was white with a mahogany or oxblood leather interior that looked pretty good with the thin orange pinstripes on those cars. (Most of the white cars had tan interior and definitely the darker color looked richer.). It was an unusual but pretty color combination so that’s probably why they ordered it. It had chrome spoke wheel covers. It cost about $8000 so that increased price of the Cutlass caught my eye. I turned 16 in 1980, so I was glad she chose the Mustang as I learned to drive on it.
I started working in 1986 and my new best friend at work had a V6 Mustang similar to Mom’s but with the tan and lesser trim. It looked tired inside already. She sold it for one of those Cutlass Ciera sedans, probably around 1988, as she was pregnant and wanted the four door. (It was not very roomy back there even with four doors.) I couldn’t tell you what year (it had that silly international flags emblem) but to me it seemed plasticky. It certainly didn’t compare to those Cutlass Supremes in their heyday.
Looks nice if a bit bland, you really had to be there to grasp how popular these cars were .
When I briefly worked for Natzel Olds we sold a _lot_ of these grill inserts .
Several of the dealer’s employees owned these and loved them .
-Nate
The new 1981 Cutlass LS sedan we orderd for April 1981 deliver was this light suaterne (or in at least some buick books it is called pastel waxberry). It had theh 4 door version of the cloth seating as shown in some pictures. We now acquired a Frost Beige 1981 Buick Riviera with sandstone topo and sauterne or similar interior this year. We love the contracting but not harsh exterior comparison. Having the newly acquired Buick and seeing this article about 1981 Cutlass sure brings back memories to ordering that new car when we were younger.