Here’s another find from our excursions yesterday. Pinpointing the exact vintage of this Olds Cutlass (Ciera) Cruiser S would have been quite difficult had I not spoken with the owner at the graduation party we were attending.
The young lady driving the car related that it was given to their family by grandparents who had parked it beside their barn when it was no longer needed… a bit of cleanup and fresh gas put it back on the road with a minimum of fuss.
The presence of a “Supplemental Inflatable Restraint” confirms this is a 1993+ model, as airbags were made standard in that year. As a 1994 model, the car has the 3.1l V6 (160hp) engine that succeeded the 3.3l from the previous year, along with a four-speed automatic transmission. A 2.2l four-cylinder engine making 120hp (up 10hp from 1993) was also available.
The SUV craze was in full ramp-up mode in the mid 1990s, and traditional station wagon offerings were getting mighty thin. There was still a market for the Cutlass Ciera, and sales stayed well north of 100,000 annually (all body styles combined), due to older, conservative buyers snapping up these tried and true A Bodies. Quality was good in these last years of production, too—the car had been in production for over a decade—long enough for even GM to get it right.
Not only was the Cruiser one of the last remaining station wagons on the market at this time, it was also one of the last Oldsmobiles to wear the Rocket emblem. After a fourteen year run, the Ciera name would be retired and Cutlass would become an N Body starting with the 1997 model year.
The sheer number of Cieras produced over such a long timeframe with decent quality toward the end ensures they will be around for some years yet—true Roaches of the Road™.
Note: A rerun of an older post.
I had a 1990 Ciera SL four door for a while and I thought it was a great car. It handled well, had enough room for the family and the a/c would turn the car into a meat locker. I wanted a wagon, but the cheapest ones ran around $3000. I was so broke at the time I could only afford $1000. I paid $700 for my Ciera and I did the front brakes on the road in front of my house. I drove it for a year and sold it for the same $700. I did one set brake pads and two oil changes. The pads were like $20 and the oil was much the same price. It also had the nicest instrument cluster I have ever seen.
Pinpointing the exact model year is actually quite easy. The VIN is visible at the bottom of the windshield on the driver’s side. The tenth character of the VIN is the model year.
Pin pointing exact year on some cars is almost impossible except in NZ the rego labels accurately describe what you are looking at, its handy. my daily is one example they built that model for 4 years stopped introduced a new model then built some more of the prior model but with updated engine, dealers cant find it on their books.
It wasn’t just “older conservative buyers” buying these in my recollection; there were at least two other groups it was popular with. One was rental car companies – the GM A bodies were the ubiquitous fleet car of the era. The other was bargain hunters of any age who just wanted a nicely equipped car at a low price. These people would discover that for the price of a base Camry or Accord sedan or wagon with a four-cylinder engine, stick shift, and crank windows, you could get a Ciera or Century with a V6, auto, power seats/locks/windows, tilt, cruise, and a nice stereo. The tooling for these was long ago amortized and GM could build them cheaply. The bargain status of the Ciera wasn’t obvious by looking at the sticker, but there were heavy discounts (and sometimes rebates) to be had on A bodies whilst Accords or Camrys sold for full price and sometimes higher.
Bring that rear in, lift the vehicle and offer the AWD system that the 6000 later used, and it would have been the GM’s first grasp of a crossover.
That’s correct, they called it the Pontiac Aztek.
By the late 80s, GM pretty much had the bugs worked out of these. And the tooling paid for. I read somewhere that even by 1996, GM sold 50k Cieras a year with negligible advertising. Had it not been for the 1997 government mandate of the side door beams (which spelled the end of long running designs), who knows how long they would have been made. They were good simple cars. Good looking, clean lines. Easy to work on, easy to get parts for. I’ve been driving A bodies since 1996 and they’re very reliable too. GM did screw up with the intake manifold gasket on the 3100, but that was across the board, not specific to these cars. Keep them from rusting out and they keep on going. All of mine have had 200k+ until too much rust took them out, and my 89 Celebrity rolled 315k yesterday. I also picked up a rust free 90 Celebrity Eurosport last week, that needs some odds and ends fixed. That would be the 5th one of these wagons I’ve had over the years.
This is my 89 Cutlass Cruiser. I get compliments almost every time I take it out, so I started taking it to shows. I realized how old these cars really are, when I took it to a drive thru detailing place on the way to a show. The young worker waved his hand a few times trying to get the tailgate to open, but of course it required the key, and I couldn’t go on the floor to tell him. So I never got the cargo area vacuumed out that day.
Always amazed me how GM kept these in production for YEARS after the w-body sedan hit the market in 1990. Toyota and Honda sure as hell didnt sell the old obsolete model alongside its replacement. GM was a hot mess by the 90s, way too much capacity, so figured keep on building these and sell them for peanuts. Would be better than idling or closing the factory and paying the UAW workers to not work.
But selling something so out of date to rental companies or old frumpy people really did a number on the brand image of Buick and Olds. They were now “old fogie” cars and to be avoided like the plague by young people because they gave off a seriously uncool vibe.
This article was originally posted in 2013, and ran again in 2019, not long after we bought our 2018 Buick Regal TourX. Marketed as a crossover, it’s really just a mid-size station wagon. Still have it, and still enjoying it, with about 107K miles on the clock so far. I won’t do the research, but maybe it’s the last true wagon GM has manufactured (to date)?
I did, however, look up the specs in order to compare with the subject vehicle of the article:
1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser
Length: 194.4
Width: 69.5 (with mirrors)
Wheelbase: 104.9
Weight: 3086 lb
Engine: 3.1l V6, 165 HP, 190 lb-ft
Fuel Economy: 17/26, 20 combined
2018 Buick Regal TourX
Length: 196.3
Width: 73.3 (not including mirrors)
Wheelbase: 111.4
Weight: 3708 lb
Engine: 2.0l turbo DOHC four, 250 HP, 295 lb-ft
Fuel Economy: 21/29, 24 combined
Overall length is very close, but the TourX has a longer wheelbase and is both wider and heavier by over 600lb. It also manages better mileage with its turbo 4. Ours regularly gets in the low 30s on the highway.