One constant throughout my life is the considerable amount of time I have spent daydreaming. Each of us has his or her own obstacles to overcome and realities to face, but my vivid imagination has often enough provided escape into future possibilities, and I consider it to be a true and special gift. The real test becomes identifying the steps to take to make those daydreams reality, then executing those plans, but it all starts with the idea of conceiving what one seeks to accomplish. This process for me has sometimes involved my passive observation of passing clouds in the background – not as an actual focal point, but something for me to look toward as I process my thoughts.
There are also times when I have looked at clouds for their own sake, as they dominate the sky with their vast, white expanses of suspended moisture moving steadily and surely above, in ever shifting forms and shapes. I remember my mother having said years ago that one thing she remembered from my family’s time of living in Flint during my upbringing was that there were a lot of cloudy, overcast days. Perhaps it had never occurred to me that this, by itself, was necessarily a bad thing.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Monday, July 15, 2019.
I’m a regular beachgoer during warm weather months here in Chicago, and it’s true that sometimes toward the end of summer when beachworthy days are numbered with increasing obviousness, my plans have been derailed when an otherwise warm day meant I had to stay inside if a canopy of thick clouds and/or rain was in the forecast. From my kitchen table workstation, I have a nearly unbroken view of the sky, passing clouds, and airplanes arriving to O’Hare that can sometimes serve as a welcome diversion amid the tackling of my daily business.
Today’s featured car, unlike many others I have written about, is one with which I actually have some degree of personal experience. In the mid-’90s, my brother had owned an ’83 Ninety-Eight Regency, also white in color, but with a burgundy landau roof and velour interior, and the wire wheel covers (not the standard discs as seen on this example). He had purchased it as the $1,000 “dealer’s special” on the lot, and it was in fine shape for a car that was around fifteen years old at the time. When I had gone to visit him one year while on spring break, he was working during part of our visit. I had a couple of options one day while he was at work: to hang out at the house and wait for him to get home, or take the “Mothership” out for a drive around Stockton.
I probably took a lot more risks in my twenties than I have so far in my forties, but even with that in mind, I was extremely reluctant to drive my brother’s car. It just seemed so huge, all 221.1 inches long of it. Aside from the ’72 Plymouth Fury I was almost born in, my brother’s Ninety-Eight was, far and away, the largest car anyone in my immediate family had ever owned. It was the most un-California car he could have selected for purchase, but thrift runs in our family (self included), and the price was right. After probably less than an hour of deciding while thumbing through his CD collection, I grabbed the keys and was out the door.
What struck me immediately was how cloudlike the ride of the big, C-Body Olds was and how rich and luxurious the interior felt. The other car I had grown to associate with my brother, a base-model ’85 Renault Encore hatchback (without even an AM radio), seemed exactly one hundred eighty degrees from this Ninety-Eight. While the Encore remains a positive memory with peppy, responsive acceleration, comfortable seating, top-notch utility, reliability (not a typo), and a certain, spartan charm, the Oldsmobile was quiet and smooth, coddled me in its pillow-tufted seats, had acres of interior room, and felt a little cave-like, as if I could have reclined the front seat and taken a nap in there if circumstances necessitated it for some reason.
Depressing the accelerator definitely produced some cloudlike sensations of moving forward, in the slow and deliberate manner of a billowy nimbus cloud wallowing its way across the sky… ahem, intersection. I don’t remember what was under the hood, but for both 1982 and ’83, a 125-hp, four-barrel, 4.1L V6 (a car this large came with a V6) engine was standard equipment, with a 140-horse Olds 307 V8 and a diesel 350 V8 with only 105 horsepower also available. Any estimated zero-to-sixty mph time is of little relevance in a car like this. Suffice it to say that my brother’s 3,900-pound Oldsmobile had enough scoot during the afternoon I drove it around so that it didn’t embarrass either itself or me.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, April 17, 2019.
It was probably around the time our featured car was new, model year 1982, that I had started to notice a disturbing trend that minor year-to-year changes in car models either weren’t happening or were so minor as to seem insignificant. Eighty-two was the third model year of the reskinned GM full-sized cars that arrived for ’77, and the only way I was able to tell the model year of this example was by a license plate search. As it went in ’82, these were popular mid-range big cars with almost 91,000 sold, outselling C-Body platform-mate Buick Electra (76,000 units) and Ford’s Panther-platform Mercury Marquis (77,000 units), both of which also included a station wagon in their numbers. It’s also noteworthy that two-doors accounted for only 13% of Ninety-Eight sales in ’82.
I normally get to see my brother and his family during the Thanksgiving holidays, but unfortunately, that will not be the case this year. Almost as unfortunate is the fact the only old picture I could find of the Mothership didn’t include me in it, so to spare my brother any unwanted attention, I’ve omitted that photo from this essay. I miss my brother’s family, and I also miss Oldsmobile, which had already passed the fifteenth year of its disappearance last year, with the last Alero rolling off the line in April of 2004.
There had been various Oldsmobiles that had captured my imagination over the years, though admittedly, most of them were Cutlasses or variants thereof. Nonetheless, like a sky full of clouds, I had taken for granted that Olds would always be there, continuing on in the background, forevermore producing cars for middle America. Then, after I had focused on other things for what seemed like a short, indeterminate amount of time, like a passing cloud, Olds was gone.
Lakeview, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, January 3, 2016.
It’s clouds’ illusions I recall,
I really don’t know clouds at all…
Great song. I almost linked a playlist, but realize I had done that (sort of) with one of my last essays.
You shouldn’t hesitate to post songs or playlists you associate with the cars you write up; it’s part of your talent and your voice here at CC, and it sets you in your own class. I think your appreciation for music is part and parcel of your appreciation for aesthetics and the senses, which what makes your writing poetic and evocative!
Scott, thank you so much. Just a minor case of second-guessing myself. 🙂
I enjoy the playlists. I’ve discovered some new music from reading your essays (which I always look forward to), so don’t hold back on the playlists.
Joseph
Great write up and requiem to Oldsmobile. Even though I can’t forgive the General for laying waste to Oldsmobile and Pontiac, I do admit that it is getting to be a long time now. I gassed up my ’83 98 during earlier in the pandemic, and the kid at the gas station asked what kid of car it was….He had no idea of what was an Oldsmobile.
Thanks, Dean. Your last comment has me wondering if I should conduct an experiment with my younger nephews and nieces and ask them if they can name an Oldsmobile model. I wonder what they would say.
Take off the back doors and the vinyl roof and this was my 84 98 Regency. I wonder if the coupe was even less popular by then – the sedans were all around me but the coupes were real oddballs even when new.
Mine even had those base-level wheelcovers. You had to be really careful taking them off – one tire shop pulled them off with a sharp jerk and then I spent the next several days chasing after them after they escaped from the car at speed. They were so flat and thin that they bent easily.
Cloudlike is a perfect description for these. I’ll bet your brother’s had the 307 – I think the V6 was a rarity in these. Those velour seats really coddled the driver. I wish mine had been as trouble-free as his – mine suffered some electrical gremlins and an automatic temp system that was never right. Oh yes, and a transmission. At 55k miles. Ouch. OTOH, the car always drove nicer than the theoretically identical 89 Cadillac Brougham that followed it. Just sample variation, I suppose.
I was curious about that too, so I looked up the numbers in my Standard Catalog of Oldsmobile book and made a quick graph. Here’s what the body style breakdown looked like for this generation of 98. Seems as if the 2-door was quite popular for the first three years after the 1977 redo… for the ’77-’79 model years, the 2-doors accounted for over a quarter of all sales.
But then that sank for 1980, and the proportion of 2-dr. sales kept dropping:
The ’77-79 had a distinct faster roofline, a proper coupe, with opera windows. The ’80 and later shared the blunt roofline with the sedan and lost the distinctive side windows. Once the coupe looked like a 2 door sedan there was less incentive to buy one. Big coupes lost steam in the ’80s and ’90s for several reasons – increasing child seat use amongst them – but the relative unattractiveness of ’80s coupes vs. ’70s coupes played a role.
Full-size coupes had been losing ground with the rise in popularity of the personal luxury coupe in the late-’60’s/early-’70’s. It parallels the trend the full-sized convertibles suffered. The end of the two door hardtop may have hastened this as well. Lincoln reintroduced the two door hardtop for 1966, saw it gain in popularity in the ’70’s only to fade with the Panther platform, ending after MY 1981.
I looked at one of these once, but a 2 door. It turned out to have considerable rust, no exhaust at all & an increasingly flakey owner, so I moved on quickly. Bought my convertible a couple of weeks later, so it worked out for the best.
Not usually a big fan of white cars, but the vinyl top and the pinstripe make this one work.
A fine survivor but the color combined with those wheel covers just don’t quicken my pulse. The interior color does lend itself to a number of colors one could repaint the exterior.
No doubt this Olds is still percolating away some where. I saw one or two of these still doing their thing in Kansas City this past weekend.
Joe whenever you get a parking space in your garage you could do much worse than acquiring one of these. I can see you driving a burgundy example.
Jason, you have me wondering if I could navigate the underground parking in my building in one of these. Granted, I’ve had more experience with parallel parking since I’ve lived in Chicago, but I wonder if that would translate to skill with avoiding contact with the concrete posts down there. There is a big, old, full-sized SUV down there, so if that person can do it, so could I.
I do like the dove gray shade of the velour interior.
I can’t remember where I found it, but I happen to have a picture of the VERY last Oldsmobile: a 2004 Alero GLS. As the banner at the top reads, it was truly the end of an era spanning 107 years.
I can relate to the daydreaming habit when I’ve got nothing else to do in my spare time. My annual vacation at Edisto Beach, SC is an especially good time to daydream when I’m on the porch staring out at the beach & ocean. Oddly enough, some parts of my dreams have actually become reality in one way or another, though a few sacrifices were required in the process (what you gotta do to make it all happen). You simply can’t have it all–THAT’S life for ya. Just enjoy whatever you can of it one day at a time.
John, I can appreciate your life philosophy, completely. We’d all do well to think that way, especially this year.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/automotive-history-capsule-the-last-oldsmobiles-falling-with-style/
I find these had rather a timeless look to them, still attractive to this day. If you see one in the wild, particularly from a distance, it stands out as being so different from anything else on the road.
I was surprised that you quoted this car as being 3900 pounds, I would have thought them to be much heftier, perhaps 4500, especially the four door. I’m not doubting you, I was just surprised these were not heavier.
Great find!
Moparlee, you’re probably right about this car being heavier than 3,900 pounds. That was just the base weight quoted in my automotive encyclopedia. As others usually point out here in other cases, fluids and things would push it over the two-ton mark.
I do agree that these were attractively styled.
Nice find, Joseph. I think all the CCs around here all head north sometimes. 🙂
Not long after I showed up, my dad got a company car, a ’79 98 (so a little different, not as formal of a roofline, mainly) in silver with a silver vinyl top and bordello-red leather interior. At the time, the silver was a standout color, unlike today, and that was a Nice Car for the time. We had that until ’89 when it was replaced with an H-body FWD LeSabre, but I wish my parents would have kept it for me to drive. In an alternate universe, I might still have it. 🙂
Since we’re talking about clouds, I’ll just leave this right here.
Aw, man! How I now wish this Ninety-Eight had been parked under a “happy, little tree”. Bob Ross was the man. Come to think of it, then next time I have insomnia or need to relax for some other reason, I need to search out episodes of “Joy of Painting” on YouTube.
You can learn to paint your own “little puffy clouds”… 🙂
221″ long. One inch longer than yesterday’s LTD II. But what a world of difference in the interior. The back seats in these were very commodious, with such generous leg room.
I had a soft spot for the 98 ever since it was downsized. Its charms were not lost on me, although by 1981, maybe those charms were starting to slip, given the lack of a husky engine in the options list.
Nice write-up. I feel your pain about the lack of visiting with friends and family.
“The back seats in these were very commodious”
The leg room wasn’t bad, but they really were not all that commodious – but then I bought one directly after driving a 68 Newport. The Chrysler could handle 3 child seats across the back with ease, but the Oldsmobile could only manage two. It irked me that a car that big could not handle my young family of 5.
I guess in fairness to the car, the child safety seat laws had not really taken hold when these were designed. But it’s not like any passenger car ever since has ever solved that issue. Thus trucks and suvs.
Here’s the stats, which confirms that GM’s design brief for the ’77 downsized cars was to be as roomy inside as their predecessors in all the key metrics.
42″ of rear leg room is quite generous. These did have longer wheelbases than the B Body cars, and unlike sometimes in the past, that extra length went into the rear passenger compartment, in the form of leg room. The B Body Olds 88 had 38.9″ of rear legroom, exactly the same as the Newport.
Although it doesn’t show up in stats, the ’77 GM B/Cs were much less roomy for three across in back than either the ’71-’76 B/C body or the 65-68 Chrysler C bodies. Compared to either of those pre-downsized cars, the ’77 B/C bodies had:
– rear wheel arches that intruded upon the edges of the seatback
– tumblehome that crowded your head if you sat at the edge of the seat
– outer seat belts latches that emerged from the seat cushion/seatback gap about 6 inches in from the end of the seat cushion, making it uncomfortable to sit all the way at the edge
– while the wheelhouses intruded on the edges of the seatback, the outer front edges of the seat cushion were cut away at the left and right front edges to allow legs to swing into and out of the seat, necessary due to the narrower door openings.
– Intrusion from the perimeter frame rails, much more noticeable in the ’77 than the ’76 GM cars, and nonexistant in the Mopars due to being unibodies.
– larger driveline tunnel
– thinner padding in the center passenger position due to large driveline tunnel
– the outer front seat tracks interfered with where you’d put your outer foot under the front seat if you were sitting near the edge of the seat, as you’d need to when there’s a center passenger. On cars with split bench front seats, there was just enough width between the seat rails for a pair of feet.
All of these thing combined to make the downsized ’77 B or C bodies uncomfortable for three abreast compared to the earlier bigger cars. But for two people they were still awesome. I did plenty of time sitting in the back seats of all of these (as they corresponded to my teen and tween years) and know of whence I speak.
I did look up hip room, and that’s where the biggest difference is: 55.4″ for the 98 and 63.3 for the Newport. That would undoubtedly explain Jim’s issues with the baby seats.
I am surprised about your comment regarding the tunnel being higher and larger, since the ’77’ up had a somewhat higher seating position which would tend to negate that.
Undoubtedly these were of course significantly smaller cars in their exterior dimensions. My original comment was about their generous leg room. That I don’t see that not being the case. But no, I don’t have a lot of three-across seating time experience in them.
I do have one observation about your experiences as a teen/tween: since you were undoubtedly growing during those years, perhaps your memories are skewed somewhat by your changing body size in relation to the newer cars your progressed through? I certainly felt a lot more cramped in the back seat at 16 than I did at 12. 🙂
Being a kid certainly made cars feel roomier, but I’ve also rode in the back of these enough as an adult (especially the downsized cars as taxicabs) and my impressions haven’t changed much. The box B/C bodies were very roomy in all directions for two people but still a bit cramped for three. The C has slightly more legroom and headroom in back, and a longer seat cushion (although the loose-cushion seats resulted in shorter effective seat cushions. The ’77s, both B and C, had shorter rear seat cushions than the ’76s probably to make legroom appear more expansive. I’ve never measured them, but the center tunnel did seem larger in the downsized cars (wider as well as higher), and the perimeter frame rail intrusions were more noticeable in the GM cars and also the Ford Panthers. My uncle had a ’79 R body Chrysler New Yorker which made for interesting contrast to my dad’s ’77 Bonneville – the rear seat was overall similar in size to the downsized GM B/Cs, but the footwells seemed much wider, with a smaller driveline hump and no frame-rail intrusion (I recall the term “unibody” kicked around in Chrysler brochures but didn’t understand what it meant until decades later). Also less intrusion from the wheelwells on the outer extremities of the seatback, and the frameless glass, resulting narrow A and B pillars, and lower cowl made it feel roomier than the Bonneville. I also did quite a bit of rear-seat time in Colonnade sedans, which made me wonder what all the fuss about the downsized Bs was. Really, the rear seat in the Colonnades felt overall just as roomy – a slightly lower (but longer) seat cushion, similar headroom and kneeroom, maybe more shoulder room, less intrusion from the wheelwells on the seat back. The big window in the C pillar, frameless glass, and narrower pillars all around made it feel airier.
Pictures work better than words to describe these things – this pic (from a CC feature) of a ’77 Bonneville rear seat shows how the curvature of the seatback to clear the wheelwells, the trimmed-off front corners of the seat cushion to help ease entry/exit, and frame rail intrusion combine to make the last 6 inches or so of the seat cushion useless for sitting on.
…and a top-down view. Not much support for your left leg. The pre-downsized cars weren’t like this, especially those from the 1960s.
yikes, meant this pic 2nd time
Thanks, Paul. Pointing out the length comparison with the LTD II you featured yesterday puts a lot into perspective. Hopefully all of us will be able to reconnect with folks in person next year.
I too sorta miss the 98s of this, their peak era, along with the contemporary A/G body Cutlasses. They were very comfortable, undemanding, yet competent cars fully capable of delivering years of service to satisfied owners; the cloud metaphor works well here.
With the demise of Oldsmobile, there seems to be a gap in the U.S. market for an upper-middle priced domestic alternative to Lexus. Buick is still around (and I preferred the Electra/Park Avenue to this generation of 98s) but barely registers a pulse in the market place. Lately, I have been viewing Lincoln as the best choice for this kind of vehicle, even though it is putatively a competitor for Cadillac instead, but it too is seldom seen on the road, despite Matthew McConnaughy’s best efforts.
Hard to believe Lincoln and Buick are both now SUV-only brands, at least in their native North America. (or will be with the impending discontinuation of the Continental)
The Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Regency sedans of this era will always be firmly entrenched in my youthful memories as my mother had three of them: a very red ’77, a darker red ’78, and another burgundy ’83 Regency Brougham.
I learned to drive in the ’78.
I was still a teen in ’83, so I thought the Brougham was super cool! Especially because it had an astroroof!
A dear friend gave us his Buick Electra when he and his wife decided not to own it anymore. It was for our third child. He drove that car with pleasure until he went into the Marine Corps in 1999 after which I drove it until I took delivery of a 2000 GMC Jimmy on 3/1/2000. We gave it to our service station mechanic to give to a young lady who needed transportation. What a comfortable and delightful ride!
My first car (which I still own, but sitting derelict in my mom’s garage with more than 200k miels) was an 83 Delta 88 Royale Brougham 2 door. I would say your write up gives a fairly accurate representation of what driving that car was like. And of course, in my youthful shenanigans, I did measure the 0-60 time once. It was 11.5 seconds with the 307 V8, TH-200 3-spd auto, and rear end gearing of 2.41. Of course, that was measured with a stopwatch and the speedo, so accuracy was certainly not a given. Let’s say it was about as accurate as Car & Driver in the early 60s…
Not o flabby 0-60 time for the day considering the cars weight ,small v8. I far I can remember the time for a Federal spec Jag xj6 and Datsun 280ZX . Us Brit’s could never understand why such large cars had the same passenger space as as a Ford Corrina?. Goes back to the 50s and 60s when imported American sedans could accommodate 6 people easily.
Thanks for your wonderful writing, and the way you weave ideas together. I could grow to love a car like this.
Olds did something nasty to the velour in these 98s at around this time. It previously was a soft, lustrous velour, but was replaced with a dull, rough cloth sometime in the early 80s. Perhaps it was because they added a higher Regency Brougham and Regency Elite trim levels above the plain ol’ Regency, so they had to make the Regency (now the base model since the LS was discontinued) look plainer. BTW the LS was originally the top line model in the late ’60s before the Regency was added, and then the Regency became the bottom-feeder. The usual GM name debasement).
I still don´t know where the inspiration for car interiors of this era came from. It seems not to be the future and not to be automotive – more like a Victorian sofa, the ones with button upholstery and hard, teak arms and brass tack and tassles. How did that ever seem appropriate for machines in the 1980s? It´s not that I dislike US car interiors from this time – they are rather charming and I love this Olds. It´s that I don´t see the path from Victoriana to car interior that makes sense. What happened to modernism in the US around this time?
It was a throwback to golden era luxury cars of the 20s-30s, it was the retro neoclassical trend that began taking off in late 60s. By the 80s it was mostly carryover, as full size buyers by this point tended to skew older and set in their ways. Modernism was certainly there in the 80s too, but typically you’d find modern buckets and consoles with floor shifters in different classes by this point.
Pap had an Olds 98 Regency Brougham from 1995 until the PA Tin Worm ate thru the body in 2004 – he always lamented that the transmission had “no holdback”, but almost ever summer/winter road trip was taken in that car until he bought what would become my 1st car (1984 Cadillac Sedan deVille) in the fall of 2003.
I loved the velour seats, the electric clock, and the burble of the Rocket V8. About the only thing Pap didn’t like was the lack of top end of the 307 Olds – his garage queen was a 1974 Sedan deVille with the 500 V8 under the hood.
Still miss that car – I have its upscale cousin, an 88 Cadillac Brougham, in the garage…but the leather in Igor isn’t as nice as the velour in that Olds 98.
Of its time, and still has an appeal too. Could be tempted if I lived in Edgewater.
Ohhhh I miss cars like this. They seemed more rationally sized compared with the gargantuan, space wasting land yachts of the 70s (although, there’s still a lot of wasted space), and they were elegant, and made a statement that you had Made It. They were incredibly comfortable and luxurious and well suited to American driving styles which consist either of sitting in traffic in your velour lined, air conditioned, stereo radio cocoon, or trips from Michigan to Florida along largely flat interstate highways. Great for long distance cruising or for short travels. Those seats are so rich and inviting.
I know that the market was allegedly dwinding for these cars when GM axed the final B bodies but part of that was the 91-96 Caprice was unabashedly UGLY and cheaper inside than the previous generation. Ford managed to keep the Panther going until 2011 and the B body was nicer to drive than the Panther. GM had a minor hit with the Impala. Nobody knows what Buick is supposed to be anymore; Cadillac tried to shake its geriatric image and came up with some credible German competitors and hasn’t blossomed. Perhaps it’s better to make cars that SOME people are rabidly enthusiastic about than cars that no one cars about, or that your target audience still turns up its nose at.
If there are any New Yorkers of a certain age, these cars were the king of the streets in the mid 80s. They were used as luxury taxis, later called “Black Cars” White ones we in Love Radio group, Burgundy in Communicar, Light blue were Skyline Radio, dark blue Dial a Ride.They clogged the Wall Street area until they were replaced by Town Cars n the late 90s
Yep, I remember it well. I grew up in Brooklyn and would see these “Black Cars” all over the place.. They were used to drive home the Wall Streeter’s that worked late, workers that attended popular after work meetings at bars / restaurants, or take them back and fourth to the airports. Many of the Wall Street firms (any other firms in NY), had accounts set up with the Black Car Companies so the passengers weren’t charged for the ride directly.
You were able to spot these cars immediately as the drivers always wore a black suit, the cars had rear tinted windows, and they license plate was one of a series.
There was another very popular Black Car company called Apple. They were based in Brooklyn and their black cars were mostly black Caddy’s as I think that was a personal favorite brand of the owner.
I’m sure with the trend of “working from home”, the creation of Uber / Lyft, and the recent pandemic, these Black Car companies aren’t as popular as they were back then, or even around anymore.
This car brings back memories of my mom’s long time friend Phyllis who owned Olds 98’s right up until the demise of this line in 1996. Every 5 years or so they would get a brand new one and as a young car fan would discuss the new car at length with her husband. This example reminds me of there 1982 white base sedan but with wire wheels and the 307/4 speed automatic. This car replaced a 1977 green base sedan with the Rocket 350. I got rides in both cars after Church school which was right across the street from their house. I would walk to their place, hang out for about an hour and mom would get out of work and pick me up. Many times the husband would drive me to our house and I was always impressed how smooth, cloud like and comfy these were.
Being that Phyllis and hubby were in there early 60’s by this point meant that transitioning from the 170 HP 350 to the 140 HP 307 was barely noticed. Looking at the specs does see the 1980 redesign losing around 100 lbs of mass and the 1981 on up cars switched from the 2.41 to 2.73 rear axle. The 200R4’s first and second gears were better than the old 350 too so normal around town driving probably didn’t seem to different. The 350 would manifest itself in swifter highway passing and a bit more tire peeling power if one chose to drive these cars in this manner.
After they bought the 1996 silver 98 Regency, which they kept until 2002 it was Buick Park Avenue time in the form of a tan 2002 which they absolutely loved! Sadly her husband passed away only a year later and she lived another 5 years always telling me how much she loved her “Park”. Miss both of them and all the cool cars and memories we had!