Oldsmobile sold nearly one million cars annually during the 1980s, but trouble loomed beneath the surface of those hearty sales. The Olds division was directionless, its cars largely mimicked other GM products, and its customer base was rapidly aging. But in the middle of that decade came a car that could have rekindled the spark of Oldsmobile’s past – a graceful, distinctive coupe that seemed like an stylish counterpoint to the rest of the division’s lineup that had become increasingly… blah.
Ultimately, the Delta 88 coupe had no effect on Oldsmobile’s eventual outcome, accounting for just 1.5% of Olds’s total output between 1986 and 1991. This car, though, makes for a rather frustrating case study because it could easily have been a contender. In an era of boxy, lookalike Oldsmobiles, the Delta 88 coupe could have led a revival of the brand. If only… if only… well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
In more vibrant times – say in the 1950s and ’60s – Oldsmobile sold exciting, innovative cars that people wanted to own. Rocket engines, Ninety-Eights, front-wheel drive Toronados, Holiday coupes, 4-4-2s… they all helped to give Oldsmobile an aspirational image, and even its more pedestrian cars presented a solid, upper-middle class status.
Then came the 1980s. Oldsmobiles were dull and uninspiring, but contrary to what logic may suggest, the brand’s cars became unexpectedly popular. Gas prices stabilized, the economy improved and suddenly customers longed for the types of cars they drove before those nasty energy crises. Older, financially well-off consumers were at the vanguard of this trend, likely because they rebounded quicker from the late 70s / early 80s recession. And Oldsmobile was waiting for them.
Olds set sales records in the ’80s, peaking at over 1.2 million cars in 1985. In retrospect, this surge in popularity likely damaged the brand’s long-term viability. GM found easy sales to traditionalist customers to be almost intoxicating; the company became reluctant to do anything that might turn these buyers away. From a mere numerical perspective, Olds was doing great, so GM instructed the division to continue whatever they were doing that brought in a million annual sales.
The Delta 88 range typified this state of affairs. In the early half of the 1980s, Delta 88s were based on the rear-drive B platform – a novel car when introduced for 1977, but rather tired by 1985. The 88s were solid, decent-looking, roomy cars that offered good value, nice-but-anonymous styling, and more brand cachet than a Chevy.
Of course, those characteristics could equally apply to Oldsmobile’s G-body Cutlass range and its A-body Cutlass Cieras, all variations on the same theme.
Source: Standard Catalog of Oldsmobile, 1897-1997.
Among this soporific model lineup, a certain consistency prevailed. Roughly half of 1980s Olds sales were Cutlasses (A/G-bodies, Cieras and GM-10 Supremes), with the FWD Ciera taking a bigger chunk as the decade passed. Delta 88s, meanwhile, drew a surprisingly consistent 20% of total sales – even through changes in the Delta itself and in the rest of Oldsmobile’s lineup. However, overall customer demographics kept inching older, which of course was unsustainable.
1986 ushered in a big change for the Delta 88, courtesy of GM’s next wave of downsizing. Migrating to the FWD H Platform, the 88 shed 22” of length, 3” of width, 300 lbs., and 2 cylinders.
This seems like a rather sweeping change for a traditional sedan, but in reality the change was somewhat superficial. Olds kept the ’86 Delta as consistent as possible with its predecessor. Oldsmobile’s chief engineer, Ted Louckes, noted that Olds strove to “save the attributes important to the full-size buyer” and to keep “road isolation and the ride rate as we have had… in the past.” In other words: Don’t upset those traditional buyers!
Mission accomplished. The new Delta 88 rode like a cloud and looked like a lounge inside.
Remarkably, this car was introduced in the same year as Ford’s visionary Taurus, which broke with the conventional principles that Olds sought to preserve. The difference between those two Class Of ’86 domestic sedans couldn’t be blunter.
Let’s backtrack a bit and look at the outgoing B-body Delta 88 coupes. These weren’t really “coupes,” but rather 2-door sedans, sharing the same roofline and upright backlight as their 4-door counterparts. Though the 2-doors had few exceptional attributes (except among people who like long, heavy doors), they still they accounted for nearly 30% of total B-body Delta 88 production.
Given the traditional persona of the new Delta 88 sedan, one would expect its 2-door brethren to have stayed the course stylistically. It didn’t. What Olds gave us instead was a breath of fresh air – not daring and cutting-edge, but rather clean, crisp and classy. Like Oldsmobiles should be.
This is one of the best-looking American car designs of the 1980s. An airy greenhouse, sweeping C-pillar, sloping roofline and relatively high trunklid all create a stylish appearance with a subtle suggestion of power. There are enough Olds styling cues (like the tail light design) to affirm that it is in fact a GM product, however this car’s overall shape evokes European, rather than American cars.
Olds wasn’t alone in offering this body style, since Buick sold its own version. This LeSabre ad’s text articulates What Could Have Been. These cars could have ushered in a new golden age of American coupes. But they didn’t, for several reasons.
The timing for a coupe revival couldn’t have been worse. Coupes – fashionable industrywide in the early 1980s – precipitously declined in popularity just at the time these models were introduced.
Source: Standard Catalog of Oldsmobile, 1897-1997.
Olds production figures tell the story. Despite their good looks, coupes accounted for only 16% of the 234,000 Delta 88 sales for 1986, and that proportion plummeted for each of the following 5 years. In the coupe’s final year of 1991, only 692 of the cars found homes.
Furthermore, the Delta 88 sedan itself struggled after its 1986 introductory year. 1987 sales fell by a quarter, and then kept on falling. As for the coupe, even an outstanding car would have been challenged to stem such a tide of consumer disfavor… and the Delta 88, while competent, was hardly an outstanding car.
Engine and transmission choices were typical GM fare – in this case a standard 125-hp 3.0-liter V-6 or optional 150-hp 3.8, both mated to a 4-speed automatic transmission. The base engine was unpopular, and disappeared after 1986. Our featured car came equipped with the 3.8, a durable engine that yielded decent performance for its day.
When it came to handling, Olds tried to cover all its bases by offering three separate suspension setups. The standard, boulevard-ride suspension was squishy in a way that made admirers of 1970s land yachts feel right at home. For a slightly firmer ride, Olds offered a Level II suspension.
But the crown jewel was the Level III (FE3) package, featuring stiffer springs, bigger anti-roll bars, quicker-ratio steering and beefier tires. Thus equipped, the Delta 88 transformed into an able road car. Unfortunately, this option package wasn’t promoted anywhere near in proportion to the car’s ability.
Most Delta 88 marketing materials emphasized the car’s traditional credentials rather than any kind of ability to compete in the sports sedan market that was becoming increasingly critical for sales success. As such, there was little to keep the car competitive among the non-senior crowd.
Even if younger buyers wandered into an Oldsmobile showroom, would they have found the Delta 88 appealing? Probably not. This car’s interior presented quite a different world than the svelte exterior. Here is the very definition of traditional comfort, with pillowed upholstery, a dashboard with just two gauges, chrome-plated trim and so on. Olds was rightly proud that its new Delta 88 nearly matched its predecessor in interior room, but this car was literally begging for more up-to-date packaging to take better advantage of that space efficiency.
Incidentally, the seatback’s “RB” monogram stands for Royale Brougham, one of the perks of this top trim level that included upgraded upholstery (standard velour; optional leather) and some niceties optional on the base Royale, such as a split bench seat and an interior Convenience Group (lamps, visor mirror, etc.). For both coupes and sedans, Royale Broughams handily outsold the “entry level” Royales.
Lounge-inspired interiors and squishy suspensions weren’t uncommon in 1986, but the writing was on the wall: the future pointed to a more contemporary driver’s environment. GM was negligent to completely disregard that fact. While Oldsmobile offered plenty of cars to satisfy traditional tastes, it badly needed at least one model to capture a new wave of buyers. The 1986 Delta 88 should have been that car. With its pleasing exterior styling and reasonable size, a properly equipped and marketed 88 could have been a formidable contender in the then-powerful family car segment.
But the opportunity slipped by. Part of the reason rested with Oldsmobile’s status in the GM organization. Olds was a causality of CEO Roger Smith’s restructuring, which took away the division’s independence and made it a mere nameplate. Individual divisions were not responsible for much – minor trim, options, marketing and advertising. That’s where Oldsmobile’s mid-1980s success at selling traditional cars became a liability. GM management was satisfied with Olds sales numbers, and became disinclined to change the division’s overly conservative course. With a more independent leadership, Olds could have injected some sparkle under this car’s skin. But that wasn’t the case.
Even given those constraints, Olds didn’t try hard to market Delta 88 beyond its existing audience. This ad with Dick Van Patten and his family virtually duplicated a 1984 B-body Delta 88 ad, down to the same tagline of “The Family Car That Didn’t Forget The Family.” Certainly this was meant to assure consumers of consistency between the RWD B-body and its smaller FWD replacement. But this was not a recipe for attracting new customers.
Oldsmobile’s next advertising campaign again matched celebrities and their families with cars in Olds’s lineup. The Delta 88 was paired with 35-year-old golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, but again there was a disconnect between the car itself and what actual young families wanted to drive.
Prior to the ’86 model’s release, Olds officials admitted that the new Delta 88’s average owner would likely remain older than the brand’s average… which was already over 50. They were right.
That would prove to be Oldsmobile’s undoing. While traditional buyers still formed a significant chunk of the North American market in the 1980s, virtually Olds’s entire lineup was geared in that direction.
Our featured coupe displays somewhat of a split personality. It is perhaps the least broughamy Brougham ever made. Not only is the profile a breath of fresh air, but there’s no vinyl top to be seen, no opera lamps, no ersatz accessories… and in place of wire wheel covers, this car features downright sporty alloy wheels (yes, wire wheel covers were available, but plenty of these were sold with alloys). It’s almost like this car is yearning to be something it isn’t.
Hindsight shows us the opportunity that was missed here. GM market share plunged in the mid- to late 1980s, and almost all of those lost sales came from its two “aspirational nameplates” – Buick and Oldsmobile. And looking at Oldsmobile’s 1980s cars in toto, it’s easy to see how this happened.
The 1986 Delta 88 coupe is one the few cars that stands out. For a brief moment, it seemed like Olds might offer an escape from the Blah cars that had overtaken its lineup.
But there was no such escape. Though this generation of Delta 88 lasted through 1991, few major improvements were made and sales dipped with each passing year.
Looking at our featured car, one can’t help but wonder if this car – and its sedan counterpart – had been slightly more modern, would Oldsmobile’s fortunes have improved? There’s no way to know, but that certainly couldn’t have hurt. With its clean styling, efficient space utilization and flexible V-6, GM had the makings of an outstanding car here. This may have been the last easy opportunity to save the Oldsmobile brand before it became indelibly associated with stuffy, dull, blah cars.
But alas, the 1986 Delta 88 will be remembered merely as a brief respite in Oldsmobile’s sad decline. Or, in Oldsmobile’s parlance, a Holiday. Like all holidays, this one should have lasted longer.
Photographed in December 2017 in Alexandria, Virginia.
Related Reading:
1987 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham: “H” Is For Harmony Laurence Jones
I’ve been into American cars since the mid-1970s and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen an Olds Delta 88 with leather seats.
Heck, leather seats in a Ninety Eight Regency/Regency Brougham are rare.
Excellent point! Leather was quite unusual in mid-market cars then.
Leather was not considered luxurious for seating by Americans until fairly recently.
Really, it followed furniture fashion. Leather was durable, so it was used in utility items. Formal use items demanded brocades or other soft, comfortable fabric. Durable fabrics kind of broached the middle, offering durability and some of the look and feel of the finer fabrics used as upholstery materials. Look at limousines from pre-WWII. The driver seat was usually leather, for durability, but the hoi-polloi in the back only sat on fine fabrics. A refined derriere only rested on cloth. Vinyl was the substitute for real leather, not an upcharge from the fabric option. Hot, sticky vinyl was the reason most chose fabric, having seared the backs of legs on hot summer days.
With that mindset, the American luxury models gravitated towards luxurious velours and brocades, with inserts, padding, tufting, and buttons galore. We wanted to be sitting in a replica of the living room that nobody ever sat in at home. Leather was for convertibles, as they had the chance of getting rained on and otherwise ruined, but your Sedan de Ville was going to have a rear seat that Grandma found appealing.
With the acceptance of European luxury cars from the 1970s onward, we saw more cars with leather seats. The market accepted leather as a luxury item, and now it is almost seen as a default option or standard on more expensive models. Leather furniture is also seeing this change, with leather seating for the home being seen as preferable to cloth. Funny how it has all switched.
I think leather remained in American luxury car interiors pretty much uninterrupted, even if only for bolsters around the edges of mostly-fabric seats. Vinyls displaced leather in almost everything by the mid 50s, but I recall many luxury cars that retained leather in places where passengers sat and touched. My 64 Imperial Crown Coupe, for example, was full leather and my 63 Fleetwood had leather augmenting the brocade fabric.
Outside of the Cadillac/Lincoln/Imperial class leather was all but extinct by maybe 1960 and didn’t really start to make a comeback until the early 90s in “near-luxury” cars. Even Mercedes used “MB Tex” for a long time. The mid-70s Cordoba was an outlier and used leather as a way to add an air of class and luxury to the car. Only then did leather start making a comeback in US midprice cars.
Mercedes used both MB Tex and leather going way back, depending on the model. The vinyl was used in the lower series cars as standard, with leather optional. In the S and SL Class, it was leather standard. This goes back to the 60s, even 50s.
Now that’s strictly in the US, as leather was not used in European Mercedes sedans hardly at all, as a very high quality closely-trimmed velour was seen as a much nicer thing to sit (and sweat) on. Leather was confined to the convertibles and SLs. Leather in Europe is a much more recent thing, and is directly influenced by its popularity in the US.
You are of course quite right about the use of leather in US luxury cars. It was of course standard in convertibles, and also in the top-trim Cadillac coupe back in the 50s and early 60s, given their roots as a “convertible hardtop”. But it was also found as trim in other versions.
I think leather’s popularity may already have peaked. Tesla uses “vegan leather” (vinyl) and fabrics, and I think fabrics and vinyls are set to become more popular again.
I sure hope nicer fabrics come back in vogue, the current offerings as the base covering on most mass market cars is horrid. My brother’s ’96 Mystique has nicer cloth an just about any new car I’ve been in. Subaru does a decent job with their current generation of Outback, I will say.
As a kid, neighbors bought a 1970 280S new, it had MB Tex.
Most people don’t know all automotive leather is plastic-coated – they’re sitting on plastic, not leather.
I believe the top interior seating material in Porsche models is not leather, but alcantara or ultrasuede, a microfiber made from polyester and polyurethane.
https://autoweek.com/article/products/buzzword-break-heres-what-alcantara-means
btw, you can probably get leather in any discount car these days, but not alcantara – that’s reserved for top drawer models. I think the NSX has it too.
I have always liked these. They looked fresh when new. I also liked the plush interior with the crisp exterior. Seemed like a nice car then and had pretty decent longevity for the day. I agree this should have been Olds’ foot in the door to the future but was not to be.
The coupes were nice-looking cars and the FWD H-body cars were among GM’s better latter-day efforts (as long as you were a winner in the company’s quality lottery). Sadly, Olds sales peaked in 1985 with 1,165,649 units. The slide was rapid afterwards with sales of less than 500,000 by 1990.
Perhaps you meant that peak was in 1984?
No. Olds sold 1,144,225 cars in 1984.
Olds’ FE3 option was promoted and sold in the mid 80s. It was on a surprising number of Ninety Eights. .
Intriguing thoughts. One can only wonder what might have been had Oldsmobile made an effort to make their cars in the 1980s more forward-thinking and appealing to younger upwardly-mobile buyers who were flocking to Japanese and European brands or even cars such as the Taurus/Sable.
They really shot themselves in the foot by keeping their cars so traditional for so long. In reality, such as shift away from these ultra traditional qualities should have started even earlier in the 1980s.
The 1982 A-bodies would have been perfect vehicles for this, with each variant offering considerably differentiated styling and less boxy sheetmetal. Nothing radical, but steps in the right direction, setting the stage for more exciting designs later in the 1980s. Of course, we all know that GM and Roger Smith kept a tight lid on anything radical or differentiated in the 1980s.
“Intriguing thoughts.”
ISWYDT. 🙂
Looking at Oldsmobile’s position in the GM hierarchy, they were narrowly cast into this role. Above Pontiac, who was the Excitement Division and below Buick who is the Grand American Car or some such silliness.
One thing we need to remember, there was no way in hell that in 1986 a yuppie who was wanting to show his newfound wealth was going to do it with a domestic car. Domestic cars were passé. Or for losers who couldn’t afford a BMW, Honda and Mercedes. Having one of these cars (Honda, BMW or Mercedes) showed you were smart, making real money, doing well. To show up in an Olds (or Buick or most Cadillacs) was like showing up to the country club in a leisure suit shouting “what time does the disco dance start?”
These really were worthy replacements for the RWD B Bodies, but I don’t believe they were properly marketed. GM was in such disarray during the Roger Smith years that occasionally, I’m amazed they got anything done. Too much interdivisional fighting, kissing the dealer’s asses, time and money wasting ideas that went nowhere. I don’t know if sticking to the Sloan ladder would have worked, but what they did definitely did NOT work.
One thing we need to remember, there was no way in hell that in 1986 a yuppie who was wanting to show his newfound wealth was going to do it with a domestic car. Domestic cars were passé. Or for losers who couldn’t afford a BMW, Honda and Mercedes. Having one of these cars (Honda, BMW or Mercedes) showed you were smart, making real money, doing well. To show up in an Olds (or Buick or most Cadillacs) was like showing up to the country club in a leisure suit shouting “what time does the disco dance start?”
A perfect summation of what killed GM (along with a few other issues). And it largely applies to Ford and Chrysler, except that Ford had the Taurus (and others) and Chrysler had Jeep.
And it’s still the case today, with some exceptions. As in certain parts of the country the same thing is starting to happen, except substitute Tesla for BMW/MBZ/Honda/etc., and insert them into the role of the domestics back then.
“Oh, you’re still driving a gas engine car?”
I just heard this morning that in latest sales reports Tesla outsold MB, BMW and Audi (each, not in total) in the same sales period! If those 3 don’t see the handwriting on the wall they’re foolish!
The need to appear to younger buyers got lost and ignored in GM’s bureaucracy. However, there was one Olds executive who rather presciently saw the division’s oncoming problems.
Joseph Sanchez was the Olds division General Manager during the boom years of 1983-84. In ’84 he said: “We’ve got the momentum right now, but you’ve got to keep innovating. We’re trying to broaden our owner base and trying to get the average ages of our buyers down so we can take better advantage of the baby-boom generation.” “When you’re successful, that’s the time to worry.”
It appears that no one else listened. Sanchez wasn’t in control of Olds for long: About a year later, he was named to be Saturn’s president, and then tragically died of a heart attack a few weeks afterwards.
If he — or someone who shared those sentiments — had been able to advance that line of thinking up GM’s chain of command, Oldsmobile would probably still be with us.
If he — or someone who shared those sentiments — had been able to advance that line of thinking up GM’s chain of command, Oldsmobile would probably still be with us.
Fat chance of that happening, with the clowns in the 14th floor and GM’s Board of Bystanders. No way…
Your sales chart is eye opening. Not only did H body cars drop in popularity every year, but they did this in a time of booming auto sales and a fuel price environment that favored large cars.
My take on this is that it tried to be both modern and traditional at the same time and failed in both missions. I personally watched many longtime GM buyers migrate to the Crown Vic/Grand Marquis/Town Car juggernaut. If you liked traditional Ford did it better.
At the same time the Taurus was a huge hit in the sedan market while the Chrysler minivan and Jeep Cherokee were making the family sedan obsolete.
This Oldsmobile didn’t really resonate with old or young. Which is a shame, because it may have been one of the last really great cars out of GM in terms of quality and durability.
This, and Brendan’s comment above seem to hit the nail on the head. This time period was a complete mishmash of styles, tastes and consumer directions. In my own family orbit at the time there was a shift away from the family sedan to minivans and SUVs. Our previous “larger” car, an 1980 Toronado, was traded for a 1984 Caravan, of all things (which was, ironically viewed as a real cutting-edge yuppie fashion statement…for about a year or two). A 1981 Delta 88 diesel sedan owned by close friends gave way to a 1987 Lincoln Mark VII, as that couple was entering an empty nest phase, with all 3 kids now in college, and of course the ’87 Toronado was probably not even considered. A few other friends and neighbors moved from more traditional GM sedans of the early 80’s to Cherokees or of course Accords and Camrys. This was a period when only folks of a less-than-with-it sense of style and adventure were buying GM A or H Bodies. If you were under 60 and had means you were going European. If you had a family you were no longer limited to sedans and wagons, and even if a sedan was what you wanted there were more exciting options than what GM was peddling. The 80’s as a decade was all about new, now, next. Conspicuous consumption and social climbing was very much in vogue, and a GM sedan or coupe just said “I picked up a replacement for what I had before” (which very likely could have been an early 80’s Cutlass, Malibu, etc.).
I really like these cars from a retrospective viewpoint, but at the time they were completely uninspiring. And if 51-year-old me was transported back to 1986 I’m pretty certain I’d feel the same way that 18-year-old me did.
Of course my perspective is very much a Northeastern one, and I’m sure GM’s overall viability at the time was stronger in Middle America. What I recall of the time as a young adult very aware of trends of all kinds is that traditionalism of just about any kind was very passe’. I think Oldsmobile actually did an excellent job of bringing traditional up to modern specs, but Olds failed to recognize that “Traditional” was over.
(Incidentally, as I’m writing this it occurs to me that a prime example of the stereotypes of the time can be well summarized by recalling the car that Long Duk Dong and his New American Girlfriend lost in a “Big Lake” in Sixteen Candles. It was of course the late 70’s Delta 88 owned by the very uncool Grandpa. I really want to do a writeup on the car casting in 80’s John Hughes movies, especially after the recent references to the T&C wagon in Ferris Beuller. The Breakfast Club was yet another excellent car-casting period flick. Has this been done here before? Or is it just another of those things my head stumbled over in its random musings?)
OK, yes. A Google search of CC posts answered my own dumb question. It wasn’t a figment. It was done here. Last year, as a matter of fact. Almost to the day. Shit, maybe that early-onset dementia my other half is always chiding me about is real. Or maybe my brain is stuck in some Groundhog Day annual loop. I think I’m done commenting for today.
That’s alright, the best part of EOD is that you can go back and re-read the older (and not so old) stuff and it’s like a brand new post!
But to your original point, JH usually did get the car casting right, and in The Breakfast Club, where cars make only a VERY minor appearance, every single one is absolutely perfectly spot on with regard to their characters and lineage.
Great, insightful piece, Eric. To echo JPC’s thoughts on the sales chart, it’s so hard to comprehend the sales juggernaut that was the A/G-Body Cutlass at the beginning of the ’80s, and how decisively it had tapered off.
The part when you referenced the 1.2M sales year as part of what contributed to Olds’ downfall reminded me of the mythical character of Icharus. Nowadays, the only constant in the business world seems to be the need to adapt to ever-increasing change.
This article also made me realize just what a lean, clean, attractive shape these H-Body coupes were, without being as overtly and obviously “aero” as some concurrent designs.
Very nicely done spotlight on a car and configuration I haven’t thought about in a while.
This was the beginning of the end for Oldsmobile. It was time-honored marque named after Ransom Eli Olds, a real engineer of his day and age. They were cars truly worthy of praise for most of middle-class America but no more. I were to buy a new car in the 1980s, it would have been the AMC Eagle. It may look brutish, but it would last forever in any conditions and be comfortable while doing so.
I’d argue an H-body would last longer in environs with road salt than an AMC Eagle.
I think that is the one area in which the domestics roundly excelled. Headquartered in Michigan, they knew better than to make cars that couldn’t handle adverse weather and the inevitable road salt.
It took Honda and Mazda, in particular, a good deal longer to master that.
Eagles were beasts.
My brother daily drove one for 14 years in Northwest Pennsylvania. It did eventually develop enough rust to fail the State inspection and after all of those years of daily use the interior was falling apart. The mechanicals never gave him serious issues but it was stone simple and reliable, IMO.
Every so often someone on line posts a question about a car you would have to live with for 10, 20 or 30 years. As much as I love horsepower and handling, I’d choose an Eagle every time.
Great article and I agree with the premise. When this car was new, my dad and I went car shopping. He had bought two prior Oldsmobiles, most recently an 83 Ciera, which was an excellent car. We looked at the FWD 88, but all I saw was unrealized potential. An advanced improved chassis was compromised by soft squishy suspension. The roomy interior was ruined by old fashioned pillowy upholstery and a deliberately useless instrument cluster that made no functional sense to us. Even by the standards of over 30 years ago, this car was outdated and out of touch.
Like countless thousands of Olds and Buick buyers, we switched to the popular Pontiac Bonneville SE, which was a functionally superior car in every way, and was $1500 cheaper.
My dad had never considered Pontiac before, thinking they were cheap and garish. But he loved that Bonneville. And Olds lost one more repeat buyer.
Great article. One thought- there was a 600 lb Gorilla in the corner, and it’s name was Buick. In the full-size and luxury market, Buick consistently outperformed Oldsmobile. The Park Avenue and LeSabre were very consistent- although Coupes in this segment were almost non existent. On the other hand, Olds mysteriously owned the midsize (Cutlass) market.
In several ways, Buick was a gorilla in the room here. During Smith’s reorganization plans, GM executives were worried about Buick & Pontiac, so a lot of resources were devoted to focusing those brands. Buick was focused on luxury and Pontiac on sportiness, but Olds was largely ignored, in large part because sales were good.
So fast-forward to the late 1980s, and both Buick and Pontiac were beginning to see some success due to their focus, but GM didn’t want Olds stepping on their toes. It was almost like Olds filled the role of an unwanted stepchild. Eventually Olds became the “innovation division,” which resulted in a few show cars, and the Quad 4 engine. And not much else.
I can remember seeing quite a few H-body LeSabres in their day but far fewer Delta 88s.
Oldsmobile had been the Innovation Division, dating back to the 30’s. As I mentioned earlier, the divisional structure had been shaken apart, especially with the advent of the FWD A bodies competing with one another. Oldsmobile had a very narrow slice of GM bandwidth to use in the late 1980’s. I believe that some of the folks running the division thought it was 1969, not 1989 and acted accordingly. Imports had long been nipping at the heels of the best selling Cutlass models; once the switch to FWD was on, the decent but not outstanding FWD A-bodies couldn’t compete with the likes of the Accord.
GM management didn’t have the balls to try and compete with Mercedes and BMW (i.e., come up with a really good RWD car to take them on). They went all in on FWD, which would have been great in 1982. By 1986 and later, FWD was rather commonplace and certainly not a way to sell a sport/luxury model against the Germans, even Audi.
And as mentioned before, the generation that thought the downsized RWD A cars were great were getting out of those cars and into trucks and SUVs. The folks that should have replaced them had been driving the import competition for a while and liked what they had. Once Honda, Toyota, BMW and Audi got beyond the small-ish car size, there was little to hold them back.
Not that Oldsmobile didn’t have it’s moments during that time. Like you mentioned, the Q4, the Aerotech test vehicle were highlights. Before the end of Oldsmobile, the lineup had been sorted out pretty well. The Alero was competitive, the Intrigue was a very good W body, but I know this will piss off some people, the original Aurora was a FWD 1969 Delta 88 Royal with spaceship styling. By then, the ship had struck the iceberg and was filling with water.
. . . the original Aurora was a FWD 1969 Delta 88 Royal with spaceship styling and self-destructive tendencies.
There, I fixed that for you. 🙂
That was a nice article, written with love for the brand and the coupe body style.
That ’61 Dynamic 88 “bubble top” illustrated early certainly was neither bland nor cautious.
The owner was very lucky to find a replacement fender and door.
Love the wheels, though. They remind me of the original Toronado wheels.
DOA. Coupe buyers wanted this instead, or something more like it.
Trying to make this tall, boxy sedan into a stylish coupe in 1985, without a proper interior and dash and other details makes it a genuine GM Deadly Sin.
I think the bodystyle was solid like the article suggests, with the right details as seen on the Lesabre T-type it gives up very little to the Aero Tbird, in fact I find them more appealing from a strictly aesthetic standpoint, but most weren’t equipped or marketed that way unfortunately, and Tbirds and Cougars even with their own wire wheel covers never looked as chintzy in detail as these did in the more broughamy trims
Of course until 1985 that Thunderbird didn’t have a proper dash either, it had a semi-carryover of the 80-82 dash. Didn’t hurt it, 1984 was the best selling year of that generation Tbird, sales actually dropped in 1985 with the fully redesigned European styled dash design(I know, correlation =/= causation, but the point is the solid exterior styling and substance seemed to matter more in the Tbirds case)
Guilty- I had a ’83 Heritage Coupe with a 5.0. At the Chevy store, many wondered who would want that rounded bodystyle. Answer- just about everyone.
Me too! I bought one of the first Turbo Coupes to roll off the truck in LA. And I had a huge bias towards imports at the time.
I had the Monogram model kit of the facelifted ’87 Turbo Coupe. I was 13 in ’87 and it was a car I genuinely aspired to own.
This was a good shape, the same as my ’88 LeSabre. Lots of room in the front to stretch out, and plenty in the back seat as well. Significantly better than in the T-bird and perhaps even better than in the 90’s El Dorado, which a friend had at around the same time.
Not many of these seem to still ply the roads but then again it has been 30-odd years, time is moving faster and faster. I’m glad you happened across it, I wonder if the CC effect will strike me now…
It’s weird that we’re buying fewer coupes at a time of dropping fertility rates. Maybe it’s insurance companies assuming 2 door cars will be driven more recklessly.
I remember back in ‘87 when William Hurt’s character in the film Broadcast News drove a dark blue or black Delta 88 coupe and thinking how sharp it looked. The exterior was a real clean sheet of paper design that is still sharp today. I owned a ‘88 base sedan and loved it. So great in the snow and ice I named it Rudolph.
The Buick Lesabre made a better case for itself with this body, particularly the T-Type. The 88 front and rear styling just falls completely flat to me, especially those awful taillights. I always found it weird how Oldsmobile ran the split grille into the ground when it was so clearly cribbed from 60s Pontiac.
These weren’t really “coupes,” but rather 2-door sedans, sharing the same roofline and upright backlight as their 4-door counterparts.
Not exactly, the Delta 88 2-door clearly had a more distinctive upright backlight than the Delta 88 4-door, which is different enough to constitute it as a legitimate Coupe in my book
Compare this to the sedan above.
Agreed. It’s a coupe. A 2-door sedan needs to use the same roof stamping.
Did the ’85-87 Electra and Ninety-Eight coupes have the same roof? It looks very similar to the four-door:
Buick did the H body coupe better, even thought the basic shell was shared with Olds. Touches like the clamshell hood and drop in rear license holder were nice design Easter Eggs that set the LeSabre apart form the 88. Pontiac was only given the H body 4 door, as a 2 dr Bonneville would have likely only cribbed more sales form the Buick and Olds 2 doors in a shrinking market. Have seen a one off of such.. Yes, it would have done exactly that.
Interesting comparison using the Taurus in the article. The Sable was priced from $9645 to $13K in 1986, whereas the Olds 88 started at around $13K. I don’t think traditional Olds buyers would have come down to the Sable or the Taurus, if they still maintained their brand loyalty. Speaking to a fellow I knew who bought one of these 88s, he told me he never liked the greenhouse on this car. The rear side windows were just not the right profile, he didn’t like the way they did not integrate into the overall flow of the design. He said it detracted from the car making it seem less Oldsmobile like. I think Ford did a better job of making a smooth design with the Tbird and the Taurus. Perhaps Olds could have adapted the design of that window over time to boost sales.
My friend never bought a GM after this 88. Not that the car ever let him down or anything, he just lost his brand loyalty on this car.
Roger Smith’s great failing was to see cars a commodities, like laundry detergent. Sure, you make the exterior packaging a little different but detergent is detergent, and most people buy the box.
Oldsmobile’s going down market was a classic GM mistake. They’d already done it with Cadillac, boosting sales in the short term, but destroying the cache of the brand. It was a no-brainer in both senses of the phrase to do the same to Oldsmobile. At first everyone thought they were buying some quality and prestige, but when everyone had one -and soon everyone did- Oldsmobiles became the status equivalent of Chevrolets. Roger then proceeded to make sure that was actually true, except for the wrapper. And even there, well in the first picture in this article, take your left thumb and put it over the driver’s and note how much the tail of the car looks like a Cavalier
Once this had occurred Oldsmobile lost all chance of ever competing in the same market as the Europeans.
Oldsmobile will be discussed in marketing education for years to come. The “This Is Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” ad campaign in the 80’s was one of the dumbest ever. It failed to entice the younger generation that it was aimed at and it rubbed the oldtimers who had been the Oldsmobile customer base the wrong way. It made them feel like a bunch of geezers. Death by a thousand cuts.
So many design details have a Cavalier / A Body vibe. Dark, rich colours were most flattering to these coupes.
I remember when the 1986 Delta 88 & LeSabre where introduced nearly every article was critical of the old fashion door handles – they really stand out on the coupes. The downsized 1985 C Platform used the same non-flush style handles and it wasn’t an issue, but the coupe’s fresh profile somehow made these push button handles look hopelessly dated.
I definitely think that Buick did the coupe better, similar to statements above. I absolutely loved the Lesabre T-Type when it was still relatively new. I wasn’t the target demographic, considering that I was only around 8-12 at the time that these were being sold. I’ve always thought the T-Type was a sharp looking coupe.
But the last couple of years of the Delta 88 coupe, the did some styling tweaks that made it a sharp looking (if not quite as racy as the T-Type) coupe.
The Oldsmobile cachet coming out of the 1950’s into the 1960’s was similar to what Acura had going on in their heyday. It was considered smart, technically advanced, fashionable, and with just the right amount of up market prestige. It made the right aspirational statement about it’s driver. Somehow it lost that after the debut of the Toronado and 442 and even DR. Oldsmobile couldn’t cure the malaise that developed.
Those Olds ads with the curvy fillagree lettering and the little “cameo” photo in the left upper corner look absolutely Victorian. Way to get Gramma’s attention, but not anyone less than 70 years old.
Compare that to the dark, dramatic, and.slick Buick coupe ad. I love that ad and I’m going to use it as a wallpaper on my computer.
And the above photo is actually of an FE3-equipped coupe, too! So here we have a car that was really rather capable and nice to drive, and it’s very existence was buried under baroque advertising material.
And it has true alloy wheels, yet styled to look like convex wire wheel covers!
Those wheels are a lot better-looking in person, in this pic they suffer from having been retouched in. More ad fail.
Love it.
The H body coupes arrived just in time for 2 door car sales to start dropping.
Buick’s FWD LeSabre sedan was a hit and seemed to be taking former Olds buyers. Can come up with many reasons, and 1 may be that to average middle aged buyers, 30 years ago, Buick brand had more cache’. While younger buyers didn’t want “their parents brands”.
The “not your father’s…” ads were from GM Brass ordering Buick and Olds to “switch roles” for 1988 models. Buick going from ‘Euro/Sporty’ to ‘Traditional American’, vice versa. The Regal GN was just dropped, for example. While Olds brought out International Series trim. We all know what happened after that.
Good question is what if not switched roles?
I’m not sure it was a conscious switch of roles, GM didn’t have the foresight to stick with the direction Buick’s turbocharged submodels(with or without actual turbochargers equipped) pointed the brand, and simply continued making the same basic models they were making all along during the 80s(they were arguably better styled, but probably not far off from the Olds demographic) into the 90s.
Buick cultivated legitimate a following with their Euro/Sporty trajectory, even if it never reached peak maturity during the time they actively pursued it, they would have been wise to stick it out in the long term, as the T-types, turbos and Grand Nationals are very much in vogue with current trends, yet because of the flip Buick is nothing more than a Zombie brand in America today, existing only to seem alive from China’s distant vantage.
Oldsmobile was probably doomed either way. Despite the flipping of roles Buick had some equity to coast from, and also enjoyed better styling from GM’s mini-styling renaissance under Chuck Jordan. Oldsmobile had zero product in the 80s that shined above their 70s counterparts that propelled Olds into a sales leader, and the brand had nowhere to go. They tried the reinvention route with their flip, with the Aurora/Intrigue/Alero, and even a redesigned badge, but if a brand has to start totally fresh anyway, why even keep the brand around?(which was asked and answered.)
Another significant factor is quality. Buicks were noticably better built, and this was picked up by CR and the media. Although they were so similar in many ways, the Buicks managed to project (and have) a better level of quality. I think this became a very significant factor over time.
Note: I’m referring mostly to the full size cars, although the X-Body Skylark was significantly nicer than the other x-Bodies.
When my mom replaced her ’79 Cadillac DeVille with something more sensibly sized for her age, she went Buick because in Mission Viejo the Buick dealer had an outstanding reputation for sales and service. The Olds/Cadillac dealer- not so much. She specifically avoided the Park Avenue because of the overly square roofline, preferring the LeSabre Limited on the basis of looks alone. Combination of better build quality and a great dealer was a winning combination. Sadly she totalled the car three years later.
Eventually there wasn’t room for two midprice makes. Arguably, there never really had been, it’s just that GM could afford to duplicate itself at 50% market share but not at 25%-and-falling-fast. Once China opened up – 1.2 billion potential buyers who saw Buick as an ultimate aspirational brand and hadn’t been around cars enough to recognize a post-Smith-era GM interior for what it was – it was clear that Buick would be the one to live on.
Still, that meant a decade stylistically wasted clinging to the Brougham look at Buick. In the ’90s I thought GM designed a clean Oldsmobile first, and then added anachronistic amounts of chrome and whitewall tires to make it a Buick or cladding, cheesegrater alloys and a spoiler to make a Pontiac from it.
On a parting note – I wonder if 35-in-’86 Fuzzy Zoeller insisted on blackwalls and no vinyl top on his personal Delta no matter how the car in the ad was equipped?
I thought this was a pretty good looking car at the time…for GM. But a detail that really bugged me about GM’s styling in this era was that almost every car had a dropped beltline combined with a razor sharp corner on the bottom rear of the rear side window. It resulted in insufficient sheet metal between it and the rear wheel opening, producing a visual weakness in the overall form. A beginning rule of car design: If you want to drop the beltline below the tops of the hood and rear deck, you probably should round the bottom corners of the windows (middle image). If you want sharp corners on the window bottoms, line the window bottoms up with the top of the front hood and rear deck (bottom). This rule, like all rules, can be broken a thousand different ways to good effect, but GM wasn’t clued into any of them.
Interesting — that never bugged me before, but seeing your examples here, I understand your point. The middle pictures is definitely the best of the three.
Thanks for explaining something that I could always feel but never identify. The middle picture is a big improvement.
Excellent write up as always Eric! I appreciate you insightful comments into these Oldsmobiles. One thing to consider is how delayed the release of these H-bodies were. They were conceived when fuel prices were still very high and the thought was that all cars would be significantly downsized. This was supposed to be the new B-body and probably should have been released I 1983 or 1984, but they kept getting delayed. By 1986, things had changed so much it was already behind the times. GM was in such shambles in these years it just seemed like a ship without a rudder. I remember an old cartoon in a Motor Trend in the 80s where all the car makers where playing poker. It showed GM with all the chips but no cards.
I remember working on and driving these H-bodies. They were competent cars and held up better than most other GM FWD products of that time, but were not good enough to get me to switch away from a RWD B-body. Like others here, I also prefer the Buick styling over the Olds, especially the T-Type.
So what you’re saying is that Oldsmobile needed a product like the Aurora ten years earlier. I agree.
Even in the nineties, they didn’t quite get it. I remember my grandmother’s 1992 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight (also an H-Body). The exterior looked handsome and modern; however the interior looked like it was ten years older and must have felt extremely dated compared to cars like the Avalon and Maxima. They did give the Eighty-Eight a modern interior later on, but by then they’d lost the plot.
Selling stuff like that final A-Body Cutlass Ciera, which lasted through 1996, didn’t help, either. Maybe Oldsmobile could’ve rebounded if stuff like the GM EV1 had been under the Oldsmobile brand (or even “sold” and derived at its dealers, rather than Saturn.)
But, really the whole Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac pipeline was bound to fail, given industry trends as a whole…and it did. Even it’s lone survivor, Buick, is an awkward premium-brand competing with mainstream nameplates at worst, and used luxury cars at best.
Meanwhile, I would totally take a ‘79-‘85 Toroado. Those were so elegantly-styled and distinctly American. So were its contemporary Buick Riviera and Cadillac Eldorado cousins.
I think the 86-91 Delta 88 suffered due to both external competition (Ford/Mercury) and internal competition with other divisions of GM. I think the Delta lost more sales due the other C and H body GM cars then they did to Ford
The trouble with the 86-91 Delta was that it looked too much like the Buick Lesabre, Buick Electra, Buick Park Ave and also its sister car the 98. There really was not much to distinguish itself in comparison to them. Add the Cutlass Ciera (a cheaper car that was just as roomy and nice riding) and the Delta was doomed.
I understand the GM philosophy that the more divisions that get a given vehicle platform means that the R&D funds and all other monies spent on that platform are recovered quicker but by making them look alike, causes one division to poach sales from another. Look at the J Body, why would a customer spend money on a Buick Skyhawk or Olds Firenza when they can get a Cavalier for less money?
GM did not seem to grasp the fact that you can have several cars utilizing the same platform that look different.
Take the late comer 1987-1991 Pontiac Bonneville. This car shared the same platform as the Lesabre and the Delta 88 but did not really look like them at first glance since Pontiac added all those styling cues of their own. The front end looks nothing like the other C and H body cars and the rear end is rounded.
I also think the Bonneville was one of those cars that inadvertently put an end to the GM notion in a platform line up (such as the H body), the coupe has to be the sporty vehicle. The Lesabre T-Type was a cool car but the Bonneville SSE was just as cool looking and it was a sedan.
I remember being horrified by these cut down little cars when they came out. They just seemed so small and plain and such a comedown from the b body cars. Alot of people went to Ford and bought LTD crown Victoria or Marquis or town cars. Indeed in the late 80s the LTD got an old 88 style make over and Marquis got a pre shrinkage LeSabre makeover. They were not that great mechanically either. A Ford product was far more reliable. I think had they looked like the 90s versions they would have done better,. But still Ford had them beat.
Would love to connect with whoever owns that coupe in Alexandria, i am just up the road in Maryland and have an 86 coupe as well.
The author doesn’t consider one very important reason why sales of the 88 were sluggish; and that is because a fully loaded Cutlass Ciera was far cheaper, and basically the same car. Some Ciera models (especially the GT) were much more fun to drive as well.