The 1991 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight was the last redesign of Oldsmobile’s top-of-the-line model. Built from 1991 to 1996, it was effectively replaced by the all-or-nothing Aurora, although both cars were produced for the 1995-96 model years. Oldsmobile, having come close to the brink in the early Nineties, was trying to remake itself into a maker of sporty luxury cars, rather than the type of cars your Aunt Cindy would drive. The Touring Sedan was one of the results of that marketing shift.
The first Touring Sedan was introduced on the 1987 Ninety Eight. It was meant as a response to cars like the Mercedes-Benz 300E, BMW 735i and Audi 5000. While just how many Mercedes, BMW and Audi owners went for the Olds is debatable, the Touring Sedan was very attractive, with Lear Siegler bucket seats in leather with adjustable lumbar and thigh support, burled walnut trim, and center console with “basket handle” floor shift. Outside, alloy wheels, fog lamps and side cladding set the Touring Sedan apart from the Regency and Regency Brougham. A touring suspension and larger stabilizer bars were functional improvements.
Aside from a revised grille and new alloy wheels in 1989, the package continued through 1990. The Touring Sedan was very similar in concept to the Cadillac Seville Touring Sedan, which was introduced for 1988. Both cars gave a European touch to what were pretty typical post-downsizing-era GM luxury cars.
When the Ninety Eight was redesigned for 1991, the Touring Sedan returned. One big change was the availability of the supercharged 3800 V6, good for 205 horsepower. As before, the Touring Sedan received standard alloys, body-color grille and a more aggressive suspension.
Inside, the interior again featured exclusive bucket seats and console, wood trim and full instrumentation. All in all, it was a pretty nice package, but that did not translate into big sales numbers. Only 4,280 were built in 1991.
In 1992, the Touring Sedan received new alloy wheels, the same type that was available on 1992 Eighty Eights with the touring suspension option. Other than that, the car was the same, and sales sunk further south, to 2,795 units.
Perhaps sales would have been greater if the Touring Sedan had the supercharged 3800 as standard, like the contemporary Buick Park Avenue Ultra. Most likely though, Ninety Eight shoppers didn’t know what to make of it (no bench seats!) and went for the Regency or Regency Elite instead, like this 1995 example pictured above.
Despite the lackluster sales, the Touring Sedan returned for 1993, for the last time as it turned out. There were no major changes, and after a mere 1,885 were sold, Oldsmobile pulled the plug on the model. Obviously, people were not very interested in the combination of a formal roof, enclosed rear wheels, bucket seats and console and available supercharged V6.
I personally like these very much. The idea of a sporty Ninety Eight is such a contrast, I can’t help but love them. I spotted this one while going through an intersection in downtown Moline. I saw the wheels and the front badges and thought “That was a Touring Sedan!” Of course I had to go back. This one is a ’92 or ’93 judging from the wheels. Let’s call it a ’92 since nearly 1,000 more were made compared to 1993. This particular one is a local car, as it has a dealer tag from long-gone Vincent J. Neu Oldsmobile, which used to be located across the river in Davenport.
We had had three or four inches of snow the night before that rapidly melted and turned most sidewalks into ice rinks, but I had to risk it and record this car. It looks like it was a pristine one-owner for a long time, as the trim is all there, the paint is still shiny and there is no rust, but the smashed grille and lots of stuff inside it tells me that the current owner is not aware of the fine automobile he or she is driving. At least it’s still here, earning its keep.
These were nice cars, but the curvy Jag like Park Avenue kinda out shined them, not to mention the new Bonneville SSEi with the blown 3800 and Heads Up display. I like the square first gen ones a little more than the kinda strange 2nd gen ones. They had great seats though, like big leather thrones.
Those Bonnevilles were awesome. It was my fathers first “nice” New car. Car was completely loaded and I remember saying it cost 31K. Funny side note, he owned a pizzaria and would wear his check pants and white tshirt everywhere. He worked all the time and well…his work clothes were his everyday clothes. The People at the Acura dealership laughed him off. He ended up driving back with his new car, same clothes and walked right up to the same sales person and said ” you missed out big”. He still hates Acura to this day and loves telling the story.
The first year bonneville was a cool car for its time for GM. It finally died 2005. 190k same motor.
I had both the Bonneville turbo and the Olds Touring Sedan. No comparison. Absolutely none. The Olds was a wonderful car. Wish it never got old.
“Neu Oldsmobile,” thats beautiful.
About the car, I didn’t know this package existed. I imagine it drives about like a supercharged Bonneville of then same era. A friends parents had a regular Olds 98 in the mid-to-late Nineties and I was very impressed with the interior. It had all the amenities found in my grandmothers 1994 Fleetwood Brougham and was scarcely any smaller inside. Probably uses about 60% of the fuel the Fleetwood burns too.
I’ve always thought this is a great looking car. It’s a clean design that was forward-looking and distinctively Oldsmobile.
These are one of the worst looking cars ever made in my opinion. From Saturnesqe greenhouse, the grille rolling back over the hood, the goofy psudeo fender skirts, to the Poncho like lower body cladding, yuck. It reminds me of a car built for a (low budget) movie that was supposed to take place in the future that they just tacked some stuff on a current model to disguise it.
Ha! I guess history showed more people agreed with you than agreed with me.
“It reminds me of a car built for a (low budget) movie that was supposed to take place in the future that they just tacked some stuff on a current model to disguise it.”
Ha! These 98s to me just scream Demolition Man any time I see one.
I’m not sure I’d go that far, but this car was neither fish nor fowl. It wasn’t big enough to appeal to the blue hair luxury crowd and not sporty enough to be taken seriously by the BMW and Audi crowd. Just another half-a$$ed GM creation from the 80s and 90s, back when GM treated cars as mere abstractions on paper.
Yes. Seemingly most if not all of the designs to come out of the GM styling studio in the 80s had that futuristic, scifi theme to them, culminating in cars like these, the Saturns and the Dustbusters. Something with those greenhouses, and the way the rear windows created sort of a canopy look.
Love/hate relationship with all these cars, especially the 98. Handsome and hideous all at the same time!
The look unfinished to me. The 98 styling Looks like The Top Of a Ceramic butter dish.
This car Looks like They just went to make it and didn’t bother to finish tweaking it.
I wouldn’t say it’s one of the worst ever but it does have a confusing design. I know the Achieva was a year later but these still stick in my head as a bloated version of it. The 90 olds was a much better design.
The sawed off wheel arches work as excruciatingly well on this Olds as they did on the 91-92 Caprice.
My soon to be Mother-In-Law had one of these after her LeSabre was totaled out. She loved the Buick more (other than the supercharged power of the Olds) but eventually little electrical problems drove her to trade in. I would LOVE one of these beasts but it might be easier to find a regular 98 and steal the sway-bars off a Park Avenue Ultra in the scrapyard.
It looks a bit like a Holden Statesman around the tailights and rear wheel arches and the superchearged 3.8 is the same, did these also have the V8 and rear drive or are these things just another FWD turd?
FWD turd and no V8 was offered as best I can recall.
No V8, and as I recall, remarkably small rear drum brakes.
While I simply love the 1st gen Touring Sedans, these don’t do anything for me. The 1st gen managed to look formal-yet-menacing, like the more polite cousin of a Buick GNX. But these just look flabby. It’s that damned wheel skirt that does it: sporty cars DO NOT HAVE SKIRTED WHEELS. Like Sean said about the Caprice, it just doesn’t work. (Anyone feel like photochopping the skirt off the 98?)
Visually, the 2nd gen Touring Sedan doesn’t have enough to separate it from the regular 98. And like Eric said, it’s very Saturn-ish; not worthy of a near-luxury car. Too much rear overhang for that (relatively) short wheelbase. On the 1st gen 98 (and related Seville & Park Avenue), I loved how the rear window stopped at the rear axle. It makes the wheelbase look longer, even though the front axle is set pretty far back, and the car is rather short overall.
This car blows my aesthetic sense to smithereens. Too. Much. Overhang. On both ends too. I can hardly resist hacking this car away. Good thing its not in physical form near me. The interior is excellent though.
I cross-shopped the 1st-gen 98 Touring Sedans before I bought my 1988 Electra T-Type. The Olds version was $5K higher (in 1993) than the Buick on the used market and I couldn’t see paying that premium simply to get a slighter firmer suspension and 16″ factory alloys (not to mention the higher license tab renewal fees, in the days before our mythical $30 car tabs went into effect).
I really liked the 1st-gen Touring Sedans. My friend’s dad was a CEO of a major utility company during the late-1980s and had one as a company car. I agree with the others; the 1990s slugmobile redesign of GM sedans really had me thinking WTF and from the driver’s seat you just can’t see where any of these cars begins or ends.
I think my memory of Olds self destructed after the demise of the muscle car era 442. There remains a big void during the time these were built. I think there is a lexus or infiniti in that void instead but I might be off a few years.
I don’t mind that it looks like a Saturn. My experience with Saturn was very good until they became Opels. I think that its just that I am limited with brain cells and I would rather remember things that are pleasant. Not the country being jerked around by a formerly progressive and leading car company that was going on the ropes.
We had a $hit colored brown ’69 442 convertible with white pinstripes that seemed nice to look at but was a maintenance hog. The weak point on the 400 4bbl was the old breaker point ignition. It wouldn’t start when it rained. The idle sounded awesome from the duals – when it ran.
The first generation version of these cars were very cool in my opinion. I love the blacked out trim and the cars drove very well. There really was no need for the supercharged engines of the later versions, the 3800 V-6 was a real torquer, perfectly mated to the transmission. GM always did that very well.
The problem with these cars is electrics. There is always something wrong with them, incessant check engine lights, failing sensors, it never ends. The rear struts were also failure prone. Most of these issues were cured in the later versions, again, typical GM.
Beg to disagree on the electrics. I owned my 1988 Electra T-Type (Buick version of the same car) for 16 years, from 65K miles when I bought it to 221K miles when I sold it. Electrically, it was more trouble-free than my 1997 and 2001 Hondas (and WAY better than the 2001 Lesabre that replaced it!). I had only one check engine light the entire time, and it was for a defective MAF sensor at about 200K miles (pick-a-part replacement for $12, thank you very much).
And the rear struts with the self-leveling suspension (one of GM’s best options IMO) never failed. I replaced them once at 100K miles with factory replacements because I wanted to keep the air-leveling and the firmer-than-park-avenue suspension.
YMMV
I bought a used 1988 Touring Sedan with 64,000 miles on the clock for $5000 in 1993. It was the same color as the ’88 illustrated above-medium metallic gray with with gray leather interior. A handsome car, especially the ass end. The walnut (real) dash and accents was quite handsome. The rear seating space was huge, a fact that my sons-6’6″ and 6’4″ tall appreciated.
The car was a cruiser and really good in the snow. I regularly commuted between Salt Lake City and the East Coast. On one trip heading east through Wyoming on I-80, I recorded 31.5 mpg at a steady 84 mph. Yes, I had a healthy tailwind, but other trips indicated an average of 28 mpg.
That was the upside. The downside included interior door trim panels that had a penchant for falling off; power window lifts with the lifespan of a fruit fly; motor mounts that failed on a regular schedule; and an overly harsh rear suspension that suffered from lack of compliance.
In 1988 the Touring Sedan was Olds’ most expensive offering at $25,000. It sold well in ’88 and ’89 in spite of the price, but Olds decided to bring the project in house in 1990 (’88s and 89s were built by ASC (American Sunroof Corp). Combined with the turd-like styling of the ’90s, escalating price, and failure of GM to address chronic quality problems, it led to ennui on the buying public’s mind and craptastic sales.
I put 176,000 miles on my Touring Sedan and ended up giving it away to a friend of my father. It was a good car.
Too bad the Olds 98 didn’t make it to 1998, or we could have had “Ninety-Eight for Ninety-Eight”
I hated the look of these. The concurrent Eighty Eight was an attractive car, but that stupid formal back end looked completely out of place on the Ninety Eight. Then the Achieva debuted as 3/4ths version this car and made matters even worse.
With Buick selling the gorgeous Park Avenue for about the same money, it’s no wonder these didn’t sell.
It’s too bad, I always liked the ’88-’90 Touring Sedan.
Ah the over-Achievaing 98, an answer to the question that nobody ever asked.
Now which was it- did somebody at GM say ‘This 98 is such a seminal design, its a shame that I can’t rent one with a rough 4 banger in white in every airport across the country.’ Or was it ‘Gee the Achieva mock-ups are so beautiful- wouldn’t it be a great idea to have a great big one with leather and more cheap trinkets?
Only the hubris of GM and Roger Smith would think that these things had any place in the market. In the early 90s, people were buying Explorers, luxo-trucks, Tahoes, and Grand Cherokees. The Geritol set were fine with their solid BOF Panthers or Broughamdello EEK New Yorkers. GM cars of this era were pooptastic, lacking size and bang for your buck of FoMoCo, or the velour-per-dollar value of Khrysler. The Ultra and Touring editions were as much a pastiche of ‘Youropeeun’ cars as the Epcot World Pavilions are of an authentic cultural experience, while all the while the great majority looking for comfortable appliances were on their third or fourth Camcord.
The fact that this car’s main competitor was the Buick Park Avenue highlights that GM had become British Leyland in 1969- in competition with itself, looking inward for benchmarks of quality and innovation, and forging an ever dwindling market share by redefining mediocrity at the highest possible development cost, then scrimping on part quality to repay the debt.
I never understood why the stodgier Buick Park Avenue got the supercharged 3.8 liter V6, but this Olds didn’t. Typical GM logic.
Oldsmobile in the 1990s was a truly schizophrenic organisation. I’d like to think cars like this were the product of dedicated enthusiasts–both engineers and marketers–trying to apply “Dr-Oldsmobile”-era thinking to the moribund platforms and powertrains they were handed from on high. True or not, it’s too bad that their hits–this, the 88 LSS, the Alero GLS–went largely unappreciated.
It’s sad how much brand equity GM pissed away with half-baked efforts like these.
“What might have been”…”what could have been”…”if only”…”typical GM”…
Put another way, if they had put the same effort into the rest of the car that went into their best powertrains, I think GM would be a far different – and healthier – company today, legacy issues notwithstanding.
The look unfinished to me. The 98 styling Looks like The Top Of a Ceramic butter dish.
This car Looks like They just went to make it and didn’t bother to finish tweaking it.
On The other hand, I Love that this is a 4 door version of My Trofeo, as far as The Interior. Very Similar gray leather 14 way p/s Coach seats.
The outside just leaves me cold, where as I Loved The squared off 89 Trofeo & 98’s.
While Olds was trying to be ‘sporty/Euro’, so was Ponitac. Also, their #1 seller in the 90’s was the ancient Cutlass Ciera. Olds and Buick managers wanted to keep the design past 1996, but upper brass killed it finally. Imagine a 2002 ’20th anniv’ edition Ciera!
These always looked awkward to me especially to the much smarter 88. I always thought the 88’s green house evoked some of the 70’s colonnades looks, so that possibly went over better with the public. Time hasn’t mellowed its awkwardness to me.
i dunno, the seats look incredible.
I would love to make an office chair out of one. (Though how would I run power to the adjustments?)
I wonder how many 1987 Touring Sedans were sold compared to 1987 442s.
I remember sitting in my friend’s dad’s ’87 Cutlass Salon when I was five, and being shocked and surprised at how similar the interior was to my uncle’s ’78 Cutlass Supreme Brougham.
I too thought that these cars were underrated and did not get the attention that they deserved. But then Olds created the Aurora and all bets were off. Poor Oldsmobile.
I think it’s a really nice looking car, if it drove as well it looked it deserved to be a success. Unfortunately, by now, everybody knew that GM cars broke.
I’d love to get a pair (or more) of those front seats. I know how to provide 12V for using them as a desk chair.
Hey Bill,
I don’t know if you got a lemon but I have had the 92 Touring Sedan since 1992. I have over 166,000 mile on it and it runs as good today as the day I got it. The only thing I have had to do is change the oild when due and put tires on it. My grand-daughter wrecked it in 2007, I had it repaired and have put more than 50,000 miles on it since. I would not be afraid to get in it and drive across country in it. This has been one of the best cars I have ever owned. Sorry you have had a bad experience with yours. I would give a big thumbs up for this automobile. Thank you Oldsmobile for putting out such a great car.
Have had 6 TS’s, current is an 87 bought with 64K miles from some super nice people in Cleveland. Took some time and bucks to get it back, but she’s now my favorite car (AGAIN)!!!
ART IN MOTION……….These cars are Perfect ..A Perfect Design in every way!!! and had ..One Designer!!! not Group made like most bad designed Cars..NOT low budget in any way Real burl wood dash..seats Desiged by Lear.. Car was over 30k New ..that ‘s why the slow sales..ON the Collecter Car list …for a Reason. wasn’t made for the tasteless masses.
These cars are big ticket items with inner city wannabe gangsters, DUBers and donkers. They were classless, odd looking vehicles when they were new and are still classless, odd looking vehicles today. That’s if you happen to see one flopping down the road with its trunk rattling with 190 decibels of Bassnectar thumpin’ away!
I know Tom doesn’t come around these parts anymore, but being familiar with his work and interacting with him, we share very similar tastes.
I’m probably one of the extreme few who LOVE this model Touring Sedan. I find the Chuck Jordan designed 98 to be more consistent to Oldsmobile than the previous model, and I find the 98 much better looking than the geriatric, frumpy Park Avenue. I don’t think the Park Avenue is a terrible car, it definitely fits well for Buick, and Buick was a brand that was more traditional and appealing to a more senior clientele.
These Touring Sedans are amazing cars.. they drive well and handle excellently. I’m proud, happy, and fortune to own and cherish a 1993 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Touring Sedan. With owning one of these cars, I’ve learned a few things about them.
The featured car is more likely a 1993 Touring Sedan as the 93 had black molding and the trim around the headlights was black in 1993 while these features were gray in 1991 and 92.
Also 91-92 Touring Sedan has a trunk key emblem and the 93 did away with it and simply has an exposed key hole for the trunk (I’ve added this to my 93 Touring Sedan)
I look forward to many more miles of driving in my Touring Sedan when spring comes!
I love them too. Never understood why so many people hated the styling of these… I thought they were refreshingly distinctive. The contemporary Park Avenue certainly looked nice, too, but it seems its widely regarded by enthusiasts as being beautiful and the 98 as being butt-ugly when, to my eyes, both declarations are too extreme.
Glad you’re enjoying your Olds! I wish you many happy years of Oldsmobility!