The '74 Olds Omega

"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile) 01/29/2020 at 12:07 • Filed to: ads

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It’s a lot of little Olds.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 01/29/2020 at 12:12

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The Thinking Man’s Nova...

jimz > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 01/29/2020 at 12:13

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6 years later it would become an X car.

Chariotoflove > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 01/29/2020 at 12:16

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I just love how it was considered a compact. 

ranwhenparked > jimz 01/29/2020 at 12:30

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And immediately alienated a huge chunk of Oldsmobile's core market, never to return.

jimz > ranwhenparked 01/29/2020 at 12:34

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to be fair, the Sloan model was already falling apart and Olds would have been squeezed out of the lineup eventually anyway. The idea of a brand hierachy of Chevy-Pontiac-Buick-Olds-Cadillac worked in the ‘50s, but once the gap between a “normal” car and a luxury car became almost nonexistent most of them ceased having a reason to exist. All they did was dilute share.

hell, if it wasn’t for guys like Bob Lutz, GM would have been only Chevrolet and Cadillac post-bankruptcy. 

vondon302 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 01/29/2020 at 12:38

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Ah oldsmobile my first love.

ranwhenparked > jimz 01/29/2020 at 12:56

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Oldsmobile usually appealed to middle class buyers, people who have options and expectations. Before the X-body Omega, all of GM’s terrible cars had tended to be entry level compact and subcompact Chevrolets and Pontiacs , classes that people just accepted would be terrible based on price (until the major rise of the Japanese brands). The X-body Olds and Buick derivatives was really the first time GM had laid such a hot, steaming turd in the driveways of middle and upper middle class buyers on such a large scale. Those were the buyers that defected to Camrys, Accords, and, sometimes, Volvos and lower tier BMWs and Audis, never to return. The X body marked the start of GM’s truly precipitous and irreversible sales and share decline, the fact that it was such a hit in its first model year made it all the worse, that was something like 2 million people that got burned.

jimz > ranwhenparked 01/29/2020 at 13:01

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Before the X-body Omega, all of GM’s terrible cars had tended to be entry level compact and subco mpact Chevrolets and Pontiacs, classes that people just accepted would be terrible based on price

counterpoint:

ranwhenparked > jimz 01/29/2020 at 13:19

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That did hit slightly earlier, but did not affect as many customers. At any rate, same general era and impacting the same demographics, but in different model lines. It’s almost like GM was consciously trying to make themselves fail, to the point where you’d wonder if there were Toyota double agents in their executive ranks.

Diesel Cadillacs had effectively zero resale value within a few years, dealers would sometimes put signs outside advertising they wouldn’t take them in trade, and insurance companies noted a rash of Olds diesel cars mysteriously catching fire for unexplained reasons. 

jimz > ranwhenparked 01/29/2020 at 13:31

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nah, it was just a sclerotic management culture.  Over and over again companies have tried to do the “easy” thing now and hoped that it wouldn’t cost them a ton later.  Inevitably, it always does.  

shop-teacher > jimz 01/29/2020 at 14:09

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I said several times before the bankruptcy that GM should be sliced down to Saturn, Chevrolet, and Cadillac. I said that as somebody who then and still does daily drive a GMC, who also owned a Buick at the same time, and had traded a Pontiac in to get the GMC . I was upset when Olds was killed, and I was sad when Pontiac went away, but they really didn’t have a reason to exist. Frankly, nei ther do Buick and GMC.  I thought Saturn should have been spared, because they had done such a great job launching that brand, I knew several people who considered themselves Saturn loyalists.  Instead they starved it of product, and then took it out back and shot it.

shop-teacher > Chariotoflove 01/29/2020 at 14:10

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It was inside.  I could reach all four window cranks from the driver’s seat of my ‘74 Apollo.

Chariotoflove > shop-teacher 01/29/2020 at 14:21

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That was a feature for that purpose. You’re welcome. Sincerely, GM. 

ranwhenparked > shop-teacher 01/29/2020 at 14:46

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Buick exists because of China and the enormous cost of buying out all the Buick-GMC franchises, and because there’s some market research to support the idea that it needs a toehold in its “home market” of the US in order for Chinese consumers to receive it as a perceive it as a fo reign, and therefore desirable, brand. That was also the reason why NAC and SAIC kept a token MG presence in the UK. Although manufacturing as stopped there, they still have a lot of the design and engineering done in Birmingham and still heavily pitch it as a faux import brand in China.

GMC exists to give Buick dealers trucks to sell, and because buyers will, for some reason, pay a premium over Chevrolet to get the GMC brand. And it costs the company little extra in R&D and manufacturing.

shop-teacher > ranwhenparked 01/29/2020 at 17:16

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I know all this, but I still think GM would be much better off focusing their resources on two US brands, instead of four.  I take no pleasure in that opinion.  I love my GMC, and the Regal Tour X and the final gen LaCrosse are both gorgeous vehicles, that I would love to own.