Just Too Olds to Keep Going
They were huge, those old Oldsmobiles, like mobile living rooms with bench seats wide enough for sibling DMZs, vast doors that opened like gates, and strategic swatches and long sweeps of shiny chrome everywhere.
If an Olds 98 passed a Plymouth, everyone behind braced for wind turbulence. When bridge clubs gathered every other Friday in the ‘50s and ‘60s, driveways were littered with these mammoth machines reeking of prestige, perfume and 27.9-cent-a-gallon gas. No more. Ten days ago, General Motors made the last Olds, one of those dwarf Aleros that couldn’t carry a pack of Cub Scouts if you crammed them into the trunk too.
For thousands of workers, dealers and car fans, the death of Olds and its Rocket 88, Toronado and Cutlass was the emotional end of a familiar name, a crested icon, a longtime auto family member and yet another era in a chaotic, very modern age fond of ending eras without starting enduring new ones. Today’s eras are disposable too, with celebrities lasting weeks, sometimes months.
Olds had been here since 1897 -- the make, not Ransom E. Olds, the founder, who sold out to GM in 1908.
Olds envisioned a cheap, smart horseless buggy for the masses. GM saw the Oldsmobile as a middle rung on a family ladder of autos matching America’s rising affluence, from cheap Chevys through Pontiacs, then Oldsmobiles to Buicks and ultimately Cadillacs, for the car dealers and their bankers. Other cars died despite love -- Packard, Studebaker, Rambler and Ransom Olds’ next car company, Reo, which used his initials and eventually switched to trucks even larger than Oldsmobiles. But Olds was the oldest American make, second only to Daimler in the world.
GM claims the Oldsmobile market just crumbled. Others believe GM hastened erosion in an unthinking, instinctive grasp for the young and the feckless. True, the affluent Olds buyers were aging, like everyone still breathing. Olds had promoted front-wheel drive, chrome, automatic transmissions.
Troubled by Americans’ willingness to buy cars made by World War II opponents, younger GM execs switched to short-term thinking with cosmetic changes like bucket seats, four-on-the-floor, smaller, zippy vehicles easily confused with others.
“Not your father’s Oldsmobile,” the 1980s ads said.
But for the young, it always was a fuddy old Olds. And for the mature, it wasn’t their distinctive Olds anymore. Annual sales dwindled from a 1.2 million peak in 1984 to 10% of that last year. Perhaps if the founder’s name had been Ransom E. Young the car make would have thrived in today’s market. It wasn’t, and it didn’t.
Now, after 35,229,218 Oldsmobiles, there are no more for olds or youngs. A lesson about trendy pandering for current fashionistas to remember for, oh, two, three months maybe.
