QOTD: The Most Daring Automaker of the 1990s?

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

Back in late May of this year, I inquired which modern automaker was the most daring. While I posited it could be Nissan or Volvo, many of you replied it was actually Dodge, followed by Kia and Mazda.

This week, let’s turn back the clock a couple of decades and see if all our answers require a bit of reworking. We’re off to everyone’s favorite car decade, the 1990s. Which automaker was most daring in the era of the neon and teal fanny pack? I’ll give you two specific model examples, much like I did before.

A strong case for many daring 1990s vehicles can be made here for various reasons, but let’s talk daring Asia first. Between 1986 and 1991 Japan experienced a valuation bubble on real estate and business assets, and companies found themselves with lots of extra money. Of course, the car companies threw some of that cash into the development of expensively engineered new models. By the time the resulting vehicles were released, the bubble had burst and Japan was in big trouble. North America benefitted from many of these special full-fat Golden Age (TM) Japanese vehicles. Case in point:

The Mark IV Toyota Supra. Shaped like soap, priced (as new and now) like a block of gold, it had great handling and performance, an optional twin-turbo inline-six and “This is a sports car!” looks to back it up. It hit the market at full-charge in 1993. This new Supra was a sporty and engaging replacement for the aged Mark III version, which was rather unexciting and often found in fully loaded, automatic brougham guise. The Mark IV Supra was a hit — try and find an affordable one for sale today.

At home in North America the Big Three were having their own daring phase in the 1990s, but perhaps not by choice like yen-soaked Japan. The middle-America SUV craze was starting up, and domestic automakers were confronted with the fact that big, lazy brougham sedans sold by the pound couldn’t compete with more athletic offerings from elsewhere. Sports sedans, Euro handling, and edgy styling — that was the place to be! Enter the following:

Now before you all make your typing fingers bleed, hear me out. Obviously this is a Cadillac Seville Touring Sedan, which in a couple years’ time became known as the Seville STS, and then just STS until the end in 2011.

At the time, in the early 1990s, Cadillac was Daring Greatly, or at least mostly. The new for ’92 Seville was an entirely new styling direction for the Cadillac brand. As their flagship sedan, the angular, sharp styling left the vertical lamps and vestigial fins of the Fleetwood Brougham and Sedan DeVille in the rear-view mirror. Under the hood (for ’93) was the brand new Northstar V8 engine which, despite future woes, was a very advanced and engineering-intensive design. On the inside, the stately stalks, digital gauges and switches of ye olde Cadillac were replaced with a real instrument panel which actually provided information to the driver.

Daring by force is still daring.

Tell me your pick for the single most daring automaker of the 1990s.

[Images: Ford; Toyota; YouTube]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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  • Truckducken Truckducken on Jun 28, 2017

    Although I think the Mopar boys win this round, I want to put in a second-place vote for Honda, for daring to make an f-ton of very solid, fun to drive Accords and Civics that are still running to this very day. Third place: Ford, for the Oval Taurus...someday I am getting me one of those gorgeous wagons, and throwing a Pentastar drivetrain in it. Also for daring to roll out the Mistake/Detour with engines and transmissions (even the manuals - how did they do it?) guaranteed to grenade between 90 and 100K mi. Good thing the Explorer was taking over by then, or things might have turned out very differently for Ford.

  • Yesac13 Yesac13 on Jun 28, 2017

    Would like to point out again... Chrysler definitely was the most innovative. One model that seems to be forgotten constantly when posters talk about Chrysler is the Jeep Grand Cherokee. It itself wasn't that particularly innovative but did give the whole SUV craze a big shot in the arm. That one was one of Chrysler's most important products. It along with the Ram truck made most of the dollars at Chrysler. Still true over 20 years later today!

    • Bumpy ii Bumpy ii on Jun 28, 2017

      I give credit for the JGC to AMC, even though some of the development work was completed after the merger.

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