Junkyard Find: 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser Hell Edition
Plenty of front-wheel-drive Cutlasses go to The Crusher without being photographed for this series, but here’s one with an interesting customization job that attracted my attention. Why didn’t GM ever make a wagon with a red-glass option?
When a car is on its last owner and that owner knows it, the space-saver spares seem to appear right away.
This car’s final owner must have scored a deal on some of that “fix-a-taillight” red tape. Inspiration!
A little packaging tape over the top, you know, to provide strength.
Riding in the back of this wagon must have felt like riding on the Hell Highway System.
Oldsmobile’s little line of flags, allegedly from nations with GM employees, lasted for a good chunk of the 1980s and 1990s.
3800 power, of course! Note: Sajeev Mehta, having joined the Cutlass Jihad, points out that this is actually a 3300 engine.
The wagon version of the Cutlass Ciera became the Cutlass Cruiser. The Judds preferred the sedan.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Between my having to replace a head-gasket in a 1984 Sunbird on my then college-student's budget, plus (and more to the point of this article, FWD GM A-bodies) the inability of the Buick dealer to diagnose a cold-engine power-loss in the Chevy-derived 2.8L carbureted V6 in my Dad's 1986 Century (the last year for carbs in that car; a family friend and mechanic later found a TSB which would have fixed it), my family gave up on GM in 1990 for Honda, having had Oldsmobiles and Buicks going back to 1971. With that said, however, I think that Honda-fication may have been delayed at least a little if my Dad would have ordered, or had been able to find, a Century with the 3.8L injected V6; I got to drive a friend's 1985 Century Estate wagon, loaded-down to the bump-stops, and even with all the weight, that engine pulled like a freight train, nice crisp shifts from the THM 450C 4-speed automatic overdrive transmission! And as is the case a lot of times, GM cars get better through the years: I know that the latest examples of the A-bodies were damn near bulletproof, and while not up to Lexus standards, were OK enough for the day; I seem to recall having a Ciera as a service loaner from the Honda dealer years ago with 30 or 40K on it, and it rode well with few interior rattles or things falling off. (No major repairs being done to the Honda--oil change, rotate tires, etc.; just didn't get to the dealer in time to catch the shuttle that morning.) However, as usually happens in salt country, the tinworm gets these before the engine craps out, or at least that's what I've observed around Northwest Ohio as the A-body population has dwindled. @MRF95TBird--hooking up an A-body AWD setup with a modded 3800SC would be the ultimate sleeper indeed! Drop a 1983 Celebrity Eurosport body on top of that combo (which, in 1983, was nothing more than a stripe/blackout package with F41 suspension, unlike later years; the Celebrity never even got the Buick 6s) and go trolling for M5s! 8-)
Picked up a 1993 Cutlass Ciera sedan in extremely good condition (white with blue interior) back in May for $500 from a friend of the family. Miles on the ODO showed 112,000. Previous owner said, and I confirmed that his mother (previous, previous owner) had spend considerable cash within the last 2,000 miles on a rebuilt 4 speed trans. Had to drop $800 bucks into it (MAF sensor and CAT) to get it smogged here in CA. Since then it's performed flawlessly. My wife uses it for her short commute on the weekdays. We drove it 900 miles or so from OC to Sonoma County over the summer and just got back from a long weekend in Vegas (another 600 miles). What a great car for getting down the interstate—cruises effortlessly at 75 mph, with easy acceleration to 85 or so to pass all while delivering 26.9 mpg. Headliner is starting to sag, the auto trans shifter knob cracked and fell off, but that's it. Would love to find a solid, low-mileage, late-model version of this car in the station wagon variant. Oh, and the brakes are kind of funky and require early application along with attentive modulation.