Junkyard Find: 1984 Oldsmobile Omega Brougham
Remember the Oldsmobile version of the Chevy Citation? Maybe not, because they sold poorly and depreciated to near-scrap-value levels within a few years. The Oldsmobile Omega was built for the 1980 through 1984 model years, and I’ve found a very clean example from the final year of production. No rust, pretty straight body, Whorehouse Red interior still in great shape… and getting crushed after 30 years on the planet.
This is a California car, of course, and the nice interior means that it was kept in a garage. In fact, this car is so nice that the 38,850 miles indicated on the odometer may be the actual figure.
So, most likely a one-owner car, driven by an elderly person who took care of all the maintenance (and brought it in for the considerable number of recalls that afflicted the X-bodies).
This one has the 2.8 liter V6, not the Soviet-tractor-style Iron Duke four-cylinder.
Genuine stereo cassette in the dash! Now that’s Oldsmobile luxury.
GM didn’t have quite the French Cathouse look that Chrysler got with their Whorehouse Red velour interior, but it’s still pretty bordellic.
The Oldsmobile of small cars: A smooth-ridin’ road-huggin’ high-fashion eye-catchin’ quick-stepppin’ fuel-sippin’ pump-passin’ pocket-pleasin’ front-wheel-drive Omega from Oldsmobile!
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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A co-worker of mine had one. It was so bad he vowed never to buy another American car. Thus began a long, sad series of drab Toyotas.
There is a full-line GM X-Body Facebook group. Almost 500 members, over 1000 pics, and every-year X-car dealer brochure in the Photo Albums section. Ha! No joke! https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevycitations/