Junkyard Find: 2003 Oldsmobile Aurora
Here at Down On the Junkyard HQ, we’re all about American automotive history. We’ve seen one of the last of the GM J-bodies, evidence of how Ronald Reagan saved Ford from recall-induced bankruptcy, and Shelby-ized French Chryslers. Today we’ll be looking at one of the many cars that didn’t save Oldsmobile, a final-year-of-production Olds Aurora that I spotted last week in a Denver-area yard.
This was one of three Auroras in the same yard, and I chose it because it was sold at a time when Olds shoppers knew that the marque was doomed. You could get a V6 Aurora in 2001 and 2002, but the ’03s all had the Northstar-based 4.0-liter V8 engine.
The guys from Car and Driver entered an Aurora in the first-ever 24 Hours of LeMons race, and “won” the People’s Curse award for their trouble.
This one looked pretty clean but had been rear-ended and wasn’t worth fixing. Now it will donate parts to nicer second-gen Auroras. The case can be made that Oldsmobile is the most important marque in American music, but that didn’t stop GM from swinging the axe after 106 years.
It doesn’t just move — it moves you.
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.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
It is ironic that GM was giving Oldsmobile their best designs when all the while Oldsmobile was doomed. The Intrigue was the best W car out of the whole bunch of them. The handling was out of this world. But GM wouldn't give it a real motor or a high quality interior, a pattern that was all too familiar in the old GM. Oldsmobiles may have been for older people at the end, but in the sixties and seventies they were making millions of cars. The Cutlass far outsold the Camry and Accord who dominate now. It's very sad that Oldsmobile had to die since it was inundated with new technologies in days past. It was a glorious division in it's day. Chevy should have gotten the exteriors and interiors of the last Oldsmobiles. They would have sold a hell of a lot more of them than the turd Lumina.
My 2001 3.5L is still kickin it! Also quite fun to drive still... http://i.imgur.com/YaMtUFK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lTWnqTF.png http://i.imgur.com/VGHvgVd.png http://i.imgur.com/aSz0R4f.jpg