#OldsmobileBravada

The General had a healthy sales hit with the GMT360 platform in the 2002 model year, when the new Chevrolet Trailblazer, GMC Envoy, and Oldsmobile Bravada hit the showrooms. Since GM had devoured Saab in 2000 and most American car shoppers wanted trucks or truck-shaped machines by that point, it seemed to make sense to produce a Saab-badged GMT360 and extract some cash from that slice of the car-buying populace that craved both the rugged-lifestyle signifiers of a truck and the quirky-yet-sensible Swedish image of a Saab. The Isuzu-badged version— the Ascender— had had its debut for 2004, and so the Saab 9-7X appeared for 2005 (sadly, no Daewoo- or Vauxhall-badged versions were produced). Here’s a first-model-year 9-7X, found in a Denver self-service yard last week.

Today’s Rare Ride represents a landmark for the Oldsmobile brand and a somewhat unsuccessful luxury badge experiment for General Motors.

Let’s check out the rarely seen first-generation Oldsmobile Bravada.

Chris writes:

2006 Isuzu Ascender: the reverse lights are on while driving forward, in drive. I got pulled over for this. Anybody have an idea why they stay on when in drive? How I can troubleshoot this issue?

Thanks for your time.

We’ve been on a Nineties streak lately, and our last four editions of Buy/Drive/Burn have all taken place within the decade. Well, ready your baggy beige suit and adjust its extensive shoulder pad region, because today we talk 1992. Specifically, Gtem suggested three luxury SUVs which were very popular with middle-class families across the country.

Ford, Oldsmobile, and [s]AMC[/s] Jeep — which makes it to your garage?

Dave writes:

Hello Sajeev,

I have a 2004 GMC Envoy, 4.2-liter six-cylinder, with about 123k miles that seems to be leaking coolant from somewhere around the radiator cap. Every time I come to a stop with the windows down or pull into the garage I can smell antifreeze. The radiator appears full and the reservoir seems to be maintaining a fairly consistent level of the pink stuff. It never leaks enough that I see wet spots except now and then around the cap, and even then it’s only a few drops at most. I’ve taken it to the mechanic; they double checked all the hoses and connections and even replaced the cap, but it didn’t help.

I replaced the cap a second time thinking I got a bad one, but the smell remains. By happenstance the cap I bought happened to be the exact same brand the mechanic used. I’ve attached a picture of the engine bay showing the areas where I can see dried coolant. The perplexing part to me is that, judging by the splatter pattern near the oil fill and the air filter box, some of the coolant seems to be making it to the fan. Still, I never see any wet spots leading in that direction. Do you have any suggestions?

As a side question, I have been getting an intermittent CEL with an associated P0526 code (fan speed sensor). It will come on for a trip or two and then go away on its own. Any chance the supposed coolant hitting the fan could be causing the CEL?

Last time on Rare Rides, we carried the racing [driver] and special edition themes to new heights, and featured a shockingly bad Jeff Gordon Monte Carlo special edition of which there were 24 copies made. Our ride today is still made by General Motors, and it’s still about racing, but it’s larger and even more rare. It’s also better, because it has an Oldsmobile logo on the front (albeit not the superior rocket one).

Oh yeah, and it’ll go 140 miles per hour.

The Olds Bravada started out as an Oldsmobized Chevy Blazer and ended (along with Oldsmobile itself) as an Oldsmobated Chevy Trailblazer. They show up in Colorado junkyards in startlingly large numbers. Who bought Bravadas? For that matter, who bought Isuzu Ascenders? Anyway, because the idea of an Oldsmobile-badged midsize SUV made about as much sense as an Oldsmobile-badged cruel-parody-of-a-luxury-car J-body and is thus sort of interesting, I’ve finally decided to do a Bravada Junkyard Find. We’ll return to the usual Pontiac-badged Daewoos soon enough.

As Detroit was skipping a decade or two of car R&D by concentrating on packing increasing numbers of 128-ouncer-ready cup holders and faux-wood trim into big trucks, it became necessary to make it clear to the targeted buyer demographics that these trucks really weren’t, you know, trucks. In fact, they were more about protection from street crime and potholes than anything else, which is where slapping Mercury badges on the Explorer and Oldsmobile badges on the Blazer came in.