Is General Motors up to the same old tricks?
This cover of Fortune Magazine is dated August 22, 1983. Pictured from front to back are the Chevy Celebrity, Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, Buick Century, and Pontiac 6000, all built on the A-body platform. If you’re a fan of Pontiac or Oldsmobile, the reason your favorite brand’s demise is in the image below.
A-body coupes and sedans performed unimpressively and looked the part, occupying American garages from 1982 to 1996, an agonizingly long 14-year production period with few exterior changes.
There were a few differences among the cars, especially Pontiac’s 6000 STE, a sport sedan with surprisingly sharp handling. The STE was a bright spot in a sad period of cookie-cutter cars, with its own steering rack, four-wheel disc brakes, self-leveling suspension, and all-wheel drive. Chevrolet had its Eurosport Celebrity with body-colored wheels and sleeker exterior cladding.
Each brand had varying selections of engines, different seating (Olds got tufted pillow seats), slightly different luxury features, different wheels, and slightly different interiors. Oldsmobiles and Buicks in later years received curved rear glass and flush mounted headlamps for a more aerodynamic look. Otherwise, they were much the same. To the general public, a Buick Century may as well have been an Olds Ciera. The differences were as subtle as red and crimson.
Below: 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera International
Below: 1990 Chevrolet Celebrity
By 1996, Chrysler was light years ahead with its spacious and futuristic Intrepid. The Nissan Maxima was building a growing audience with a legendary V6 and lively handling. Ford’s Taurus was a best-seller (until the 1996 oval body), and the Camry and Accord leaped ahead every four years, until the Camry and Accord became America’s two best-selling midsize cars.
This is what Buick still offered in 1996:
To GM’s credit, the final years of the Ciera and Century continued to sell unexpectedly well and the cars were reasonably dependable, but a brand cannot evolve by offering aging hardware to aging customers, even if doing so is profitable in the short term. Baby Boomers eventually replaced The Greatest Generation, and anti-Japanese and anti-German postwar sentiment became distant memories. GM’s market share dwindled accordingly.
The same could probably be said of Toyota today [see the 2011 Camry review] as its customers age and its product portfolio remains in a state of arrested development.
Some say General Motors is repeating history with badge engineering, heavy sales incentives, and a disrespect for engineering and innovation. CEO Dan Akerson recently compared automobiles to Diet Coke, sold by consumer-driven marketing rather than engineering.
What do you think? Is GM up to the same old tricks? See the article below.
Weird Bonus: Someone put the Cutlass Ciera in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
Fast Tube by Casper
Good read, Jesda. Made all the more interesting because I’m looking at a ’93 A-Body wagon for a winter beater. Cool site!