This guy does the best reviews. His commentary is superb. 9mm, bag of drugs...and couple Canadians in back...a small one in the middle...a switchblade in the door pocket . The best start to a video ever. And a Coronavirus flask. Gender fluid...cause you can’t say tranny anymore.


love the interior and color.

 

He’s got a good grasp of how autos are designed, but I find his language and mannerisms to be too vulgar for my tastes. I don’t like to listen to cursing or four-letter words. And he seems to have a phobia of some innocent animals that are not aggressive and have no intentions of hurting him one bit.

I agree with Jill that’s a nice blue/green color, but, as someone who liked the classic Olds 88 and 98 (particularly before their dash and instrumentation went all-button and digital). I was not a fan of the Aurora, which, IMO, caused Olds to go off in a new direction and hastened its downfall. IMO, it looked too much like a four-door coupe and not enough of a sedan. The 1Gen version, with a Cadillac-designed Northstar V8 only, (the somewhat smaller 2Gen also offered a V6) had notable reliability problems.

 

Bill sounds like a guy who might work at a used car dealer. I think his goat talk was done tongue in cheek.

 

Were the Canadians chipper in the back of this one? LOL.

I love him too.

My Dad almost got one of these Auroras in 1995 when he traded his 1990 Continental, he got an STS instead. This Aurora didnt hasten Oldsmobile's decline, it made Oldsmobile relevant again, these cars were regarded as pretty awesome in their day. They never followed through with them which is what killed Oldsmobile.

 

He does work at a used car dealer lol, Auto Europa Naples.

 

The STS, overall, particularly the interior, was a much nicer car than the Aurora.


I think, with all due respect, we'll just agree to disagree on that one. The Aurora was a rather strong departure from the 88 and 98 that was Oldsmobile's Bread-and-Butter, and that, along with the Cutlass in the 1970s, had kept them in business for decades. Instead holding on to the crucially-important customers that had bought the 88/98 and Cutlass, Olds, with the Aurora, essentially went after the descendants of those that had been buying the four-door Thunderbirds of the late 1960s and early 70s....which, with the Aurora, simply didn't work, because there weren't enough of those customers. Worse, those who had liked the traditional 88 ad 98 no longer had a choice, because Olds was foolish enough to drop these cars to bet on the Aurora....so those customers were lost to the (then) Buick LeSabre and Park Avenue.


Well, a number of things killed Olds...the Aurora was just one of them.

I will, however, give Olds credit for one thing back then.....For a while, they were wise enough to adopt the Saturn system of no-dicker/list-price deals, although I don't remember if the 30-day money-back guarantee that Saturn also had was included. They also priced their vehicles competitively, so that people couldn't claim that were getting ripped off by that policy. Unfortunately, that alone wasn't enough.....they never recovered from the loss of the 88 and 98's customers.

 

Well sure, it was a lot more expensive.

This is an old argument with you, you are a fan of the status quo and against change and you seem to think that every car made needs to cater to octogenarians. The Eighty Eight and Ninety Eight were from another era and cars that only ancient people bought, the Aurora was an attempt to try and bring younger buyers into the brand, and it did. There were lots of mid 40 guys out there that bought the Aurora, they were everywhere. My dad would have never considered a 88 or 98, but he did consider an Aurora and he actually did have a Cutlass Calais in the 80s. You have to remember the Cutlass was a sporty power car, it wasn't an old persons car. Oldmobile was not historically an old persons car.

You talk like the Aurora was a sales disappointment and it wasn't, it was very successful they sold almost 50,000 of them the first year. In fact, the only Oldsmobile from the end of its existence that still has any relevance is the Aurora, you wont see Bill make a video about an 88 or 98 lol.

Its also impossible for one company to LOSE customers to itself. Thats the whole point of having multiple brands within the same company. If Oldsmobile 88 and 98 customers were "LOST" to Buick, they weren't lost at all because it was all GM. It made no sense for them to sell Oldsmobiles and Buicks to the same customer, if that customer would just buy a Buick and leave Oldsmobile to sell something different. Oldsmobile and Buick are not car companies, they are marketing divisions of GM. You don't need an Olds 88 or 98 when you have a Buick LeSabre and Park Avenue.

Great article if you would like to learn more about the Aurora and how Oldsmobiles history brought it about:

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/201...-on-the-aurora

 

I even forgot, they sold the 98 and the 88 alongside the Aurora for several years lol.

Another great article about the Aurora:

https://drivetribe.com/p/the-oldsmob...TBGlcibIYiGNJQ

 

I recall the first gen Aurora was a big hit. A total departure from the GM.....fun experimental stuff..it was when times were good and profits and market shares were quite high.

I also liked the 2nd gen maybe even more.

Then came Intrigue and Alero...then collapse

 

Three things. First, not just my opinion. The 88 and 98, despite the (often-mistaken) public-image, appealed to more than just Grandpa/Grandma. Several of my high-school friends (including my closest friends) liked them. My uncle had two Delta 88s in his 30s (I really enjoyed test-drivng them). And, in the 70s, Cutlass sales were rampant.....it was the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. for a number of years.

Second, I didn't just worship at the altar of the 88 and 98. In fact, at the D.C. auto show, back sometime in the 1990s (don't remember exactly what year), I got into a row with the Olds reps there about how the company had screwed the dash/instrumentation of those cars up so badly with digital gauges and row after row of dozens of (literally) almost identical buttons. So, yes, I criticized those cars when I felt it was warranted....and you see what I am driving today.

Third, if I was such an agent of anti-change (which I'm not), I would not have wasted my money on the new FWD products that Chrysler and GM came out with in the late 70s/early-80s. But, I was a traction-freak in those days (got tired of winter conditions with RWD cars, even with snow tires), and FWD promised a big improvement in winter grip.

The FWD Cutlasses of the 80s changed radically from those of the RWD 1970s. Those of the 1980s were unreliable descendants of the X-body cars. The ones in the '70s had been nice alternatives (with a little less power) to those who didn't want or couldn't afford the 4-4-2 muscle-version.

 

My dad was working at an Oldsmobile dealership when the first gen Aurora came out. It stirred up a lot of excitement and got a lot of new foot traffic into the dealership. I remember being very impressed with it when it came out.

 

The bottom line is in the time between 1985 and when the Aurora was debuted Oldsmobile sales had fallen 60%. So, hard to pin the failure of Oldsmobile on the Aurora. The 98 and 99 (which were sold alongside the Aurora for years) were symptoms of what killed Oldsmobile.

Watching the video now, it’s a good one lol. The goats! What a 90s machine, teal on teal lol

And my dads Cutlass was a RWD coupe.

 

Yes, it was a pretty color.....I mentioned that; so did Jill.

Yes, I did not mention, earlier, that, in the 1980s, there were several different variants of the "Cutlass"....some were FWD outgrowths of the X-Bodies, others were more or less continuations of RWD 1970s-versions. It was confusing, at first, for even auto-enthusiasts.

The Cutlass Ciera for example, was FWD, and the Cutlass Supreme, RWD.

 

I wouldn’t call it pretty lol, I would call it...90s.

 

You don't like teal? I always thought it was a gorgeous color.

I can remember when Accords (which already had a mark-up from strong-demand) had even more of a mark-up on the teal-green ones.