Find or Sell any Parts for Your Vehicle in USA

Remembering Oldsmobile and its incredible Aurora

Wed, 30 Apr 2014

On April 29, 2004, the last Oldsmobile rolled off the line and took the century-old badge with it.

Since its founding in 1897, Oldsmobile has enjoyed a beloved and storied past in the tapestry of American industry. So many luminary products arose from its Lansing, Mich., home!

-- The Curved Dash Oldsmobile, the world's first mass-produced car and the first to show some semblance of thought into its interior design, a legacy GM has since squandered and recovered.

-- The front-drive Toronado, which helped GM scientists discover and harness the rare, wildly dangerous meteorological phenomenon of "psychosteer." (The Toronado later spawned the eight-doored, tri-axled, 15-passenger Jetway airport bus, which may or may not have set the template for either GM's "Dustbuster" minivans or one Los Angeles apartment complex.)

-- A rich musical legacy: "In My Merry Oldsmobile," a song about knocking boots in a car, which later spawned "Rocket 88," which later spawned the Public Enemy lyric, "Suckers to the side, I know you hate my 98."

-- The Silhouette, the "Cadillac of minivans," embroiled in its own sibling rivalry.

-- The Vista Cruiser.

-- The Aerotech.

-- The Achieva, which set the template for a thousand underachieving jokes about underachievement.

-- About 1,500 individual models named "Cutlass."

-- Cars named after jets.

So many possibilities, so many permutations, so much optimism translated to badges that spoke to American ingenuity, American comfort, American needs. And then the Aurora came out.

The Aurora set the template for all succeeding Oldsmobiles. It arose from the fertile grounds of the late 1980s that saw engineering ingenuity as diverse as the Ford Taurus and the Acura NSX, itself stemming from the Tube Car concept -- a styling exercise that combined an impossibly sleek Coke-bottle shape, wheels pushed to the corners, and frameless, pillarless windows that were more painted on than installed. It looked, simply, like it had fallen out of the sky. The nameless car sat in the lobby of GM's headquarters for half a decade before starving Oldsmobile, desperate for reinvention, took it.

Oldsmobile Aurora road test, Autoweek 1993 (page 1)

Oldsmobile Aurora road test, Autoweek 1993 (page 2)


The Aurora's slippery shape and Kamm tail netted it a coefficient of drag approaching 0.32, still among the lowest ever to see production. Its engineers found that luxury shoppers preferred the solidity of German cars; the resulting frame was so stiff that it broke the frame testing machine for cars; GM had to test it on a machine reserved for trucks. This was something its brochures touted. Its brochures also heaped praise upon the fact that the 4.0-liter L47 V8 had gone 25,000 kilometers without stopping or slowing down, 100,000 miles without a tuneup, even 50 miles without any coolant. Just in case. Meanwhile, the suspension was ""stiff as a Prussian bureaucrat." Clearly, Oldsmobile brass knew who they were aiming for.

If the above ad is true, the Aurora was even built in space.

In 1993 we said that the Aurora "walks a fine line between performance, luxury." The Aurora's V8 delivered great power and sounded just as good: "Mash down on the accelerator…and the same throaty growl that we've come to appreciate in the Northstar cuts through the quiet cabin." We appreciated the tight handling, "unencumbered by gimmicks" like Sport modes and electronic filigree. "Much about Aurora fairly shouts luxury import," we said, which at the time was as high praise you could give a Detroit-area product. "Olds found that when consumers thought Aurora was a Lexus," Businessweek wrote in 1994, "instead of an Oldsmobile, 50 percent more of them said they would consider buying it."

In a later review, alas, we complained about the weight: "were it not for an avoirdupois every bit as stunning as the dramatically sculpted sheetmetal, this would be a rave review." And, curiously enough, the weight comes despite a lack of room: against the Chrysler LHS (remember that thing?) the Aurora was said to be a weaker choice “for those who intend to employ all five seatbelts on a routine basis."

It wasn't enough to save the division. Oldsmobile styling, as the company entered its second century, can best be described as B.A. (Before Aurora) or A.A. (Anno Aurora); can you imagine the Aurora, devoid of its Oldsmobile lettering -- with only a stylized round arrow instead of the fuddy-duddy red rectangle -- across the showroom from an Eighty-Eight? For a moment, it did transform the company while keeping its respectful distance from, say, the Achieva. And for a moment, sales went swimmingly -- nearly 46,000 out the door in 1995, its first year on sale. But a year later, sales were less than half that. They wouldn't recover until 2001, spurred by a milquetoast redesign rampant with panic and cost-cutting -- but the year after that, Oldsmobile sold just over 10,000 Auroras. Ten months after, GM announced that Oldsmobile would be phased out.

What was so unique about that first Aurora was that it proved -- like the Toronado before it, which laid out America's front-drive destiny -- that when GM gave a new product its all, the results could be spectacular.

The Oldsmobile Aurora could have been so much more -- it could have been the brand's Citro


By Blake Z. Rong