We all know the reasons that GM killed Oldsmobile, but in retrospect, was it really a good idea?

Mark LaNeve is on record as saying that GM has never regained the volume lost when Olds was closed down. And Buick's GM has said that the Lacrosse and Lucerne haven't been very good at conquesting these former Oldsmobile buyers.

So where did all of these Oldsmobile people go?

 

Probably poor timing on killing the brand because they had close to zero in the hopper regarding good new cars in other brands.

I think if the Aura, Lucerne and next Malibu (assuming it is nice) were out at the time Olds was killed, they might not have lost the customers. But expecting people to switch from a fairly high quality Olds car to a equally priced Buick with lower quality... probably not the best decision.

 

Maybe not, but then again, they have a hard enough time figuring out and laying out a clear direction for each of their brands.

 

Couple points about this:
1) GM lost most of Oldsmobile's volume while Olds was still open -- going from ~500K to ~100K cars.

2) After Olds closed down, GM continued to lose volume in similar numbers.

I think if you plotted it out, it would look more like a downward line instead of a cliff where they closed Oldsmobile.

Don't get me wrong, I think GM did a lousy job in how they closed down Olds. But nobody was buying them, so whadda you going to do? GM's in much better shape for a turnaround now that they don't have to worry about filling up the Olds dealers.

 

You can't buy heritage, but you sure can kill it off.
GM should of never done what they did. If its possible they should bring it back. All they needed was one or two models to spice up their show rooms.
They could of had an olds version of the GTO and called it the 442. Which in this day and age would stand for 442hp.

 

Hmmm...wonder why Olds owners aren't interested in the "new" Buicks:

2001 Oldsmobile Aurora V6:
Base Price: 30,130
3.5LDOHC V6 215hp, 234 lb/ft

2007 Lucerne V6
$26,410
3.8 OHV V6, 197hp, 220 lb/ft

These specs aside, the cars above are basically identicle. On top of that, which car looks nicer? The same facts arrise when one compares an Oldsmobile Intrigue and a Buick Lacrosse. I've never understood why Olds got the ax while Buick somehow staggered on, with inferior technology, demographics, and design.

 

To me Buick and Olds were basically the same company. Both were for older people even though the last of the olds were sporty. Saturn and Buick have filled any gap left by Olds. I don't see where they would fit in today.

 

I think Olds was getting on the right track, but was never allowed to show its potential.

Back in the early 2000s, the Aurora had probably the highest quality and best design for a GM interior for that time. The Bravada was classiest looking of GMs SUV clones. Inside and out the Intrigue was the best of the W-Bodies, which outranked the Camry and Accord in a comparsion test at the time. The Alero was also a nice quality car which sold very well and was available with a manual transmission, which the Grand AM didn't get.

Before the plug was pulled, Olds was set to start there own high performance brand like SS or GXP which would have featured a 4.0L Aurora V8 powered Intrigue and a 3.5 DOHC powered Alero.

The last generation of Olds was like a big secert in the automotive world, there was hardly any marketing for these cars, but those who came across them and bought them ended up very happy with them.

 

What was the difference between Olds and Buick?

 

I'm amazed every time I read these "They shouldn't have killed off Oldsmobile" threads. Oldsmobile at best was a US Toyota/Lexus. It produced cars for middle America and it's top models were aimed at the older end of the market. It's cars were not designed to quicken the pulse or breed excitement, therefore, there is hardly a person in this community who'd be caught dead in an Oldsmobile even if it was still alive.

When GM killed off Oldsmobile, sure, I was as dumbfounded as anyone else. But in retrospect, it would have been almost irresponsible not to kill off Oldsmobile. The only vehicles Oldsmobile sold in any number was also available at Pontiac, Buick, and even GMC, and it seemed at the time, the cost of closing Oldsmobile would have saved far more money while minimally impacting overall sales.

If you own stocks valued at $20 each & you know you're going to make at least $5 on each by the end of the year, but you also own another set of stocks valued at $10 each, and you know you aren't going to make any more than $1 on each by years end, unless papa used to beat on your head with a brick when you were younger, you're going to sell off all those $10 stocks that make no more than a dollar and get more $20 stocks and make at least $5.

Pumping more money into Oldsmobile beyond what was already done is like selling off those $20 stocks and buying more $10 ones. In the real world, you'll eventially go broke. In the business world, you'd be fired.



Flowmotion makes an excellent point in that GM's decline can't be layed at the door of closing Oldsmobile. 30thZ286speed, your point about Olds never being allowed to show it's potential, while plausable on the surface, doesn't really hold up when you consider that even as GM pumped money into Olds, sales continued to drop. Olds had their own chassis developed in the Aurora (arguably the best built car from the US at the time) & advanced OHC V6 & V8 engines. Again, other divisions needed that money Oldsmobile was getting. How much money do you pump in before you pull the plug?? How far do you go in ignoring other divisions in order to save Oldsmobile, which didn't seem to be responding in sales?? Even if you put a 280 horse Northstar in the Alero, it wasn't going to boost sales

Older folks were moving towards Cadillac, Buick, & Lincoln (which was still a powerhouse back then). Younger professionals GM was aiming for when the new Oldsmobiles came along in the 90s came at the same time Lexus and Infiniti gained traction. Saying "I drive a Lexus" is alot different than saying "I drive an Oldsmobile", especially where status comes into play.

Olds had a great heritage. It's "Rocket V8s" were famous in the 50s all the way till GM pulled out of racing in the early 60s. Along with Pontiac, it created the 1st US RWD cars with IRS, flexible driveshafts, alumunum V8 engines, and turbocharging in their midsize cars in the early 60s. Toronado was one of the 1st regular production FWD luxury cars. Olds was home to the highest advertized horsepower regular production GM muscle car (the 500 horse 455) around 1970. It had the best selling car in the US by far in the late 70s. Although by the mid 80s it was the weakest handling of GM's midsize "performance coupes", Olds's long association with Hurst has left a line of valuable performance and-or appearence models (even the big car had a version in the 70s).

But the reality is that none of us here would buy one, we'd buy Chevrolet & Pontiac 1st. Buick had a far higher buyer loyalty. Younger professionals were moving towards the new Lexus & Infinitis. Middle class people who weren't buying Toyotas or Hondas were buying up Ford Taurus (was still selling at numbers almost impossible to imagine today in a US car). In the end, the only Oldsmobiles that could remotely be called "sellers" were the almost-identical-to-Grand-Am Alero, and the regrilled-from-GMC Bravada, and to a lesser extent, the Grand Prix-ish Intrigue.

 

I really hated to she Oldsmobile get closed down but that was mostly because of what it once was, not because of what it had become.

One of the best cars my family ever owned was a 1967 Olds Delta88 two door coupe fastback which was a light yellow exterior and maroon interior (bucket seats)…it was a beautiful car and it could really move…Olds used to mean something then (as did Chevrolet and Pontiac and Buick and Cadillac) but that just isn’t the case any longer.

As it is now, GM simply didn’t need Oldsmobile anymore and frankly, I’d say you could make the same argument about one or two other current divisions.

So, to answer the question, no, I don’t think it was a mistake for GM to kill off the Olds nameplate.

 

When it was killed off, Cadillac was going into the young generation, and olds/buick were for the older folks.
They could have turned olds into what used to be the luxurious cadillac. A 442 olds could have been on par with, say the BMW m3.
A problem was GM wasn't partioning out its brands like it used to to back in the 60s. Wwhen GM was great, true car guys were running the company Today, even though we have guys like lutz and ol' red, look at how much work it had to take for them to get the Camaro concept through....We told them...we told them...we told them....only a few would listen...these few were car guys...and the Camaro Concept made the most noise of any GM has ever produced.
Now all the bean counters are holding the car guys back.
Think about the early 1990s. GM had old-cadillac-buick, all selling cars to grannies...Why? Then just as Cadillac went hip, they book olds? What the....
Now as the WWII vets are dying the baby boomers are buying up some of the cars marketed at todays kids, like the aztek and scion brands.
You left old-buick open with no buyers.
All they had to do was turn olds into a BMW type brand. Like Guionm was saying, alot of guys now see getting a infiniti or lexus as meaning "you made it." If GM could just make that Olds...

 

Dave, why are you comparing 2 very different cars that are 6 years different??! Also, you have just inadvertantly shot yourself in the foot here. Here's how.

1st, look at the price of the Aurora you posted. $30,000..... in 2001! That's a mountain of money 6 years ago... especially for a V6.

2nd, you quote the "inferior" technology of the Buick. Going to my above post, and the fact that GM spent a closet full of money trying to save Oldsmobile, which didn't work, makes Olds seem like a money pit. Combined with the 1st point, an overpriced money pit.

3rd, The point you are comparing cars that are well over 5 years different instead of other Oldmobile competitors of the day doesn't work. It makes you seem desparate to make a point.

Reccommend you compare 2001 Oldsmobiles with other 2001 cars of the same market position. Then I think you'll start to see what Olds problems were.

Not that I'm "anti"-Oldsmobile. Left up to me, it's a bit of history that should still be around. But putting myself in the position of the Board Of Directors, given the info they had then and the fact that I'd have 4 other US and 3 other foreign car divisions that also need attention and money, I don't believe i'd decide any different than they did under the circumstances.

....And as a realist, I wouldn't buy an Oldsmobile anyway, even if it was still around.

 

Yeah, the "new Olds" was supposed to be a Acura/Low-End Lexus/High-End Toyota competitor, and I agree that they totally failed at it.

The problem is that by killing Olds, GM basically took themselves out of competition in the "near luxury" sedan market for about 8 years. Just now are they getting back into this with the Aura and other cars that are supposedly coming soon, but that's a long time to not have any products in a high-profit market.

If I were dictator of GM, I'd would have kept at in this market -- there's too much at stake. Perhaps relaunch Oldsmobile to "Aurora" (this was a real plan), cut the product line a bit, and merge the dealer networks with Buick so that traditional Oldsters could still find their bench seats.

 

Any brand will have to have a bunch of money dumped in it, for it to be reinvented, mostly at start up, once you get going in the new direction it becomes cheaper. Olds sales were making a small rebound until the death annoncement was made then the bottom fell out.

The reinvention of Cadillac costed GM a boat load too, and got off to a slow start with the CTS, but now the CTS is selling better than it did when it debuted. Unfortunally the reinvention of Olds would have never payed off like Cadillac has, but maybe they would have been breaking even by now.

Moving up market the name really hurt Olds too, like guiom said with Lexus, Infiniti and then "OLD"smobile, that just didn't sit well with younger people.

As an Intrigue onwer, I am pro Olds, its been a great car, and is really just starting to look dated compared to whats new. Our Intrigue was in perfect shape until a couple of weeks ago a drunk driver slammed into the back of our Intrigue causing $3,500+ damage to it while it was sitting in front of our house.