1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme
It's not your father's Oldsmobile...
It's your grandMOTHER's!
I remembered a car that my crack-head friend had been looking at. It was an Oldsmobile sedan owned by an elderly librarian who only drove it back and forth to the library. She'd passed away, and the car wound up for sale at this small independent garage near my house. My crack-head friend never bought it because he kept spending all his money on crack. So I went and checked it out.
It needed a jump, but it sprang to life pretty easily, and turned out to be a cream puff to drive. So many things reminded me of the full-sized Oldsmobile wagon my family drove when I was a kid, which was the car I'd learned to drive on. And this one was looking like a fabulous car to get me through this interim period.
The car was pretty cheap because it had a carburetor so no one wanted it. I think I paid around $1500 for it. But it was an absolute utter sweetheart from the moment I started driving it. I cleaned all the granny stuff out of it, vacuumed it up, wiped down the dash, and I was stylin'!
The car couldn't have been any more granny. It had to have been the most stripped down Oldsmobile you could get. It had no vinyl top, hand-crank windows, no cruise, and not even a clock on the dash. But it did have the fancy wire wheels hubcaps. It was a deep maroon color, and the upholstery was burgundy velour.
And you know what? I loved it. I absolutely loved it. The ride, while not responsive, rivaled my black-oil Citroën ID suspension. And although it was a stripped down model, as an Oldsmobile it was a luxury car. It was interesting comparing and contrasting the fit and finish with that of the Fiero, which was a comparable model year. The Pontiac was chinsey by comparison. The difference was most evident in the radio controls, of all things. On the Olds, the knobs were elegant, and their movement was smooth and firm. Really, when I was driving around in that car I truly felt like I was in the lap of luxury.
Except for a new set of tires, I didn't have to do a damn thing to the car. It was one of the most seamless purchase-and-drive-away experiences I'd ever had. I didn't like to take it too terribly far from home, but I felt plenty confident driving it to Boston and back before I actually did leave for California.
When I came back from California abruptly and ahead of schedule, the old girl fired right back up without even a jump, and went right back into daily service. And when the Alliance just couldn't keep itself running, I had no choice but to put the Oldsmobile into winter service. It wasn't the best scenario, but when I was a kid growing up and learning how to drive in snow country, our trusty Olds wagon got us through year after year. For better or worse, I decided not to put snows on the back. I knew that the following winter I would simply not be driving this car, no matter what else happened, so I would not waste a pair of snows for just the one winter. I buckled up and braced myself for an Ithaca winter in a rear-wheel drive Oldsmobile with summer tires.
The truth is it did fine. There were times when there was just so much accumulation of snow on the road it was difficult to keep control while plowing through (where the Alliance would have either cut through it or danced over top), and I feared stop signs on hills when it was slick, but truthfully it was just fine. And the heater worked great, too, which really helped.
The car made it to the end of Winter just fine, but over the course of the next year it started to show its age, including a coolant leak that was difficult to pin down. Based on that and the fact that I really wanted something smaller and more efficient, I decided that it was time to move on. I wound up putting it for sale on eBay, and sold it first try for a good amount of money. Except for the fact that the buyer didn't arrange pickup in advance, and the transport company arrived when I was 2+ hours away from home, the sale was uneventful.