That was the last new car my grandpa bought, early-mid 90's Oldsmobile 88. His wasn't fully loaded like that one, so there were fewer buttons. His also had a column shift, I bet the floor shift was kind of a rare option. IMO the almost identical Buick LeSabre was a much better looking car with a bit more straightforward dash design.

 

Even with all of the identical dime-store buttons, I thought the last Oldsmobile 88s and 98s were much nicer than the Aurora which followed them, which, from what I could see, just didn't have the same styling appeal, especially to Olds traditionalists. Buick was the one that really benefitted from the Aurora, as not only that car, but the later demise of Olds itself, drove a lot of former Olds customers over to Buick.

 

An Olds 88 didn’t have the same appeal as an Aurora which won basically every styling and interior and appeal award when it came out?!? That was a revolutionary car.

 

I loved that first Gen Aurora when it came out and the somewhat related last Gen Buick Riviera. They both had concept car like styling and very interesting interiors and were very unique, I remember the climate controls and other controls on the doors which was totally unique at the time. The Aurora had a V8 related to the block they used in Indy Car at the time though it did not make a lot of power and was fwd. The 2nd Gen Aurora was not as nice and had more traditional looks.

 

The Aurora, for the most part, failed to do what John Rock, head of Olds at the time, had predicted for it. Plus, like many American-designed GM products of that era, it had quality-goofs. I respect other views and opinions on it, but I simply found it unimpressive.

 

Just because the Aurora didn't turn Olds around, and convince buyers that it wasn't your father's Olds doesn't mean that it wasn't one of their best products in a long time. It just came too late. The damage to Olds' brand reputation from decades of mediocre vehicles with little difference from other GM sister vehicles was already done. Was it "impressive"? Maybe not. But if that's the take on the Aurora, then how do you describe every Olds produced from the mid-80s until the Aurora?

 

I thought the very similar 1992 Cadillac Seville STS was a much better looking car. The Aurora was, well interesting(IMO UGLY!!) from a styling standpoint, you either loved or hated it. Both it and the Seville/Deville with the Northstar engine(the Aurora engine was a Northstar with smaller displacement) turned out to be horridly built cars, lots of problems besides the headgasket issue on the engine.

 

Out of curiosity I looked up the Aurora and was surprised to see that it was offered for 8 model years. Olds sold a total of 208k with the highest annual sales of 54k in 2001.

 

Exactly...at the time it was a pretty impressive car, and opened Oldsmobile up to buyers that it wasn't running with at the time. For instance my Dad entertained one in 1995 when he ultimately bought his STS, he was comparing it to the Lincoln Continental, the LS400 and the STS/SLS. Absent the Aurora, no Oldsmobile would have been on his radar.

 

Correct. The Aurora had a smaller Northstar V8....4.0L instead of 4.6L. Later models, if you will remember, also offered the 3.5L V6...which was (more or less) the Northstar with two cylinders cut off.

I respect the views and opinions of others on the matter, but I just was not impressed with this car. I wasn't impressed with much of anything GM was building at the time, outside of the ingenious Saturn S-class.

The Aurora's future, had Olds not gone down the tubes, probably can be debated, but it clearly did not prevent the marque from becoming history.....perhaps that's too much to ask of any one single vehicle, although the Chrysler K-Car (Aries/Reliant), back in 1981, along with a Federal loan, payed a huge role in keeping the corporation afloat. I remember that the last vehicle coming of the production line with an Olds badge on it was (what else LOL?)..a Bravada SUV....but I don't remember the exact date.

..........just looked it up......January 12, 2004.

Speaking of badges, one other thing about the Aurora was unique (and then we probably should get back to the digital-gauge thread-topic). On early versions, at least, there were no Olds emblems on the car. Instead, there was a variation of the Olds oval, with a swept A inside. GM wanted to try and market the car under the name, rather than the company.

 

GM has always been a bean counter's paradise. It was a blue chip stock at one time for this reason. It was also a workers paradise because of the high wages for semi-skilled labor. Oldsmobile was actually an interesting case because it was trying to be more European, but because of the GM thinking at the time, it got lost in corner cutting.

I remember driving one of those Auroras in the late nineties as a valet. Loved the styling from the car mags that I used to read. But when I actually drove one for just a short little jaunt, I was shocked at how cheap it was inside. This car barely had 25K miles on it and it was already creaking and squeaking. The interior was cramped despite the fact that on the outside, this was a large car.

The cheapo leather, the hard plastic on some surfaces. No wonder Olds never made it out of the GM cost-cutting jungle. But the styling and the drive train, those were good things. GM just never followed through until it was too late.

 

It was cheap inside, but so was the Cadillac Seville really. It was a little nicer, but not a lot nicer.

 

The competition by that point was much better in terms of materials, fit and finish and even dash displays. You had the LS400, Acura RL, Infiniti Q45. The problem with GM's displays of that era was that they didn't compensate for the bad fit and finish and the assembly quality. You can only be distracted with a nice gauge cluster for so long, before the rest of the car makes you dislike the car you're driving.

 

I don't remember ever having sat in a first-generation Aurora but do have vague memories of having ridden in the second-generation model (or perhaps it was some other GM look- and feel-alike model of the time); I was not impressed.

I do remember that the first Aurora came out to great critical success, as the model that would save Oldsmobile. Yet, the second Aurora became a victim of GM's infamous indifference (and never following through); that could-not-care-less attitude killed the Aurora and Oldsmobile, and almost killed GM itself. The history of the Aurora is the history of GM in microcosm.

 

25K? That's positively durable compared to some Chrysler products of the time. It was not unusual to see Omni/Horizon and K-Car-derived vehicles to start loosening up thin 3-4K miles. My poor late mother got one that was already a rattletrap with only 5K miles on it....plus warped-out brake rotors. She learned from that...and from my previous poor experience with Chrysler products, eventually switching brands.

If you can believe it, at the time, Pontiac, except for the nice Australian-designed Holden-derived GTO and G8, was even worse. American-designed Pontiac interiors of that period were true basket-cases.....GM plastic at its worst.

In its favor, though, I suspect that is one reason why the Pontiac G6 power-hardtop convertible as able to sell at such a low price...remarkably low for a vehicle of that size and type.