Remember the Oldsmobile version of the Chevy Citation? Maybe not, because they sold poorly and depreciated to near-scrap-value levels within a few years. The Oldsmobile Omega was built for the 1980 through 1984 model years, and I’ve found a very clean example from the final year of production. No rust, pretty straight body, Whorehouse Red interior still in great shape… and getting crushed after 30 years on the planet.
This is a California car, of course, and the nice interior means that it was kept in a garage. In fact, this car is so nice that the 38,850 miles indicated on the odometer may be the actual figure.
So, most likely a one-owner car, driven by an elderly person who took care of all the maintenance (and brought it in for the considerable number of recalls that afflicted the X-bodies).
This one has the 2.8 liter V6, not the Soviet-tractor-style Iron Duke four-cylinder.
Genuine stereo cassette in the dash! Now that’s Oldsmobile luxury.
GM didn’t have quite the French Cathouse look that Chrysler got with their Whorehouse Red velour interior, but it’s still pretty bordellic.
The Oldsmobile of small cars: A smooth-ridin’ road-huggin’ high-fashion eye-catchin’ quick-stepppin’ fuel-sippin’ pump-passin’ pocket-pleasin’ front-wheel-drive Omega from Oldsmobile!
wow I am surprised that with those miles some kid would not take it back on the road, it would at least stand out today, more rare than any porsche in CA I am sure.
When I was in my twenties, let’s just say late 80’s, a friend got one of these in this exact color combo from his grandfather. We gave him nothing but grief about it. I don’t think it would get any more respect from that age group now.
A car born to die… When these first came out the company I was working for bought a whole fleet of them for all the sales engineers, me included. I hated mine so much I just parked it at work and used my own car for calls. We got rid of them all in one year
GM X-Body – Citation X-11 Facebook page. Almost 500 members, over 1000 pics, and every-year X-car dealer brochure in the Photo Albums section. Ha! https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevycitations/
Saw a Citation live in the flesh last month. It was on a movie set for a Robert DeNiro movie. They had a bustle-back Seville parked next to it keeping it company.
So, “Stereo Cassette” is in cursive, but “Brougham” is in what, Helvetica?
Ummm…
It looks more like Century Gothic than Helvetica, but I am not a type-setter.
The correct answer is Avant Garde Book BT.
It *is* Avant Garde. However, the BT version didn’t exist back then. The BT means Bitstream, the type foundry that digitized this version didn’t exist when this car was being drawn up.
Most likely it’s the ITC (International Type Corporation) Avant Garde version, which would have been available in the late 1970’s…
Very nice, someone else into fonts! I just went with the name I know from the computer, that I’ve had to add to Word (it’s never provided). Never knew what BT or ITC was.
I did watch the documentary Helvetica, and was disappointed with how boring it ended up being.
That Helvetica documentary is wonderful. If you can’t sleep, that will knock you out like Mike Tyson’s fist, covered in melatonin.
I was so disappointed! And I like documentaries on a single subject. The documentary on Brutalist architecture was entirely fascinating.
Did that doc on brutalist architecture mention the group that formed, dedicated to imploding every example ever built? They were hoping to make the Boston City Hall their first victory, but there’s the matter of financing a replacement. Their ultimate goal is to save the J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC for last, and implode it on the 4th of July, year to be determined.
@CoreyDL: Graphic designer, production artist, prepress specialist 32 years and counting.
@Lorenzo Nope I don’t think it did, and I can’t find the name of it now. It was pretty long, but I feel like I watched it on YouTube.
@geozinger I’m sure you have had lots of change in your career, as we transitioned from the printed word to the one on a screen.
All this discussion of Helvetica reminds me of the first episode of Look Around you. Youtube search The Helvetica Scenario for further information.
Agree with Murilee’s supposition, probably a one owner car. Garaged and dealer maintained.
Why would someone not want this as a daily driver?
Cheap, available parts. No surprises regarding design/part problems and issues.
Even a car as poorly made/designed as this still should have many more miles of life in it.
I agree, especially with the 60V6. Although with the Iron Duke I wouldn’t be driving it BUT I would pass it onto a Lemons team.
Some day I want a nice big yard so I can pick up all these cheap weird cars. This is a downside of apartment rentals.
It must have been garaged, or that vinyl roof would be cracked and ejecting little puffs of stuffing.
Friends where given an early ’80’s sedan sorta like this. All I remember is that it was gray, and had bench seats. Grandparents owned and taken care of, it was mint, driven back and forth to church and the store, low miles. When pressed into daily service it turned out to be a total pile. Various issues with the carb, and I think it blew a headgasket? While are reasonably handy in fixing stuff, it just wasn’t worth the time or money to keep it up.
A 2 door no less. Wish someone was saving it.
The junkyard finds is my favorite part of this site. The only thing you can’t get somewhere else.
These are rare birds indeed. The junkyard section is without a doubt my favorite as well.
+1
Broughamtastic.
In this case “Broughamtastic”= Craptastic or Crapastrophic, your choice
I get the joke but remember Cadillac made a “Brougham” for a period which was not craptastic in its time.
Yeah, that V8-6-4 was bullet proof
The “Brougham” model came out in MY87 initially with the carb’d LO2 Olds 307 and then later added the TBI 305 in MY91 and offered the L05 350 TBI V8 options for MY90-92
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Brougham
Addtional: The MY80-81 D-body Fleetwood Brougham used the 368, which unlike its contemporaries the Olds 350 Diesel and 4100, could actually be made to work though use of a carburetor.
My dad had an ’81 Fleetwood Brougham V8-6-4, when he took it in for the new engine (the car was 4 mos old) he said the crated engines were lined up right out the service center door
I’ve been told otherwise but I can’t dispute your account. Perhaps the initial knee-jerk reaction was to do a motor replacement and then someone came up with a better solution. I do know the complete engine replacement was the case with 4100 and Northstar when under the full factory warranty.
This guy sings it’s praises:
“The great thing about the 8-6-4 is that if you DO NOT want to use the 8-6-4 mode, one simple wire to unhook, and you have a fuel injected 6.0 liter engine all with great power all the time. When not used, the variable displacement hardware was nothing but a few extra pieces that did nothing and affected nothing in the way of reliability.”
“Yes I would rather still have a 4BBL carburetor on the engine for simplicity, but the 8-6-4 is what it is. A very early fuel injected big block. It was the change over year, but A LOT was put in these motors. They are far from junk. The two most common (misdiagnosed) running, idling and stumbling issues with the 8-6-4 are a worn TPI sensor (40 bucks) and a fuel pump that is not putting out what it should, thus causing erratic running and low power. ”
http://www.mcsmk8.com/8-6-4/8-6-4.HTM
If you snip that little wire to the transmission it is. The 368/425/472/500 are very long lasting engines.
What Lie2me writes about the engine pile is (unfortunately) true, 28-Cars-Later, my dad worked at a Cadillac dealer at the time. And it wasn’t even a high-volume dealer. Sadly, it really did not go all that much better with the HT4100.
The 1980’s were a depressing time to be working at a GM dealership. It started out as such a hopeful decade and turned into such a crappy period. It was disaster after disaster, after disaster…the 1990’s were a slight improvement, but no great shakes.
All of that happened long before my time but I’m sorry to hear it did. I don’t know why the old timers told me otherwise.
I don’t think you were intentionally misguided, because I too have read about the “snip wire fix” I have two Cadillacs of this era, though neither came with this engine, I’m just relaying my father’s experience
Do you have 4100s?
And the vinyl roof’s still in nice shape!
If you had a 8 track player mounted under the dash the upgrade to a “Genuine stereo cassette in the dash!” was pretty nice.
I am told my grandmother had an Olds Omega when I was first born although the model year is cloudy to my mother (either a MY79 or MY80 which are two completely different cars of course). She evidently liked it and kept it throughout my early childhood finally discarding it for a white MY81 Monte Carlo in 1987 which she kept until late 1996.
I’d take that in a heartbeat. The 1980 Citation we bought new in ’79 and had for almost six years was a very rugged and reliable car. Only non-wear item it need during our time with it was a water pump. Guess we got one of the handful of “good” X-cars that GM built.
Must have been one of the ringers GM built for the magazine reviews.
You got lucky – the early models were an ATROCITY.
They did clean the model’s act up in subsequent years, but not enough to make up for the original debacle.
I must own and operate one of the only Omegas still on the road today. She’s a 1980 sedan, bought new in June 1980 by my parents for graduating from college with a good GPA. She now has 161,871 miles on the odometer and is still in almost mint condition. For 30 years straight, she was driven 5,000 miles a year for a total of 150,000 miles as my only car ( you can do that if you live in NYC and take the subway to work every day, driving her only on weekends or on local trips around the northeast USA ). Since picking up a ’99 Subaru Outback as my primary run-around vehicle in 2010, my Omega is now semi-retired, although I’ve still managed to drive her 12,000 miles in 4 years. She still gets close to the original 30 mpg on the highway ( holding the speed to 55-60 mph which is easy to do here in the NYC & Long Island urban area), a 2.8L V6 but now runs better on 93 octane since she reached 140K miles. Since a total repaint in her original platinum mist color at Maaco in 2006, she is only hand washed and polished. Looking at the paint at night with a streetlight shining on it, there are no swirl marks on the finish. If I stand a bottle of windex on the hood or trunk lid, it will slide off by itself on the polyglass polymer polish I use on her. Only on her second carbuerator, water pump, alternator, power steering reservoir and pump, radiator, exterior paint, third transaxle. 9th set of tires, latest one a set of Milestar P17580R13 ( with whitewalls too :-) because they stopped making the factory spec P18580R13. I lost 1/2 inch of treadwidth, reducing its grip on the road a bit but I’m not worried, she doesn’t go out on the road if a drop of rain is forecasted. The slightly smaller circumference of the new tires causes the speedometer to under report by 1 mph at 30 mph and 2 mph at 60 mph. Cost me about 1 mpg in fuel mileage as the engine has to turn the tires a few more revolutions to travel one mile. She resides in the garage of my house in Queens County, NYC. Almost mint condition and the R-12 A/C still cranks out the cold air. Trick to keeping the AC system and its seals from leaking is to run the AC compressor for 10 minutes every 2 weeks, even in the middle of winter. I don’t drive her on winter roads even if they are clear and dry but there is salt residue blowing around. In the spring/summer/fall, I drive her around on nice days on local as well as highway runs of up to 200 miles round trip. I just love the looks I get as I drive around in her. Still have the original metal hubcaps for my 13″ rims that are still in great shape and don’t leak any air – for months ! I’ve had very good luck and experience wit this car. My mechanic says that the general parts are still relatively easy to get, but it is getting hard to find some of the more specialized components such as the rubber bushings for the top mounts for the Macpherson struts. Rocker arms are tough to find too. Also have an issue with the bumper fillers between the bumpers and the metal carbody. 2 of the bumper fillers have cracked and partially fallen off. My project this year is to hand-produce with a vise and drill, some thin galvanized sheet metal shaped as replacements, install them and paint to match. I just wish there was a way to get that rubberized plastic air dam under the front bumper of this poor old car in Richmond CA ( I’ve read that she no longer exists on the list of available parts cars on their lot), mine cracked and decayed from age and oxidation, fell off 2 years ago.
I know it is fashionable for car guys to pretend they know about fashion, but the red=whorehouse crap has got to go. What also has to go is the whole range of interior colors from tan/brown to gray/black. Brown is sort of a color, but I’m not sure gray qualifies. My favorite color scheme was my 1990 White Towncar with bergundy leather interior. By the time I replaced it in 1998, Ford had gone to the now ubiquitous gray and brown shades. I had to settle for, I guess, whorehouse bergundy for the exterior. I would pay extra for a red toned interior. Of course, I have the disadvantage of not knowing what the inside a whorehouse actually looks like, but I am guessing the outside is a sort of silvery gray.
If nothing else, that’s a fantastic hood ornament.
I kind of miss the days when individual models got their own badges.
It’s something still in wide practice in Japan (http://toyota.jp/carlineup/index.html), but here it’s become a rare thing indeed (e.g. Corvette, Mustang).
This thing’s in sweet shape.
So a 3800 swap FTW?
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a coupe version, though I do remember some sedan ones driving around in the mid and late 80s when I was growing up. I always liked the Oldsmobile wording and font – seemed so modern to me. To this day Avant Garde is one of my favorite fonts! This one looks pretty well optioned and very clean (though I still don’t really like it). I am a little surprised Omega watches didn’t have something to say to GM for using that symbol in such a way.
Speaking of GM and hood ornaments, two things I thought of last night:
1) Was the 91+ Caprice Classic the last Chevrolet vehicle to have a stand up hood ornament?
2) Was the 91+ Caprice Classic available with fender skirts in certain trims, or for a time until the 94 (?) restyling where it got straight-across rear fenders like the Road Master?
The early whale B-bodies did come with fender skirts and I was under the impression they were not optional but came on all of them (similar to the MY94-96 K-body Deville). Prior to this the C-body Deville/Fleetwood FWD did not come with fender skirts standard, but it was an option.
Hang on I’ll show you what I mean.
http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/chevrolet-caprice-16.jpg
See clearly no skirts here on this 93.
http://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/chevrolet/caprice/1991/oem/1991_chevrolet_caprice_sedan_classic_fq_oem_1_500.jpg
This one from factory had them.
Yup they must have made them optional by MY93 on the whales. This MY93 Fleetwood Brougham has them but you can see the outline around the rear wheelwell.
http://www.jimsmintcars.com/93CadBlu46kWEB_files/image002.jpg
That’s a very pretty one, don’t see that shade of blue on them as much.
Funny there was no outline on the Roadmaster.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QUN8WdzZdOA/maxresdefault.jpg
But it does look like the Caprice had an actual different fender panel design! This sounds expensive for GM.
Those cars were the cat’s tats at the time, I’m not surprised they had custom sheet metal for a short period.
You’d think they would reserve such a thing for the higher end models, not the very lowest one! And it’s strange, I recall most of the police spec cruisers had the fender skirts.
Fender skirts are sweet but it made more sense to offer them as a pop-off trim piece than as part of the rear sheet metal. Why this wasn’t done when the body was initially being styled is beyond me. I imagine it was thought of but shot down, and then complained about enough to dealers that a hasty change was made for MY93.
Then again these ostensible MY93 Roadmasters still appears to have the sheet metal vs the trim piece.
http://zombiedrive.com/images/1993-buick-roadmaster-5.jpg
http://www.boys2mengirls2women.org/car_images/1993_Buick_Road_Master2.jpg
The MY92 does as well
http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/1936-1992-buick-roadmaster-2.jpg
While the MY92 Caprice has it but then loses it for MY93
http://www.cargurus.com/Cars/1993-Chevrolet-Caprice-Overview-c1001
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/chevrolet-caprice6.htm
The only thing I can think of is GM inexplicably cut the sheet metal for MY93 for the whale Caprice and new for MY93 Fleetwood Brouhgham but kept the Roadmaster on the previous design spec or assembly location. Perhaps fleet customers for Caprice hated the fender skirt and necessitated a change? Since Fleetwood would also go to fleet for limos etc it kinda makes sense why the Buick did not change but the Chevy and Cadillac did.
You know, now I’m thinking they just made both options at the same time. I’m finding pics of later CC’s with both the regular fender and the skirted one.
And in the FB picture from before, I think those cut outs are there by the wheels because of the extra TRIM the FB had on it, and the fact that it had a lower stance. I think it had the same fender as Roadmasters and CCs with fender skirts.
Mikey can you shed any light on this, didn’t Oshawa build B-bodies?
To complicate things more the Chevy wagon kept the skirts through the entire model run with the sedan losing them in ’92
The last I saw for a Chevy hood ornament was an 06 Caprice, but ya know…GM flipped us the bird big time on those cars.
Oh so like the UAE-only one. I don’t count that!
I had an ’80 model.
this thing is in the scrapyard, right where it belongs. At least they had a mid-cycle refresh and put the cassette in the dash–the GEN1 FWDs had a separate cassette unit that hung under the dash.
Engine accessibility was awful, and since it ate alternators and had that horrid reed-valve air pump instead of a real one, they got in the way of anything related to the spark plugs and wires.
I spent so much time working on it just to keep it running, the neighbor up the street wrongly assumed I was lavishing tender loving care on it, and insisted she buy it for her daughter.
I was more than happy to sell it.
Probably a charity donation car. If the kids inherited the car when mom or pop went into the nursing home, they might have donated it to a charity. Because the car is old, or didn’t run, (maybe only old gas or dead battery), these charities send them to the crusher or wrecking yard. It’s a shame, because a lot of neat old cars are destroyed this way.
Lots of lousy old cars get sold on Ebay by donation companies as well, when they should go to the crusher. Their feedback comments tell some interesting stories!
I agree, though, lots of cars get crushed that really shouldn’t. I have a friend who drives a tow truck, and when metal prices were high, he couldn’t believe what nice cars were getting scrapped.
I remember tons of these and their X body siblings on the roads during my youth in blue collar Pittsburgh. Then they all vanished, replaced with the Grand Am, Acheiva and Corsica/Beretta.
No, these were not great cars (and if this was an ’80 or ’81 I’d say it was an awful car, but by this time the bugs were pretty much worked out).
But this one’s a time capsule, and it’s a shame to see it die.
Thats almost the Oscar and Emma mobile!
Think that theirs was a Pontiac but nice catch.
I believe theirs is a 4-door Omega in a Malaisey shade of brown.
I could be wrong.
Lets see breather removed-very low miles. I would say varnished up fuel system and it may have been running or not ( carburator ) not worth messing with. In this case not being driven enough probably was its doom.
What wrecking yard is this in? Somewhere in California? If so, I’ll go buy it out of the yard. The ONLY vehicle I want to tow behind my 1976 GMC Motorhome is a 1984 FWD V6 Oldsmobile Omega coupe! The first few years of the Omega had “Oldsmobile ” badges on the glove box that pull right off and make great briefcase velcro logos! I have over 70 of these.
Murilee sometimes mentions that the photos he publishes were taken months prior, so this one is probably a GAC SUV by now.
A good car gone to waste with the more rare 2 doors, Brougham interior with some color and the more desirable 2.8 V6 and long lasting 125C 3 speed transaxle. Stupid Californians.
Too bad ;
Gramps died and no one else wanted it .
Many You-Pick Junkyards in So. Cal. sell beaters , this one would have flown(or been towed) away for $1,000 in 30 minutes .
What a waste .
-Nate
I agree, -Nate. This may not be an Olds 442 or anything like that, but I still think that a 30-year-old car in that kind of condition did not deserve to get scrapped. Yes, there may be a million horror stories about GM’s X cars, but I had a 1981 Olds Omega and it wasn’t a bad car. And this one is a 1984, by that time these had been improved quite a bit. What a waste…
RE : saving cars from Pick-A-Part Junk Yards :
I live and die there and have for 40 years , here’s the deal :
Once it’s in the rows , God himself can’t get it back out , period .
Not all yards offer cars for sale anyways and _all_ of them are bursting at the seams with incoming inventory ~ if you see a part you need , GRAB IT as they’ll roll them back out in a week or less unless it’s put aside in the ‘ old car ‘ section .
In the 1980’s in one of the old Adlen Brothers Sun Valley yards , a co worker of mine spotted a cherry Edsel and had his buddy guard it whilst he ran to the office , at that time , any car was $1,000 _PLUS_ engine and tire ‘ core charges ‘ (!) .
He paid for it and they told him to wait for the Yard Apes to let it down off the stands and drag it up to the gate , in 15 minutes he was _driving_ it up the aisle , shyte eating grin on his face .
He didn’t want to wait .
They won’t sell then out of the rows anymore ~ for years they’d charge you extra , $100 per dead car to be moved to get your choice out , thinking this would stop folks from asking to buy .
It’s all sad but true .
-Nate
It’s a damned shame, I watched my usual pick-N-pull send a nice looking old silver Town Car out to the rows for the vultures to pick over.
They do sell some cars, but for whatever reason this Town Car wasn’t one of them. Maybe it had a blown transmission or something.
benzworld is down right now, but on there is a tale of the 500SEC AMG I helped save from Ecology junkyard back in 2009. Search “Flight of the Phoenix”, the tale will come up in 70 pages or so of forum chitchat. I keep it to myself that the proceeds from that little adventure may have saved my house. You can indeed get cars out of the yard, but it takes cubic dollars and that isn’t a common commodity at pull-your-parts yards.
Shame this X body is done for, but it does show my GM bête noire of having several fake gauges which show nothing. I thought this was a taunt that you didn’t spring for the full gauge pkg until I sat in a minty 1965 Riviera GS at a car show. Full house GS Riv, Buick’s flagship, big fake tach with nothing but idiot lights in it. Apparently only a Corvette would entitle the buyer to real gauges. Some things never change…
Uh , oh ~
Where did my post go ? .
-Nate
This was a Copart auction car, sold as running and driving with 38,850 actual miles, and as a donated car. The “Before” pictures of the car before it went through the auction (link below) will make you shed a wee tear. A fairly unremarkable car to be sure, but one that deserved a better fate than this. I’m sure the first (and perhaps the only) thing to go were the tires. The used tire sellers in Utah where I live line up each morning at the pick-N-pull yards and race in to pick clean all the good tires for resale.
http://ww2.copart.com/us/Lot/30502894/Photos
Great find. This reminds me I need to pay more attention to Copart.
A surprising number of low mileage unwanted cars on copart.
Like this caddy: http://ww2.copart.com/us/Lot/35067644?searchId=639719398 that I hope we don’t see in a junkyard find.
There’s a Copart yard right near the pick-N-pull I go to, but I think it’s all late-model vehicles for insurance companies to use as donors and your average Joe can’t go in there and look around…
It also doesn’t seem to show up as a location on the Copart website either, unless they just gave it a really screwy town name different from the yard a quarter mile down the road.
Oh my god.
Didn’t even get any bids.
Have seen one of these never.
Now I feel bad that I didn’t do a “Last Rides” for it. Would probably just have been a spiteful little ode to the clueless whomever put this car there.
Betsy scrubbed and scrubbed the shampooed back seat until it seemed to glow crimson. “This should get them at least a few thousand ($40) so they can help those poor (middle class, white) kids (…go to a summer camp).” , she thought…
I think that story might depress me due to the waste and ignorance involved. Although your piece on the Olds Silhouette way back when had a similar premise and I had the opposite reaction so what do I know.
“1-877 cars, for kids*, K A R S cars for kids*…”
*Jewish kids (look it up!)
That IS sad, a survivor like this, awful car as it may be, going to the crusher in mint condition. Maybe that’s what this car deserved, rather to be hooned to death and covered in Monster Energy stickers. I notice the lack of “the tree”, this thing probably still smelled like new 80’s GM and mothballs.
It kind of reminds me of the stuff you find in your grandparents (or great grandparents house, should you be lucky). Items that were kept pristine, in their original box, but are sorely outclassed and out of date by the time they are unearthed 20 years or more later. It’s nice, but no one wants it, so it gets donated or thrown in a dumpster. They kept it nice for so long, only to throw it away.
The last new car someone bought(and just perhaps the ONLY new car ever bought) was an 84 Olds Omega.
I believe the tires say Lemans on them, which I think were only sold at Sears. Which is very fitting, as this car probably only saw the dealer and Sears for service.
I just don’t see the sadness here. It’s nothing special, just a clean X-body. If it were a more unique car, perhaps, but this would just be another old, mediocre car on the road. I get that one is willing to forego modern safety equipment (including ABS, ESC, impact beams, etc.) for the joy of a classic ride, but this is too mundane to justify it.
Thanks for the link although it is sad. The engine bay is pristine. The way that the rear seat seatbelts are set makes it look like they were never used.
Please somebody give this car a good home before it is too late! A just reward for 30 years of service.
“Well done, good and faithful servant”.
I secretly dream of finding an X-car with the 2.8 liter H.O. and a 4-speed in this kind of condition. I’d probably be running over there with my checkbook if this was one. Ditto for a J-car with the 1.8 liter turbo. Unfortunately you don’t see X’s and J’s in any form anymore, much less the performance models.
Art’s right, can one of us go to this junkyard and rescue this poor wretched thing?
It’s strange, I haven’t seen a Citation in years, but every few months I see a different Olds Omega on the road.
My Dad bought one. Total pile. He used to leave it unlocked hoping someone would steal it. No takers (criminals aren’t that dumb).
John
This is a Hipster’s delight. Slap some whitewalls and wire hubcaps on this b-tch and put it on ebay!
You are so right, of course it needs the obligatory bike rack strapped to the trunk, but otherwise ready to go. Small enough to park in front of coffee shops, whole foods and tattoo parlors, relatively cheap on gas and parts. Probably already smells like clove cigarettes.
What a shame. Two door, the 2.8L V6 wasn’t “that” bad incredibly low miles, cheap parts, not terribly complex to work on.
I can only speculate that all the seals, hoses, vacuum lines etc are Swiss cheese and too problematic.
Stunning this is going to the crusher.
I agree, would have made a nice Sunday car or DD (although you’re DOA in a real crash I imagine).
As an 84, I believe this was the pinnacle of GM carbureted engines. 85s or 86s went to the simpler and better throttle body.
I had a 1980 Brougham 4 door V6. Traded my 74 Gran Tornino in on it for better gas mileage. The wife and I cross-shopped the Pontiac and Buick versions of these X cars. We decided on the Olds and placed an order with just the options we wanted. Waited almost 12 weeks for it to come in. It was fairly reliable but didn’t drive well. Had tons of torque steer. Got rid of it in 1985 before it hit 65,000 miles.
I rescued an almost-as-nice white ’89 Honda Accord LX-i Coupe from Copart a year ago with only 64k miles for $250. It needed a front bumper and left front fender, but it was clearly a one-owner (probably elderly owner) car that had been garaged its whole life. I’m sure this one didn’t sell for any more than that. Copart does have some gems, but they’re difficult to do business with sometimes and all the extra fees tacked on can get ridiculous.
When my Accord got totaled, the at-fault driver’s insurance company cut me a check and a tow truck came to take my Honda to a Copart auction. I wonder if they ever noticed that the fuses were missing, and the good battery was replaced with an old, worn-out one? A few other minor bits and pieces got pillaged, too. The horn has joined in the chorus on my Volvo…
I could write a very long article about that experience, from the rear-ender collision, to dealing with a tight-fisted insurance company with a dishonest car inspector, to the search for a replacement car. Somewhere in there would be an analysis of the process of the sudden damage to a car you enjoy, the realization that it will soon be gone, to the letting go of an integral part of your life that has had money, time and care invested in it.
Most of us here have gone through this once or twice!
Was this a relative of the Buick Century?
I last saw an Omega here in Aarhus, Denmark. It was gold and stuffed with filler. These Irv Rybicki cars are hard to fathom. They are to US cars what Trabant and Moskvitch are to Europe, products of corporations that didn’t care.
Buick Century was the successor to this. Definitely a much better made car overall, though most you’re gonna see nowadays are 89-96 models.
The Buick version of the X-Body was the Skylark. The A-Body was the Century. After the X-body had its checkered run by 1985 the Skylark was based on the N-body platform, same as the Grand Am.
Thanks for the X-body/A-body explanation. I ended up liking the ’84 Century Custom I had, apart from the seats which were dire. It had a burgundy interior. I too would pay to have that option in my current car.
They were somewhat related, the A body platform was an updated X body platform. Dimensions of the front subframe mounts were the same if I recall, and I believe the rear twist beam axle and lateral link was re-purposed.
My Mom and Dad bought a brand-new 1980 Buick Skylark Limited, which was a near duplicate of the Olds Omega in Murilee Martin’s article above. They ordered it through the local dealer with the specific color combination and options they wanted, which included the 2.8 V6. In other words, the car was built to order. You could do that back then. It took about a month to arrive from the factory. Unfortunately, it was not built very well. None of the body panels lined up. It leaked oil, trans fluid, and anti-freeze within the first six months. It hesitated and stalled when the engine was cold. And it had an Olds Omega escutcheon on the trunk. Despite its faults, my parents like that car and took very good care of it, just like the Olds Omega in Murilee Martin’s article. My Mom held onto it for many years and after she passed away, we sold it. It had only 25,000 miles on it. Aside from the head liner, which drooped from the ceiling, it was in perfect condition. We were a Buick family up until then, but not any more.
I had a camaro with that engine & carb. There’s a tab that limits the opening amount of the secondary barrel. Grind that tab & flip flop the air cleaner & you got yourself a beast….well not really, but the butt dyno sure felt something.
There’s a man who remembers! What we had to do in the late-malaisian-era just to get these cars out of their own way. Unfortunately, the cherry-bomb glasspacks just made them louder…
My friend a block away learned to drive in the Citation version (for how we pronounced it reference South Park “City Sushi”). Burgundy (Ron?) over maroon, and tough as nails. We were always trying to find intersections with enough center elevation to get it airborne (it would spark gloriously on landing).
At 17 he bought a 1966 GTO, and was forever passing the rest of us in our disco-malaise personal-luxury cars while we were “racing”.
The car seemed to have been located at the Richmond, CA Pick-N-Pull, it was showing on their web site last night in Row 41, but today it is gone from their web listing. Hope someone got it out of there and can save it. I tried calling the yard, but didn’t get anywhere after 15 minutes on hold.
Does anyone know if this Survivor car was saved? or met an untimely end?
License plate 3RIE212 on this Omega:
1: This sequence was issued for the 1996 model year in California;
2: CarFax shows very low miles since reporting began;
3: Extremely low miles driven in the last few years and failed emissions testing often;
4: Junked at U Pull It in November, 2014;
5: No longer a candidate for an RV tow vehicle!;
6: soon to be Chinese non-UL listed cheap wire…
Even though Pontiac had the Phoenix, Buick had the Skylark and Chevy had the Citation, the only one I like is the Oldsmobile.
It was probably the only one that somewhat resembled its division’s flagship, the Olds 98.
Does anyone know the price it sold for at Copart? That would probably make us really depressed.
Not a fan of these at all, but seeing this time capsule on the road would indeed be a breath of fresh air among the Camcords and crossovers.
As near-new as this example was, the X-cars were the nadir of lousy American cars. Maybe it could have been saved and put in a car museum somewhere, but these were mediocre at best and usually awful in so many ways.
It’s sort of like that summer you spent at the lake when you were 14 -you still have all the good memories, but have forgotten about all those damn mosquitos.
My brother had the 82 Buick Skylark Limited version of this car with the same red velour interior but with a light grey exterior. It was unusual in that it had fuel injection, 4 speed manual, and electric windows. It was actually a good car and he had it for over 10 years with about 300k miles which he gave it to his daughter and then when his daughter got another car gave it to one of his employees to use as a company car. It had the 4 cylinder engine in it. Not all X cars were bad but I think having the 4 cylinder with the 4 speed manual and fuel injection were pluses.
I would agree that this was an older person’s car that sat in the garage most of the time and when the owner either died or went to a nursing home the family gave it to charity and the salvage yard bought it at the charity auction. This car would have made a great short distance commuter car. You can tell from the pictures that the owner took good care of this car.
I don’t know that these deserve the reputation as the worst investments for their time, most new cars were already old in 1984. Remember the ’84 Accord was a carbureted, vacuum line entangled rust magnet, and while I’m sure the Accord has many admirers that have seen quarter million mile examples, the then, reasonably technologically competitive for the price X-Bodies probably also spawned a few quarter million mile examples, though they had more horses in the race.
Thanks for the pictures, I love this segment.
Oh well, you win some, you lose some! I can still tow a newer Oldsmobile Alero behind my motorhome; just found a bronze GL coupe in Indiana. Only problem is the dealer wants $2,000 over KBB for the “low miles”…
Geez, did everyone’s grandfather own one of these? Mine did. His was a metallic reddish brown with a matching interior. No vinyl top. It wasn’t a bad looking car but it stalled a lot.
I had an Alfa Spider at the time and I kept it in his garage for the winter, parked next to his car.
The Alfa and the Omega.
I agree, a waste of something well cared for. But, if this was a RWD Cutlass/88/98 or Ciera, it would be still running. To some, the X cars’ names mean junk, even if the 84’s had bugs worked out. BHPH Dealers simply avoided it at auction, and junkers came.
Also, once in awhile I see a 90’s Ciera/Century, filled with 20-somethings, maybe going to a concert. ‘Retro chic’ to them, but they would turn nose up at a 1997 beige Camry.
A co-worker of mine had one. It was so bad he vowed never to buy another American car.
Thus began a long, sad series of drab Toyotas.
There is a full-line GM X-Body Facebook group. Almost 500 members, over 1000 pics, and every-year X-car dealer brochure in the Photo Albums section. Ha! No joke! https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevycitations/