People of a certain age will recognize the car above. America’s roads, driveways, and parking lots were filled to the brim with them in the 70s and 80s. The Cutlass propelled Oldsmobile to hypersuccess, but would result in a fatal complacency.
The Cutlass name first showed up in 1961. It was the top trim line on the compact F-85.
Slow sales of the F-85 and the other “senior compacts” as well as the introduction of the Ford Fairlane forced GM to upsize them to intermediate status in 1964. In 1966, the famous “Supreme” trim line appeared.
In 1968, the “Cutlass” name became its own model. In 1972, the F-85 nameplate disappeared altogether.
In 1973, the Cutlass and GM’s other A bodies got bigger and ditched their muscle car pretenses to make way for the golden age of the vinyl roof.
In 1976, the “fuselage” shape made way for the “shear” look, it went well with the newly legalized rectangular headlights and waterfall grille and must’ve done something for buyers because just look at sales.
In 1976, Cutlass sales suddenly rocketed by over 60%. It did the unthinkable, it outsold the full sized Chevrolet. That would be only a one year feat as the downsized Chevrolet won back its perch. But still, the Cutlass would be one of America’s best sellers into the 1980s. One of the buyers was a certain First Lady of Arkansas. Cutlasses were simply everywhere. The sales of the Cutlass brought great prosperity to Oldsmobile itself, which became America’s 3rd best selling brand behind Chevy and Ford. Olds’ success during the period was in no small part due to its reputation for quality, something that was a scarce commodity at the time. Oldsmobile had hit its stride and produced the perfect car for the time.
The Cutlass itself was downsized in 1978 and got even better and kept selling like crazy.
In 1982, Olds was faced with a dilemma. GM was once again downsizing its intermediates and this time moving them to front wheel drive. But the rear drive Cutlass, especially in coupe form, was still selling incredibly well. Their solution was not a very good one. All the rear drive Cutlasses kept selling as Cutlass Supreme while a new front drive Cutlass Ciera was added to the lineup.
In 1985, Oldsmobile sold 1.2 million cars, making them more popular than Ford! It would be their biggest year ever. The brand, and the entire company would be damaged by Roger Smith’s incompetence. And the bread and butter Cutlass would soon be under attack from a hot new competitor from the Blue Oval.
Suddenly, it was 1990. The “aero” look pioneered by the Ford Taurus made the “shear” look obsolete. If GM had been sensible, they would’ve seen there was nothing particularly wrong with the A bodies and by just giving them new aero bodies and more sophisticated suspension, they’d have a range of able-bodied Taurus competitors by 1987 or 1988. Instead, they decided they needed a whole new midsized platform, the result was the calamitous W-body platform.
In 1988, the new front drive Cutlass Supreme was unveiled. It was only available in coupe form even as the midsized market was clearly moving towards sedans (Taurus didn’t even offer a coupe model). The sedan didn’t arrive until 1990. The W-body program would go down as one of the most incompetently managed projects in GM’s history. In total, it cost $7 billion, twice what Ford paid for the much better Taurus. Its high costs nearly bankrupted GM in 1992 and reliability problems destroyed Oldsmobile’s reputation for quality.
Also in 1988, Olds decided to turn their compact Calais into the Cutlass Calais. It was a cynical attempt to milk the Cutlass’ good name onto a crappy econobox. Until 1991, Oldsmobile was selling 3 different cars named Cutlass. And when everything is a Cutlass, then nothing is a Cutlass. In 1990 Oldsmobile was down to less than half a million sales, an over 50% drop in just 5 years. The cache of the Cutlass name had been dissipated.
In 1996, the Cutlass Ciera, by now a 14 year old design reserved for rental car fleets, was finally put out of its misery.
In 1997, the Ciera was replaced by a plain old Cutlass. It was a not at all cleverly rebadged Chevy Malibu and fooled nobody. 1997 also saw the end of the larger Supreme. In 1999, the Cutlass nameplate was killed off for good and in 2004, the Oldsmobile brand was shut down after 107 years of operation. The enormous sales of the Cutlass led Olds to believe it could make money just by slapping that nameplate on everything. But they found out the hard way that the car it was attached to also had to be good.