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Old 12-20-2008, 08:45 AM   #9 (permalink)
EPA2
1.4 Liter Turbocharged ECOTEC
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 86
Re: Remembering Oldsmobile

Quote:
Originally Posted by MCGARRETT View Post
It started before Roger Smith, you can really trace it back to the 60's starting from the muscle car era, when every division wanted a performance car, and they got one,(except Cadillac) then in the 70's, they all wanted compacts and sub-compact cars, and they got them, in the way of the Nova, Ventura, Omega and Apollo cars and the H-special, Monza, Sunbird, Starfire and Skyhawk, the "watering down" of the divisions continued with each one trying to be everything to everyone, turbocharged Buick performance cars, Cadillac sub-compacts, lux-ed up Caprices that were almost as nice as Cadillacs, fluffy Grand Prix Broughams and Bonneville sedans with whites and wires next to turbocharged Sunbirds and Fieros, but since each division was healthy and the were all selling, GM brass just kept giving and giving until it was so out of focus that you couldn't tell who was who anymore, and then in the middle of all that, what did they decide to do? ad another division, Saturn, which after neglect, fell into the same, "feed me feed me" trap and they got SUV's and Minivans etc etc too!

Excellent insights and so very true. This indeed started the crumbling of the indentities of the different divisions. This also led to the different divisions swapping engines in the 1970s which was a disaster and later led to the "GM corporate" engine policy that was enacted for the 1982 model year.
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Last edited by EPA2 : 12-20-2008 at 09:54 AM.
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