In 1979, the Olds Cutlass Supreme was one of the most popular cars in the United States. Let’s check it out.
In the late ’70s—when cars rather than pickups still ruled the sales charts—the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was one of the top-selling cars in the USA. It was largely on sales of the Cutlass Supreme that the Olds brand strung together three million-car years in a row, a feat historically reserved for the Chevrolet division at General Motors. The Cutlass Supreme found more than 277,000 buyers in 1979, accounting for more than a quarter of the division’s total volume. Oldsmobile’s traditional breadwinners, the full-sized 88 and 98, now lagged far behind.
A dry lake bed in Southern California is the setting for this original Oldsmobile spot, which features the Cutlass Supreme for ’79 in three flavors: standard Supreme, the Euro-flavored Calais, and the Supreme Brougham, with yards of velour and extra brougham-ness. Nicely equipped and priced at $5,390, only a few dollars more than the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the Cutlass Supreme found the sweet spot among North American car buyers, and Oldsmobile sold a ton of them. Video below.
With the Buick V6 these were good cars. Seems like Buick sold a bunch of Regals too.
These cars were everywhere in Kansas City. Oldsmobile hit just the right spot in price, size, performance and brand identity. I think another important factor was the upscale interior. Love to see those fabrics and colors come back to replace all of the black plastic of today.
79 Cutlass and Regals models were junk. I had a 75 Cutlass with a 350 V8 and was fast and reliable. 79 Regal engine blew after 50,000 miles.
All these models (the downsized midsized GMs) sprang from the Seville, which itself was a shelved DeLorean initiative hastily dusted off to give Cadillac something import-fighting. DeLorean had intended that it be the full size, although what GM actually did was rebody the existing midsized cars along the lines he had laid out–they couldn’t bring themselves to make their full-size models that small in the first round of downsizing. P.S. — my mom had a Seville and it was about perfect, suffering only from a lack of rear suspension trave. It thumped in back if an intersection had a heavily crowned road.
The 79 gm intermediates changed the car world.into the.1980s with smaller gm motors. M305..301s.and the smaller body cars..these were great smaller cars and better mileage. Mthe cutlass car was great car..without this we.d all be still driving 1972 Ltd cars at 8mpg.on gas..it was a great change. R