Junkyard Gem: 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser

GM’s Oldsmobile Division was one of the most important station wagon players during the 1960s and 1970s, and car shoppers in the United States could still choose from three sizes of new Olds wagon as late as the middle 1980s. The smallest was the Firenza, sibling to the Chevy Cavalier. The biggest was the Custom Cruiser, built on the same platform as the Chevrolet Caprice. Between those two was a midsize wagon related to the Chevrolet Celebrity: the Cutlass Cruiser. Here’s one of those cars, found in an Oklahoma City wrecking yard recently.

The Cutlass was such a rollicking sales success during the mid-to-late 1970s that Oldsmobile ended up applying the Cutlass name to a bewildering variety of unrelated vehicles later on. Today’s Junkyard Gem was the wagon version of the Cutlass Ciera, while Olds shoppers in 1986 could also buy a rear-wheel-drive Cutlass Supreme with a platform ancestry stretching back to to 1964. Starting in 1988, the Oldsmobile Calais became the Cutlass Calais, because why not spread that famous name over as many models as possible?

The base engine in the Cutlass Cruiser for ’86 was the primitive 2.5-liter Iron Duke four-cylinder, but this car has the optional 2.8-liter V6.

A three-speed automatic transmission was standard equipment.

This car is pretty well used up now, but it would have been considered reasonably snazzy during the second Reagan Administration and perhaps for a few years into the George H.W. Bush administration.

The Cutlass Cruiser was the final station wagon sold by Oldsmobile, continuing in production all the way through the 1996 model year. In 2004, Oldsmobile itself was discontinued.

I’m the Olds they call Cutlass Ciera, and I know the roads from Oregon to Maine!