Also, remember that GM had just launched the 1986 E-body coupes, whose sales immediately fell about 70% from what the previous gen was selling in 1985. The market was transitioning away from coupes at this point, and GM would have been hard-pressed to justify a whole new chassis for its midsize coupes, when it was in…
AMC/Renauledge
n2skylark
The 3rd generation F-body was already in its 7th model year when the G’s died. GM was getting ready to replace it with a FWD chassis to follow Ford’s Mustang plans when Ford reversed course due to enthusiast outcry.
Yeah... the G-body was ancient and sales were dwindling by the time the FWD W-body coupes replaced it. Not sure how GM could have replaced them and kept them RWD. Midsize/large coupe sales were cratering in this era, anyway.
The Lumina and this Cutlass Supreme were W-bodies. #corrections
Do you know what kind of skill goes into building a car? Do you know what that kind of labor does to the body over time? Obviously not.
Well... lots of cars get “killed” by dealer behavior, though I’m not sure it’s often because of price-gouging.
Weird. Kinja didn’t initially register this as a discussion on my dashboard, so I thought this comment didn’t go through. So I repackaged most of this in another comment below. Now they’re both showing up. Fun!
What a star-crossed car the Avanti was!
True. The Blake-era cars had paint problems and questionably styled vehicle safety compliance equipment, but even they were still Lark-based like the original Avantis.
Avanti was around until 1990.
Now playing
For anyone who wants to hear media opinion of the later Avantis, here’s MotorWeek’s test of the Avanti in 1985, while Stephen Blake ran it. Before all the scamming took place:
It didn’t. It stayed in continuous production from 1963-90. Attempts to revive it came 2 or 3 times, basically as a neoclassic replicar, and no production units were made. Only prototypes.
It didn’t. It stayed in continuous production from 1963-90. Attempts to revive it came 2 or 3 times, basically as a neoclassic replicar, and no production units were made. Only prototypes.
Revive it? The thing was essentially in continuous production from 1963-90, just under different owners.
Thank you for this article. It’s extremely comprehensive and well-expressed. I learned a few things.
It’s clean, sleek, and yet distinctive. I’m amazed. I love it.
A lot of GM’s slowness in this era was Roger Smith’s fault. His decision to restructure GM by abandoning the division model threw every single program under development at the time into complete chaos. The W-body had an even longer gestation at this point and also came out underdone. GM poured $5B into Saturn starting…
...everything but the Quad OHC.
What, no mention of the dismal Quad OHC?