Best and Worst GM cars of the 80s

Best and Worst GM cars of the 80s

Transcript

- So the three of us were children of the 80s. Though I don't really recall any of it, because I was only 4 and 1/2 months old when 1990 came around. That being said, 1980s GM cars kind of played a fairly big role in my life early on. I called my parents actually like an hour ago, and they couldn't tell me for certain, but there are one of three cars that I was brought home from the hospital and as a newborn in 1989.

It was either a 1988 Chevy Corsica, metallic gray with red striping. That red striping I'm sure made it look so great. Or a 1985 red and gray Pontiac Grand Am, which I think was the first year after they brought it back. Or it was a 1985 red and white Chevy Maxi van. I don't remember the Grand Am at all from my childhood, though I do have some memory of the van and the Corsica. What are your guys' first experiences of GM car?

JAMES: Oh well, yeah, I was brought home from the hospital in '83. Now '81 Buick's were stable, so that's a big black Malaise era sedan. And then shortly, but at the time my dad had an '83 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra, which was a new car at the time. A car that my mom would later get. But those are the last two GM cars they would own.

- Yeah, same here. Yeah, those three were the last three GM cars.

JAMES: I don't think they were particularly bad, but dad went to Jeep for a couple, for two or four years, and then never went back again to that either. But my family had them all into the-- all throughout the '80s, with the exception of a couple of aunts and uncles who had Ford Tempos. Oops. So yeah, early on-- and actually it was funny, because I got to drive a Buick Grand National maybe like 10 years ago.

And that was like a cool car, but I thought it was cool because it was like stepping back in time to my childhood. Because really, the interior of the Regal was basically the same as all those cars I grew up with. And I knew how to use the radio with the little four Chicklet buttons, that if you press more than one it was a different radio preset entirely. So yeah, from this era I would say I was quite familiar with mundane cars. You said '85 Grand Am.

- Yes.

JAMES: In 1980-- Well after '85, my grandmother asks me what kind of car should I get James? And I go, you should get a red Pontiac Grand Am. And she bought a red Pontiac Grand Am. Bam. I've been dispensing automotive advice since I was three years old.

- OK. How about you, Byron?

BYRON: So my family was all that-- they had a bunch of imports honestly. My parents had Toyota Tercels, VW Rabbits. I think the first exposure I had to GM on any real basis was my best friend growing up back in Maryland. His parents had an old custom cruiser with the rear facing seats in the tailgate and everything. Oh my God. Big old wagon. It was cream with the woody treatment. It was like stereotypical. Oh my God.

And that was great, because we're six, seven years old. So this actually would have been in the '90s, but it was an '80s vehicle. And they're taking us to the pool in the community and stuff like that. So we loved it, because they would just throw us in the back with the towels, and be like, don't get anything wet. And we'd flip down the thing, and put the towels out on it, and just kind of-- and then occasionally they would forget that they hadn't put the seats in the back, and they'd just be like eh, we're not going that far, you'll be fine. So-- but yeah, that was really it. It wasn't until I actually started doing this that I got to get out and actually experience more GM vehicles, because just nobody I was around when I was younger really had them.

- Do you guys have like favorites and least favorites from the '80s and the '90s?

JAMES: So I'm going to go with, because I'm-- forgive my Canadian pronunciation here, but the Camaro IROC-Z. Because I think that's cool. I know it has like the whiff of bollocks about it, but I don't care. I still think that looks pretty distinctive. And yeah, I mean, if you look, it actually had some muscle to it. For the time, if you look back. If you look at how much power it actually has, it's like a Subaru Forester today. But I think that thing's cool. I think it deserves a comeback. In terms of we should retro the '80s, and that thing-- make Camaro different, the next one should reference that one.

BYRON: Yeah, I'm here for that. Go back to IROC over Z28, that'll be fun. I'm actually going to go for best of the '80s being the Fierro. And I know it's not-- it's another one it's not objectively good. It's not objectively good, but it's a nice relic of when GM tried. And that sounds terrible now, because obviously things have changed in the last decade especially. But you look at the '80s, they were coming off Malaise, and they were just finally like-- which is going to tie into my least favorite car GM from the '80s.

But you have this like, the sense that they're trying things. And I think that was when GM was still investing in aerospace companies, and all the other crazy crap the domestics were doing in the '80s. They were doing weird things with the cars back then. And the Fierro was kind of the last where like, they're going to throw it to the wall and see if it sticks. And then by the time it got killed off, it actually was halfway decent. And the next generation of it could have been good. We could have gotten to a mid-engined GM sports car that was worth a damn, way before we actually did, two years ago.

So hey, it-- I know it's-- most people know Fierro because it was a junker on "How I Met Your Mother". But for a lot of us, it was just like, hey they did something, they tried. They really did. And then for another 10 years it was just, well let's start throwing SS badges on stuff and see if it works. So I like to kind of recognize that little bit of effort that actually went into doing something different.

- So what your worst then? You said there's a tie-in there.

BYRON: I'm going to go with the front wheel drive Cadillac Fleetwood. The downsized Fleetwood. The post Malaise, left over Fleetwood. The Oh my God, we can't keep doing this. But it's already paid for, so let's keep selling them until no one buys them any more Fleetwood.

JAMES: That was the first Cadillac I ever went in. My aunt Lorna had one. She loved that thing. Silver. After the black Le Sabre that my family sold to them, they-- she got that-- gosh, the first Cadillac I had been in.

- Is that your worst one too, James?

JAMES: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's a far deeper--

BYRON: Is it the Fierro?

JAMES: Far, far deeper turd iceberg from Cadillac to sample from in the '80s, and that would be the Cimarron. I mean, that is the correct answer. It is--

BYRON: I thought it was too easy.

JAMES: Yeah, but sometimes the easy answer is the correct one. Yeah, let's take an '80s Cavalier-- anyway, unacceptable. It was not acceptable at the time, it was unacceptable thereafter. Just an embarrassing vehicle. You still see them up until a while ago, for someone's grandmother who bought one because that was what she could afford. They'll show up in Palm Springs used car sales, and they're just like immaculate. But yes, just embarrassing.

BYRON: There have to be at least a few of those still around here too. I haven't seen any of them, surprisingly, since I moved here.

JAMES: Really, more often than not, the worst of GM is badge engineering at it's worse. And this is an era of that too. Is that a Buick? Is it an Oldsmobile? I don't know, kind of like those wagons you were talking about. They're indistinguishable. But like really? They're going to pull a Cadillac into this now? OK. That did not-- It hurt Cadillac for a long time.

But then you also have like that same IROC-Z Camaro that a couple of years earlier it was introduced as the Camaro sports coupe, which had the 90 horsepower Iron Duke four cylinder. Which 90 horsepower, this is not like the four cylinder turbo of Camaro today. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's a rather sad moment. What I actually, I found the apparently 12% of owners of the '82 Camaro chose the Iron Duke, versus 51% which got the V8. So thank God. Then also Oldsmobile diesels, that set back diesel in this country forever, until Volkswagen really finished it off.

BYRON: Yeah, right?

- Yeah, I was going to say diesel has not made a comeback in this country. So yeah.

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