In the early 1970s, it was selling more than a million vehicles a year and the Cutlass was the nation's most popular car. But dismayed by a decade of declining sales, parent GM decided last week to scrap the venerable Oldsmobile name that had become essentially a marketing brand, GM's basic automotive platform tricked up in Oldsmobile chrome.
Cars have a peculiar hold on the American imagination.
For many families in the postwar years, the Oldsmobile was a step up the GM ladder of economic and social mobility from the Chevy to the Cadillac. With an Olds 88 in the driveway, a family was halfway there. Perhaps for that reason, Oldsmobile became stuck with an image of stodgy respectability. Now it's not ours for much longer, either. E.W. Scripps Publications , All Rights Reserved.