Apparently this is the last Oldsmobile that was for retail sale...

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace...2245294820422/

 

Nice car for someone who 'must have' it. Selling for same as new back in 2004. I'm surprised they didn't clean it up for presentation on that FB site. It doesn't look pristine with all that crap on the paint.

 

At the end of the day its still an Alero. For $25k, this car would be at the bottom of a very long list of more desirable cars to collect.

 

^^^THIS. It's sort of a memorial as to why Oldsmobile went under. Plus, unless you also plan to store it in a dry nitrogen-filled bubble, what are you going to do with it? Clearly it hasn't appreciated. $24K in 2004 is over $33K today, just with inflation.

 

More than most would spend for a car to enter a demolition derby.

 

I own a 04 Alero. They would cut 10K off the asking price before I would consider it!

Pat

 

That's a beautiful Olds.

 

That's one of the things people don't get about collector cars. Some appreciate, some don't; and the ones that don't, it doesn't matter how nice they are, they won't be worth much. Plus, that car would have to go into a museum or have lots of things done to get it running right. I'd rather have one with 20k miles and little old lady every Sunday use for 5k.

 

I'd rather have something else altogether.

 

Your 96 Olds Regency Elite is 2x the car and much nicer to ride in. I loved my 95. If it hadn't been for the nasty R word, I would still have that car today. It was a fantastic riding and running car.

 

Exactly...

 

True.

 

I had a loaded 2003. At 80,000 miles the trans started to shudder. The seat upholstery ripped. It was fun to drive and got very good mileage. The paint did not hold up. (black)
I thought 2005 was the last year for Olds not 2004 anyway.

 

I'm afraid you thought wrong.

 

"On April 29, 2004, the last Oldsmobile comes off the assembly line at the Lansing Car Assembly plant in Michigan, signaling the end of the 106-year-old automotive brand, America's oldest brand"

 

You should limit your search for Oldsmobiles to a max year of 2004. This gets rid of alot of SPAM advertisements when using search engines. Dealers include Oldsmobile as a catch phrase when posting their junk cars for sale on CL.

 

Maybe GM ought to save it for posterity. But boring mediocre meh cars like that were the downfall of the most exciting (once) division that GM ever had... tragic!

 

GM already has the LAST one built. This is the second-to-last built and the last one delivered to the public, thus the "last RETAIL Oldsmobile".

 

I think they sold the last Oldsmobile built.

 

You are correct. Apparently it was on loan to the REO Museum for a while. Thanks for the correction.

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/201...dealer-auction

 

If anyone is interested, here is the last Olds built as shown in Setting the Pace - The Last Chapter. The text that goes with it is much longer than what is shown in the first photo.

 

Wow. Ugly car. No wonder they went out of business.

Nothing like the classic Oldsmobiles from the 60's and early 70's.

 

Olds didn't have much to choose from in building their final car for 2004. It seems classic Oldsmobile names were left behind in 1999.

 

"Setting the Pace" gives specific dates for last-one-made for several models.

Last Cutlass, 7/2/99
Last Intrigue, 6/14/02
Last Aurora, 3/13/03
Last Bravada, 1/16/04
Last Silhouette, 3/26/04
Last Alero, 4/29/04

Last 88, the book notes that the last one was made in 1999 but that the specific date is not known. The last 98 is not shown at all other than, as your chart notes, 1996 was the last year for it. But in 1996, no one knew that Olds would be gone eight years later. Remember that GM didn't announce the end of Olds until December 2000. There was no real reason to note the "last" production date (other than year) of any model names that ended prior to that (Toronado, Custom Cruiser, 88, etc.) because model names come and go and always have, and no one knew that Olds itself would soon be gone. The fact that the date of the last Cutlass is known is interesting, I think, because that was also before the demise of Oldsmobile was announced. I'm guessing that this was because the Cutlass name is so revered in Olds history that someone was going to note and record the date no matter what the circumstances.

1997 was the last year that "Delta" was used in the 88 name. It was first used in 1965. For 1998 and 1999, it was just "88" or spelled out as "Eighty-Eight" on the fender.

Total Oldsmobile production, 1897-2004 was 35,229,208. Of that number, 14,458,756 (41%) were made in Lansing

 

Seems a shame that the last of the last couldnt have been something worth collecting , or just having. thats a car i wouldnt want for free.

 

I doubt that something like this was in the mind of GM at the time. They just wanted Oldsmobile to be gone.

But think about any of the other recently-deceased legacy brands like Mercury, Pontiac, and Plymouth. Were the last-ones-built for any of those makes something memorable? Not that I've heard. You can go further back. The last Saturn? Even the last Packard? By the time the Packard name ceased to exist, its cars were rebadged Studebakers, and there was nothing memorable about them. Car companies don't go out of business at the height of their popularity and styling. They go out of business at the end of a long, steady decline when their glory years and the cars that made them famous are nothing but a distant memory.

 

I guess its like old girlfriends. remember what they used to be, not what they turned into. I have a long list of them.

 

 

They're like used cars with cheap paint jobs; you don't know what you got until the paint comes off.

 

By that time Olds didn't make a car worth collecting, the Toronado was long gone, and the Aurora too.

 

most of mine had expensive paint jobs, but when the bondo cracked , there was some structure damage.