It’s well-publicized that Lee Iacocca’s K-Car saved Chrysler from almost certain doom and plucked its Detroit owners from the inky grasp of the Malaise Era. Less fanfare has been given to General Motors’ A-Body platform, which is a true shame because at least in the Midwest, Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras and Buick Centurys still blot the automotive landscape with rust-blighted body panels and missing trim galore. However, the A-Body was clearly one of GM’s moneymakers, staying in production with virtually no changes from 1982 to 1996.
Most that you still see have the ubiquitous and indestructible 60-degree V6 under the hood, but the rare diesel A-Body is all but extinct. This is hardly a surprise since General Motors’ Malaise Era diesel engines are a fixture of “Worst Ever…” lists everywhere, but the diesel 4.3-liter V6 in the A-Body was very much a product of the tough environs of that dark era of auto engineering. Hey, it wasn’t coined (recently) the Malaise Era for nothing.
MotorWeek reviewed a BCAS-approved diesel ‘84 Cutlass Ciera Brougham back in the day and gave it pretty high marks, despite being stranded during road testing by a “near total electrical failure.” With only 90 horsepower on the rare days it was running, a diesel A-Body wasn’t going to set any land-speed records and, judging by the near-complete lack of them in the current world, it’s safe to say that GM didn’t much improve the horrendous reliability record.
Still, this review is a great time capsule to the automotive world just beginning to emerge from the dark ages of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Be thankful that technology has come so far in three decades.
Wor Lass can run the quarter mile quicker and faster than that if I open a can of beer at the other end…
While the production versions of the diesel had there problems, GM had developed a 6000 r.p.m. V-8 diesel which was pretty powerful. Some of the ideas used in that have been in use by the Europeans for their high revving diesel engines. Advanced engineering back then in use today.