We have debates around here. Debates about important issues of the day and issues that strike right at the very core of what being a BangShifter is about. Stuff like trying to determine between McTaggart and I which guy’s birth year had the absolute worst, 100% rock bottom car. He was born in 1983 when the world was a happy place and the streets were paved in gold. Me? I was born in the rough and tumble year of our Lord 1980. It was all crazy then. McTaggart has no clue what it was like to be an infant in 1983 because he was living the high life, foot loose and fancy-free, in the magic known as 1983. So I don’t really care with what he comes up with, I am going to tell you that the worst car built in 1980, which is far worse than the dreamy automotive sculptures of 1983 was the 1980 Oldsmobile Deltaa 88 diesel. Few things outside of despotic rulers and communism have ever been worse than a 1980 Oldsmobile Delta 88 equipped with the ill-fated (but built for seven years?!) Oldsmobile diesel 350.

It wasn’t that the physical car itself was bad. The chassis was a piece that had been around for years. The suspension was all soft and blubbery like old people and aspiring Oldsmobile buyers wanted it, but the optional diesel engine, that was the Love Canal level disaster. Rated at a robust 125hp, the 350ci Olds Diesel was a engine that was rushed to production in order to try and fill and niche for truly fuel economy focused buyers who wanted to be up on the latest and greatest in automotive technology. European diesels had been filtering into the country for a few years and there was a great buzz on the street about the potential fuel savings that this style of engine offered. The general public by and large didn’t know the major differences and that became part of the problem, but we’ll get there.

This engine and car are so much worse than anything that McTaggart can come up with because it left an actual scar on the American car buying public that people are still not fully recovered from. If you know better, you understand that today’s diesels are the furthest thing from the wheezing, lazy, smoking heaps that were put into these cars but don’t tell anyone who has heard the Olds diesel tale of woe hear that.

The problem was the fact that the engine was internally a virtual identical copy of the gasoline burning Olds 350. Yes, the block had been beefed some and we believe that the crank was of nodular iron, but the connecting rods, cylinder heads, bolts, and other hard parts were carry overs and that is where the problems began. Because of the huge cylinder pressures created by a diesel the factor head bolts would stretch, Once this happened coolant would get all up into the cylinders and when you see a connecting rod try to compress a liquid all kinds of fun stuff happens….all resulting in the need for a wrecker. Compounding the problem were the rebuild procedures used by mechanics at the time who would often reuse the same head bolts allowing the owner to experience the same engine failure again not too far down the road. Also, the injection pumps failed because there was no fuel/water separator, common fuel additives ate the injector seals, and virtually the entire thing was a disaster either waiting to happen or actively happening.

As if the engine failures were not enough, the performance was horrid. 0-60 was somewhere on the order of 16 seconds and a quarter mile came through at just over 21. Modern big rigs, right off the factory floor will run it in the 19-21 second range bone stock. This car would literally lose a drag race to a stock Kenworth. The gas mileage was OK with ratings in the upper 20s on the highway as opposed to lower 20s with the gas engine but the major issue is that after the first couple tow bills you had to getting to car to a garage, all of your “fuel savings” was gone and you were screwed. Oh, we did tell you that this was an extra cost option, right?

The final disgrace? There was a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of people who owned Oldsmobiles with this engine in it and the people suing GM won and got a large portion of the engine purchase price handed back to them. How they produced this thing for seven years and never fixed the issues is something that still stands as an amazing feat. The 1980 Olds Delta 88 diesel was the worst car of 1980….let’s see what ol’ happy pants McTaggart has to brag about from 1983.