General Motors announced that on Thursday, April 29, 2004, the very last Oldsmobile, which will be the Alero (shared common platform as the last series Malibu and Grand Am), will roll off the assembly line in Lansing, Michigan. The final Alero/Oldsmobile will be stored in Lansing’s R.E. Olds Transportation Museum. More info can be found at this Detroit News Auto Insider article.
Bye bye to the original GM experimental car division that experimented with real customers long before Saturn took that mantle.
Myself, I had two Oldsmobiles. I had an Oldsmobile Cutless Supreme wagon & an Olds Touring Sedan. Loved them both. I will be sad to see them go. That 3800 engine kept on going well over 150,000 miles.
It will be wierd not seeing the Oldsmobile name. The 3800 is a strong, reliable, and easy to maintain engine. My grandmother had a front-wheel drive Buick Park Avenue that had a 3800 in it and I was impressed. When I had to do some basic mechanical work to it and started to read the history and the technical specifications, I found out that the 3800 is literally the infamous 305 V8 with two cylinders chopped off. It has the same bore, stroke, and compression ratio as the 305 V8 and used the same pistons and rings.