Oldsmobile Aurora

The Oldsmobile Aurora was a car that was built by the beginning of 1994 until the summer of 2003 Oldsmobile, a trademark of the General Motors group, and the last high end model of Oldsmobile.

For decades, Oldsmobile had been successfully positioned with its models 88 and 98 in the American upper class, but with the 1984/85 were carried out conversion of these two model lines on front-wheel drive this position was lost. The new models have not been accepted by the customers and suffered from the reputation of being cars for older drivers. With the Aurora, a car should now be introduced with a dynamic character, with the Oldsmobile should regain its former reputation as a particularly advanced car brand.

Aurora (1994-1999)

The Aurora was introduced in January 1994, but called from the beginning as a " 1995 model ". Technically, he was related to the Buick Riviera and with the Cadillac Seville. He had, the only Oldsmobile to his time, an eight-cylinder engine. It was a ³ to 4000 cm smaller version of the Northstar engine of Cadillac; and a power of 184 kW (250 hp).

The Aurora had a great initial success, but let the sales by as early as 1996. It turned out that the brand reputation of General Motors was so damaged that the Aurora despite existing qualities are not really with the German luxury car or Japanese origin (Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti ) could compete.

Aurora (1999-2003)

End of 1999, the Aurora has been revised. Meanwhile, the older large models of Oldsmobile, the models were 88 and 98, gave up. The Aurora was now the only offer of the Oldsmobile in the upper class. It now gave him, as a successor to the 88, with a 3500 cc big V6 engine, the (158 kW) made ​​215 hp.

Strangely, the renewed Aurora was designated from the outset as a model in 2001. The model year 2000 there was not, because all vehicles built in 2000 were already part of the model year 2001.

Now appeared the first rumors that the Oldsmobile brand should be completely abandoned because of persistent failure. These rumors appeared naturally on the already disappointing sales success of all Oldsmobile models.

Mid-2002, the six-cylinder was removed from the program. In model year 2003, there were only eight -cylinder engine.

The sales continued to decline until the production of the Aurora was finally set in the summer of 2003.

Then the traditional brand Oldsmobile was completely abandoned in April 2004.