First introduced in 1982, the Ciera is pretty much the same car as it was 14 years ago, inside and out. A mild freshening of the exterior several years ago didn't help the Ciera march into the '90s with any sense of contemporary style, and our opinion is that the Ciera is ready to be retired from the Oldsmobile lineup.

One glitch in that plan; the Ciera is Oldsmobile's hottest seller. More than 100,000 Cieras find their way out of GM's Oklahoma City assembly plant every year, and sales haven't tapered off in quite a while. And so it remains in the lineup, possibly to be replaced by a modern design in 1997. What is the current Ciera's secret recipe for success? It certainly isn't obvious.

Crash tests prove the Ciera to be a relatively safe car, but it only comes with a driver's side airbag; a passenger-side airbag is unavailable. Antilock brakes are standard, but the Ciera does not meet 1997 side impact standards. A dedication to safety features is not what sells the Ciera.

Uadventurous styling renders the car invisible on the excitement meter, and the interior is about as close to numbingly dull as it gets. The dash is reasonably functional, but many of the controls look like they were pilfered from the Chevette parts bin. The seats are mushy and unsupportive. Style and comfort are not what sell the Ciera.

Prices for the anemic four-cylinder sedan start around $14,500, and a top-of-the-line V6 station wagon goes for less than $19,000. The Ciera is reasonably roomy, decently reliable, and carries a fair-sized load of cargo, at prices that reek of value. Ahhh, so this is what sells the Ciera.

New reasons for those buyers to swoop into Oldsmobile showrooms in 1996 include groundbreaking improvements like simplified exterior badging and fresh colors. Storage armrests, better speakers and a cassette player are now standard items. Long-life spark plugs, and improvements to the optional V6 round out the changes to the Ciera this year.

We think buyers would be better off shopping Dodge Stratus, Ford Contour or Chevy Lumina in this price range. So the Olds is a good value; we think the more modern machinery will make you happier in the long run, unless you're one of the few who really needs a mid-sized wagon. The Ciera, and its corporate twin the Century, are the least expensive mid-size wagons on the market

When I was a kid, Washington license plates were green with white letters. The letters were a code for where you hailed from. Plates that started with the letter "J" meant you lived in in Thurston County. "A' for King County, "B" for Purse County (see my blog entry to explain the spelling), "C" for Spoogaloo (Spokane for you non-East WA literate), "H" for Grays Harbor County, etc. I can't remember any others.

But these days you get assigned a new plate in accession order. My Olds got stuck with the letter "U." As in "Unlucky," "Unfortunate," or "Unidentified Flying Object." I don't like this.

How many successful politicians can you name with a "U" surname? Mo Udall, Stewart Udall, Wes Uhlman, Oscar Underwood, Jolene Unsoeld. When Jesse Unruh made a run for governor in California, my cousins said he didn't have chance because his surname started with the letter "U." There are many politicians with the surname "Upham," and I'm related to all of them, but I wouldn't call them successful.

I'm too cheap to have my "U" plate changed, so I guess it will be my cross to bear. I liked my old plate better, "JCY"=Juicy. But, hey, I still have the satisfaction of driving an Oldsmobile and keeping it alive in a cold world of indifference.

I noticed no one in OlyBlog (Rick and V-Ster excluded) has picked up on the Rubin Hubcap-On-the-Head reference. Perhaps a film review is in order.

I lost the ability to use my left turn signal last month, so I try to follow very complex driving routes in order to avoid using the signal as much as possible until I get the thing fixed. Today as I was unloading the trunk I noticed a mouse had constructed a nice little nest right behind the rear passenger seat, which might explain why the wiring is going crazy. Time to invest in a mousetrap.

This is very much a guy car, so I'm hanging on to this one for as long as I can, since guy cars are getting harder to find. We are now over 180,000 miles.

My trusty Olds took me through 5 counties today with no problem. And the sun shined upon it in places other than Grays Harbor and Thurston counties. This was a very good day. A Sunday drive day to clear the head and enjoy the backroads of the real Washington.

I welcome the end of an oil-based economy where cars like mine vanish from the planet as much as the next re-aligned, re-educated, and let's-face-the-truth-about-global-warming Boomer, but I will miss my petroleum guzzling Ciera when the time comes to say goodbye. I recently saw the futuristic movie Serenity (2005) where the captain of a spaceship talks about his vehicle:

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: But it ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. You know what the first rule of flyin' is? Well I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say.
River Tam: I do. But I like to hear you say it.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Love. You can know all the math in the 'Verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her home.

If I bought this vehicle, maybe we could start up a cutlass sierra club???!?!? ^_^