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17 Oldsmobile Aurora
In the late 1990s, Oldsmobile wanted to add a new high-end sports sedan to their lineup to continue on the heritage of their Toronado and 98 products. The first generation Aurora debuted for the 1998 model year, and even though advertising tried to pin the big sedan as a sports car, not many Americans were fooled – it’s hard to sell a boatlike, 3,600 pound, front wheel drive car with a four speed automatic transmission, much less while calling it a sports car. The simple exterior of the first generation Aurora gave way to a second generation redesign in 2001, which only served to solidify the Aurora’s bulbous nature in the mind of the public.
Oldsmobile otherwise barely changed the car for its facelift, retaining a mediocre V8 (as well as an outright underpowered V6) under the hood, again powering the front wheels through a four speed automatic. The announcement by GM in December 2000 that Oldsmobile as a brand would be phased probably didn’t help, and clearly the Aurora wasn’t going to be the savior Oldsmobile desperately needed to continue its existence. Overall sales of the second generation Aurora just barely reached half the sales of the first, in fact, and thankfully the model slid out of existence along with the brand by 2004.
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