1982: Times are hard, but at least you can still get an Olds Cutlass

In 1982, a mean recession was sapping the optimism right out of North Americans, while fuel prices looked set to get even worse in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Expectations were diminishing fast, and so The General’s Oldsmobile Division threw some Olds-ish gingerbread on the new Chevy Celebrity and called it the Cutlass Ciera. Here’s a magazine advertisement for the first-year Ciera, pitching the idea that “Even today, there’s still room to do it with style.”

The Cutlass name had been so incredibly successful for Oldsmobile during the 1970s that it ended up being applied to three unrelated cars— at the same time— during the 1980s. There was the Cutlass Supreme, which began the decade on the rear-wheel-drive G-body platform and then switched to the same W-body underpinnings as the Pontiac Grand Prix. There was the Cutlass Calais, which was the N-body sibling to the Buick Skylark. And, of course, the A-body Cutlass Ciera, which became famous as the car driven by the bungling kidnappers in the film Fargo.

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