HAVE A LOOK AT THIS AURORA ON CARS & BIDS!
This is the Oldsmobile Aurora, GM's stopped working effort at futuristic. Today I'm reviewing this Oldsmobile Aurora, and I'll reveal you all the lots of peculiarities and features. I'm also going to get behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile Aurora and show you what it resembles to drive.
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DOUGSCORE CHART:
CHAPTERS:
00:00 CARS & BIDS!!!
00:16 THIS …
00:52 Overview
02:59 Tube Automobile Principle
03:31 No Oldsmobile Badges
04:54 V8 Powertrain
06:49 Radical Interior
07:40 Motorist Cockpit
08:25 More Interior Quirks & Characteristics
09:53 The Aurora Screen
10:53 A lot more Quirks & Features
13:02 Monolith of an Equipment Selector
13:43 Forward Thinking Interior
14:37 Rear Seating
15:58 Trunk
16:52 Lighting Features
17:48 Driving Experience
19:11 Durable
20:12 Drives Like Acura and Lexus
20:40 Oldsmobile Was Beyond Saving
21:44 Final Ideas
22:14 DougScore
#dougdemuro #cars #oldsmobile #aurora
Who also loves it when Doug reviews these run of the mill of the cars instead of the quarter million dollar exotics?
This indeed is way more interesting.
Me and based on the views of his other vids, maybe 75% of his viewers 🙂
Agreed
Especially since I have one in white sitting in my barn rn. Haha. The v8 was great for how small it is.
I agree. I find this also much more interesting than another giant SUV.
As a European this car is dream tier. In the 90s we still had fairly boxy cars, some Japanese imports being the exception, so seeing these cars in American movies was quite the culture shock.
Funny from the American perspective of the time, these were seen as a relatively cheesy alternative to Lexus/Acura/Mercedes etc. Also didn’t help they were driven by mostly senior citizens which killed any kind of cool factor. Thirty years later, this definitely brings back the 90’s American nostalgia vibes.
I remember this car well. It was a cool car in the day.
Same here. I grow up In asia where Jdm cars are very cheap and everywhere. Those american cars fascinated me so much. I saw amrican people ball sck jdm cars so much and little or no respect for their country made make me very sad. If you drive a american v8 cars here You’re like a god of car guy. And better than most jdm cars too. I don’t know why they don’t see that.
I unironically really like the styling. It does the no grille look WAY better than modern cars tend to. It’s only a shame the rest of the lightbar doesn’t light
The tech was available back then on. The Lincoln Mark VIII had full neon light up taillight bar
Doug, this is quite an unexpected surprise that you’re reviewing an American passenger car from the era of the 80’s to the 2000’s again, especially something like this Aurora or any other General Motors product. I have to say, I love it!!! Its always a good day when you review some truly quirky cars, nonetheless the severely underrated stuff like this, and I’d love to see you do some more vehicles like this.
One suggestion for a car I would want you to review is a 1999-2005 Pontiac Grand Am, perhaps a GT or a Ram Air version. It would be really cool if you can try and review one of those. These cars are shockingly quirky, such as with two sets of working reverse lights, air conditioning vents that you can litteraly orient any way you could, the trunk release button on the inside of the drivers door, and even some other interesting design and styling quirks too.
Speaking of Grand Ams would love to see an 80s Firebird. The one with pop up headlights. Especially the pacecar one with the 3,8l V6 Turbo from the Grand National
Thank you — I appreciate hearing that 🙂 Cars & Bids has allowed me to go and review some of these old oddballs and still have it make financial sense. I’m thrilled with it!
I love it when Doug reviews a car like this. He knows the views will be crap, but he knows he’ll enjoy making it. It’s my favorite type of Doug video.
You know you’ve made it when 200k views in one day is considered crap😂
It really was an exciting car at the time it came out! My dad had one and I loved driving it. Very comfortable and fast. Too bad the 4.0 V8 proved to be so problematic. The supercharged 3800 would have been a good fit but not as exclusive as Doug mentioned. I would also argue the lack of grill was fairly common at the time. My 92 Civic also didn’t have a normal grill on the hood. Great review, Doug!
The 90’s era T-Birds had a really cool driver centric design. The center stack was seriously angled towards the driver. I always liked that about those cars.
When this came out I remember thinking how incredibly futuristic this car looked….It hasn’t held up well, but I still appreciate it.
I thought from the side profile it looks like the stereotypical car a kid draws.
It held up really well
It held up better than anything else. Looks amazing still.
I respect brands taking risks to impress their customers
I have always like the first generation Oldsmobile Aurora. The styling was ahead of its time and something not many people had seen when it launched. The Aurora did the tail light bar before tail light bars gained popularity, even though most of that tail light bar did night light up. I would love to own a first generation Aurora.
I used to have a 2002 Oldsmobile Alero. It honestly was a good and dependable car. I drove the wheels off of it. The Aurora was definitely an interesting car for its time.
The rear seat temperature control dial at 15:12 is meant to be used with your feet! That’s why it’s lower and larger than normal.
Loved this car as a kid. A year ago I found a clean one and drove it for a year for grins and giggles with my other cars. It really was a great car. Things you missed: the rear was self leveling air shocks, all the wood in this car was real burl wood, and the unibody structure was so strong for the time it broke GM’s crush test machine for cars and they had to put it on the truck one.
That explains why he kept saying no rattles.
WTF? The wood was real in this?
Dough is the automotive equivalent of CNN. Lots of biased info, some of it true, most is omitted
@Ogi’s Garage , he was more detailed up to like a year or two ago. I live here in San Diego and one day I will see him.
Did all cars have that? Or just the ones with the Autobahn package?
I’ve got a few fond memories of this car! I’m in my late 20’s now, but when I was much younger, say around 5 or 6, I thought this was the coolest, most futuristic car I had ever seen. It looked like a spaceship to me, and that light bar was absolutely wild! Although, as a kid, I didn’t know the center didn’t light up. It’s not as though the bar was set very high for me back then, but I was in love with the way these cars looked!
My old neighbor from across the street, Ed F., had a two car garage with a white 1995 Aurora inside, parked alongside a yellow, Targa-top Porsche 911. I wanna say it was a 1978, but it may have been older – I can’t quite remember. He later traded the White Aurora for a Final 500 (second generation) he had managed to acquire as it’s first owner -brand new!
He moved out of State around 15 years ago or so, and I have no idea what happened to the cars, or even if Ed is still alive. He was one heck of a neighbor, though, and I miss those days. He would let me come over any time I wanted to look at his cars. He would also let me sit in the driver’s seat and pretend to drive them, which was awesome, being a 6-year-old!
While everyone else I knew was having fun with Gameboys and Tomagotchis, I was goofing off around my neighbors cars, and I had a blast doing it! Those two cars, and my Dad’s 1987 GMC Sierra 3500 (single cab flareside) were among the very first cars I ever got to know, and they kicked off my life as a car enthusiast! I’d love to have one of these as they’re becoming increasingly rare, although parts are also hard to find nowadays. Still, it would be a wonderfully unique, comfortable, fly-under-the-radar, IYKYK-type of daily driver car, which is the best kind of daily driver car, honestly.😮
Thanks for this video, Doug! I love the old quirky stuff, but especially this! Thanks for the throwback! I enjoyed that little trip I just took down memory lane.
Oldsmobile was actually trying to take on the Germans with the Aurora and Intrigue. The Intrigue had an “Autobahn package” which upped the limiter from 108 to 128mph as well as gave it slightly different suspension and tuning. I had a 2001 Intrigue with that package.
Aurora had an optional Autobahn package as well.
They were excellent cars for the time just badly marketed. The OSV models were unbelievably cool and so good looking for their time and even today! The Intruigue OSV looked sinister and a super sleeper machine.
Oldsmobile was pretty much a rental fleet staple in the mid 90s….and to think that the Ciera was still in production when the Aurora was introduced…and the Ciera was a decontented fleet special at that point. The GM-10 Cutlass Supreme was starting to age out as well…plus the Cutlass name was pretty well diluted by then. And by 95…you had Oldsmobile entering the SUV market by offering a S-10 Blazer with fancier trim and the dustbuster Silhouette which was deemed the Cadillac of Minivans in “Get Shorty.” Overall, the Aurora was a great effort and probably would have served it’s market better as a V8 rear driver like the Mercedes and Lexus LS400 of the day.
I remember, in my senior year of high school (02), looking at one of these with my uncle. He debated it, but ended up buying a Toyota Avalon instead, mostly because it had a front bench seat option. While we both liked the Olds V8 extra power, I am really glad he went for the Avalon. I have since inherited it; I doubt the Olds would have still been around for me to still be driving today. The Auroras did have an interesting look to them.
I had a second generation Aurora with the V6 “ShortStar” engine and it remains one of my very favourite cars ever. I didn’t even know it existed but I’d totaled a 6 year old Golf with nearly 400,000km on the clock and I had a $6,000 insurance cheque in hand. I just went to a dealer I trusted and asked him for the best thing on his lot for $6k and it was the Aurora. In common with NorthStars, eventually the head gasket went. But I loved that car for 4 years.
My mom had a ‘97 back then and it was… great! I was 16/17/18 at the time and I loved driving it. It was “cool”. It looked cool. It was “fast” enough that it was “cool”. It was by far the nicest car mom ever owned up to that point. Thank you for bringing back those memories!
I will forever love you for reviewing cars like this, Doug, I know they don’t get as many views as your supercars/sportscar videos, but I love stuff like this so much so please keep doing them.
From a preservation perspective, so many of the old cars like this are trashed with no real efforts made to document how they looked at their peak. These cars were an importnat part of history of the American automobile! For a lot of cars which don’t really have any survivors, we are left with only memories. I think there is something noble about documenting survivor cares like this, even if it’s only to sell on Cars & Bids.
The ironic thing is that many did believe these were going to be collector cars when they were new, and treated them accordingly, expecting them to be worth real money one day. I think the mistake was not realizing that 90’s cars were going to last much longer than the cars of the 50’s and 60’s, and the time before they became valuable was going to be decades later than expected.
I have always been in love with the first generation Aurora; wish I had one. Fun fact, the second generation was meant to be a model called the Antares to slot between the Intrigue and Aurora, but was turned into the second generation Aurora when the writing was on the wall for Oldsmobile. I hope you follow up with a video on its platform mate Buick Rivera. Love that car as well, and it’s super quirky and weird.