The 1980s were one of the darkest periods for the mighty General Motors. The General spent the early years of the decade losing an incredible amount of momentum, fighting a losing battle armed with derided diesels, unloved downsized cars, and massive V8s that made only morsels of power. Through all of the doom came a bright light. This is the Pontiac 6000 STE. In a period when many buyers couldn’t tell two GM cars apart, the 6000 raced ahead of the pack as not just a better car, but one that could somewhat keep up with the Germans.
Under Alfred P. Sloan’s control, General Motors famously said it made “A Car for Every Purse and Purpose.” That was back in the 1920s, and this strategy was vastly different than Henry Ford’s idea of a one-size-fits-all approach. GM would build its cars across tiers, from the cheap and affordable car to the elegant and expensive car. The rest of the automotive industry would adopt this standard.
For much of the history of General Motors, its brands shared some parts, platforms, and tooling, but each brand had its own identity, its own engineering, and its own designs. Sometimes, this resulted in quirky situations, at least by today’s standards. Chevrolet and Oldsmobile both made America’s first production turbocharged cars. Both cars even debuted weeks within each other in 1962. Yet, they were vastly different projects despite both falling under the GM umbrella. Another example of this is how GM’s divisions had their own distinct V8 engines. Chevrolet and Oldsmobile both had 350 cubic inch V8s, but they were not the same engines.
A Different General Motors
As the book ‘A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of Automotive Design,’ by Michael Lamm and Dave Holls notes, this changed in the late 1970s. It was now the peak of the era known today as the Malaise Era. Automakers were adapting to a rapidly changing environment. The horsepower wars of the 1960s became a battle to downsize, increase fuel economy, and reduce emissions. At the same time, people cared more about car safety than ever. The smaller yet bulky cars of the late 1970s reflected all of this.
Hemmings quotes the book more:
General Motors Assembly Division and its young and inexperienced engineers had started to eclipse Fisher Body and its veterans. GM started to centralize product development under platform teams rather than leave that up to the divisions; “divisional identities blurred when management mandated that differently badged cars on the same platform would use identical outer sheetmetal,” Lamm and Holls wrote. Lawsuits began to fly over the corporation’s use of one division’s V-8 engines in another division’s cars. And, perhaps most symbolic of all, in July 1977 Bill Mitchell retired.
Rather than pick Chuck Jordan, the man who Mitchell groomed to replace him, GM’s selection committee chose Irv Rybicki as Mitchell’s successor as vice president of design. In hindsight, as Lamm and Holls noted, it was a poor decision. General Motors, during Rybicki’s nine years in office, would lose not just identity but its dominance of the American industry. It would lose its half century of automotive design leadership.
Irv’s strength lay in administration. (GM Executive Vice President Howard) Kehrl wanted a good administrator, someone who could put GM Design Staff on a more businesslike footing. He got that. As a designer, Rybicki had done some nice things when he ran the Olds and Chevrolet studios, but he lacked emotion and forcefulness. He didn’t have the conviction to fight for design. He was too gentle a person to do battle at all. The corporate moneymen, the general managers, the engineering and manufacturing people too often got their way with Rybicki. While GM Design Staff was never shorted on funding, Irv could see and agree with the economic arguments for making design subservient to other disciplines, especially engineering and manufacturing and especially, too, because those staffs were working furiously on downsizing, CAFE, safety, emissions, quality, etc.
Those lawsuits that the book mentioned? There were more than 200 suits launched after customers were furious about finding Chevrolet engines in cars that were supposed to be on a higher tier. Ultimately, GM took a $30 million hit when it settled these suits.
All of these factors and more meant that, in 1982, General Motors would make a bet that the future of the American automobile was downsized, lightweight, front-wheel-drive, and fuel-efficient. This bet would not pay off, and led to one of GM’s darkest periods. Yet, there was still light, and it was at Pontiac.
One Car, Four Brands
In 1982, General Motors launched the front-wheel-drive version of its A-body platform. These cars were based on GM’s maligned X-body, which made its debut in 1979 and underpinned the Chevrolet Citation, Buick Skylark, Pontiac Phoenix, and Oldsmobile Omega.
The A-body cars shared much of the X-body platform and systems. As Motor Trend wrote in December 1981, the A-body Chevrolet Celebrity had the same 104.9-inch wheelbase, 58.7-inch front track width, and 57-inch rear track width as the X-body Chevrolet Citation. The Celebrity even shared most of the same powertrains as the Citation. But GM didn’t just copy and paste the X-cars onto the A-cars. The Celebrity was 188.3 inches long, a whole foot longer than a Citation.
While based on the X-body, Motor Trend wrote, the A-body featured so many of its own parts that there was little X-body left. At launch, the A-bodies featured rack-and-pinion power steering that was relocated from the firewall to the front subframe. The steering geometry and alignment were changed for better handling and on-center feel, while the front subframe uses larger and better isolated mounts than the X-cars did. MacPherson struts handle the front end, and Motor Trend said that the A-body cars use softer mounts and more numerous insulator rings for lower noise and harshness. A trailing arm twist axle takes up the rear.
Motor Trend continued that General Motors had spent a lot of time adding extra insulation, hood seals, bushings, closed off fenders, and other tricks to make the A-body cars ride smoother and quieter. The 1970s left a poor taste in the mouths of car buyers because of abhorrent quality, and GM is said to have worked on that, too. The A-bodies were assembled by General Motors Assembly Division in California, Massachusetts, and Ontario. Computers, robots, and lasers were used in the production facilities to ensure weld accuracy and panel fitment.
GM went even further from there, using Lexan to create the front spoiler of the A-body cars, plus making the A-pillars out of a single piece rather than two pieces welded together. The rear end was also a single piece, and any metal part that wasn’t structural, like the hood or trunk lid, was made out of two layers of metal.
GM then took aero seriously, too, putting the A-cars through nine tests in three different wind tunnels. Out of the other end, the bodies got flush glass, integrated mirrors, and aero spoilers. When all was said and done, A-body sedans had a coefficient of drag of 0.42, an improvement over the Citation’s 0.43 and the Malibu’s 0.51.
At launch, an A-body came with a 90 HP 2.5-liter Iron Duke four-cylinder as its base engine. A little hotter than that was the 2.8-liter carbureted V6, which made 112 HP. Finally, there was the 4.3-liter Oldsmobile diesel V6, which made 85 HP. The diesel is notable here as this engine was made after the infamous 5.7-liter Oldsmobile diesel V8, and by this time was a reliable engine. A manual transaxle was not available at launch, and buyers had to be okay with a three-speed automatic.
Back under those days’ testing standards, all of the engines were frugal, with highway fuel economy numbers coming in at 40 mpg, 34 mpg, and 42 mpg, respectively. Yeah, GM’s diesel tech was running out of steam by this time as gas engines were becoming frugal enough that the extra cost of a diesel wasn’t worth it anymore.
The A-body cars were considered to be intermediates and were touted for having interiors of a similar size to their larger siblings. The A-bodies also looked different than the X-bodies, but their visuals would also cause a bit of an upset. When the A-body cars launched in 1982, they were sold as the Buick Century, Chevrolet Celebrity, Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, and the Pontiac 6000. There was only one small problem. Unlike in the past, when each brand would have its own version of a car, the A-body cars were hard to distinguish from each other.
The A-Body’s Image Problem
[Editor’s Note: I just want to point out that those two in the picture there are carrying an Apple II Plus with a Monitor /// and Disk ][. – JT]
While that might have been the case, buyers did not care. Chevrolet sold 92,330 Celebrities in 1982 alone, and by the time the Celebrity ended production in 1990, Chevy managed to move 2,153,098 units. Sales numbers were equally crazy over at Pontiac, where the 6000 became that brand’s best-seller in 1984 with more than 122,000 units sold that year alone.
Still, GM’s badge engineering and choices of 1982 would catch up to it. Car buyers did notice that the A-cars were basically the same, and so did the press. On August 22, 1983, Fortune magazine published an issue with this as its front cover:
In just one photo and a few words, Forbes magazine pointed out the problem with the new era of General Motors, and it was that GM leaned so heavily into badge engineering that you couldn’t tell the four A-cars apart. Sure, this paid off in the short term, but at what cost? The Forbes cover was a slap in the face for GM execs. From Automotive News:
“That cover really stung,” says Chuck Jordan, GM’s chief designer from 1986 to 1992. “It was kind of unfair, but it made things really clear.”
Says Lloyd Reuss, GM’s president from 1990 to 1992, about the cover: “It was sort of a wake-up call.”
From Hemmings:
“The impact of that 1983 Fortune cover had a profound effect on GM Design Staff,” Lamm and Holls wrote. “Chuck Jordan said the Fortune cover marked a turning point. He vowed then and there: No more lookalike cars.”
Ultimately, the success of GM’s downsizing push was short-lived. As I have written a few times in the past, General Motors was reorganized in 1984, and the company got absolutely beaten in the 1980s:
The General Motors of the 1980s struggled to maintain forward momentum. In 1984, GM’s brands held onto a grasp of 44.6 percent of the car market. But as CNN reported, GM’s grip was loosening. By 1987, GM’s brands lost their footing and began reaching for a lifeline as market share sank to 36.6 percent. Oldsmobile took the greatest beating, seeing its sales slide from 1.1 million units to 714,394 units.
GM’s dramatic loss in popularity was its own doing. In 1992, CNN explained that, during the tail end of the period that we now know of as the Malaise Era, General Motors made a bet on the future. Unlike its competition at Ford and Chrysler, GM was flush with cash and thought it would get a leg ahead by launching new cars for the new era. GM figured that future buyers would want downsized, lightweight, front-wheel-drive, and fuel-efficient cars. After all, America had only just been pulling out of the tumultuous 1970s and its gas crunches.
Unfortunately, GM’s gamble didn’t pay off. As CNN noted, gas prices got cheap again, and American car buyers wanted big and fast cars again, which GM had just spent the early 1980s moving away from.
General Motors recognized its errors early on. In 1982, the same year the A-cars went to market, GM launched the GM-10 program. This program was a $7 billion bet to replace the Chevrolet Celebrity, Pontiac 6000, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, and Buick Century.
The BMW Of General Motors
But before the next generation of GM front drivers could come out, something had to be done about the A-cars to make them distinctive. All four brands tried to add zest to their A-bodies by getting inspiration from Europe. Buick came out with the Century T-Type, Oldsmobile punched out the Cutlass Ciera ES, and Chevrolet would arrive late to the party with the Celebrity Eurosport. Pontiac was the most ambitious, and for good reason.
In January 1982, Motor Trend declared the Pontiac 6000 as the best of the A-bodies. This wasn’t because of the performance, because the original 6000 was the same under the hood as a Celebrity and its other siblings, but because Pontiac tried its hardest to make the 6000 look spicy. Apparently, Pontiac engineers also attempted to make the base suspension a little more sporty.
Weirdly, Motor Trend also reported that Pontiac saw itself as the sort of BMW of General Motors, which was ambitious, to say the least.
But this was embarrassing for Pontiac. This is a brand known for its iconic firepower, not putting ribbed taillights on a Chevy. Thus, Pontiac began a program to bring excitement back, and the 6000 was going to lead the way. Pontiac took the 6000 and turned it into the STE, which stood for Special Touring Edition. This car was meant to prove that Pontiac could still capture the heart of the enthusiast and that BMW wasn’t the only one that knew how to make a sport sedan.
Pontiac started with the engine. The hottest A-body mill was the 2.8-liter carby V6, so that was taken and pumped up to 135 HP from 112 HP. Reportedly, Pontiac really wanted to put an entirely different, more high-tech engine in there, but found itself hamstrung by GM’s tight budgets of the early 1980s.
From here, Pontiac just piled on everything it could. Nearly every luxury was standard in the STE, from power windows and power locks to air-conditioning and power brakes. Everything was standard, even electronic ride control, a cassette deck, and cruise control. The only options were a manual transmission, leather, and a sunroof. Oh, and this was the 1980s, so this car was filled with as many buttons as the flight deck of a passenger jet. The STE even had a digital instrument cluster made by Denso in Japan.
Pontiac didn’t just stop at filling the STE up with every conceivable option, but it also made it handle better, too. The steering rack was stiffened up, a 24mm stabilizer bar was added up front, a stabilizer bar was added in the rear, and Pontiac wrapped the 6000 STE’s 14-inch wheels up in Eagle GT tires. Lower final-drive gearing added a bit more jazz.
Renewed Pontiac Enthusiasm
The buff mags went wild. Honestly, the legendary David E. Davis Jr. says it best in Car and Driver:
The Pontiac 6000STE stands head and shoulders above every other Detroit sedan, including its fellow General Motors front-drive A-cars. It is a sedan that can hold its head high in any automotive society. We expected Buick’s new Electra T Type to mount a serious challenge to the STE, but the Buick people couldn’t quite bring themselves to go all the way with their new Eurosedan. The Buick has roadability and performance to match the Pontiac’s, but it lacks the Pontiac’s sophisticated instrumentation and enthusiast-oriented interior appointments. The Pontiac emerges as winner and still champion for the third year in a row.
There is a rightness about the STE that sets it apart from all of its American brothers. It even looks better than the other GM cars that share the same sheetmetal. It was a startlingly good car in its first year, 1983, and it has only improved in each of the two years following. One thinks of the original GTO, the original Buick Riviera, the 1963-67 Corvette Sting Ray—all cars that sprang to life fully formed and ready to take on the best—and one knows that the 6000STE has taken its place in good company.
Motor Trend was so deeply in love with the STE that it called the sedan a “legitimate alternative to the European sport sedan,” and praised the 6000 STE’s flat cornering, 0.80 g of lateral acceleration, and 60 mph time of the mid-10 seconds.
The Pontiac was successful with enthusiasts, too, and Pontiac credits the 6000 STE with reinvigorating Pontiac and its enthusiasts. This was the car that pulled Pontiac out of GM’s dark ages. To many, this was the car to buy from General Motors from 1983 to 1989.
The 6000 STE Goes AWD
Oh, and it doesn’t even stop there, because the STE got better over time with four-wheel disc brakes in 1984 and then multi-port fuel injection in 1985. In 1988, the Pontiac 6000 STE became the first GM car to offer optional all-wheel-drive. By now, the 6000 STE had a 140-hp 3.1-liter V6, and the AWD system featured a transverse composite single-leaf spring from the Pontiac Grand Prix and a GMT400 truck rear differential. The AWD version utilized a three-speed automatic paired to an electro-mechanical center differential with a locking function.
What was amazing was that the Pontiac 6000 STE stayed awesome through its entire run.
Here’s what Motor Trend said:
In July of 1989, about the time the last 6000 STEs would have been rolling off the line, MotorTrend wrote, “The new [6000 STE AWD] is the most skillful sedan Pontiac’s ever built—indeed, the car is potentially the most important sedan of any stripe built by GM in the modern era. It offers great handling without sacrificing ride quality, most of the cues and equipment expected of a fine touring sedan from any manufacturer, Germans included, and a pleasantly conservative exterior appearance that supports its subtle mission.”
In 1987, a base Pontiac 6000 was $10,499 ($30,666 in 2025), while opting for the 6000 STE set you back at least $18,099 ($52,864 in 2025). The buff mags called the 6000 STE a bargain because a competitive Euro import like the BMW 325 sedan was $22,015 ($64,302 in 2025) that year. Enthusiasts bought them up, too, and the 6000 STE usually accounted for 10 percent to 15 percent of all 6000 sales. Not bad! In 1986, Pontiac moved 26,299 STE examples from dealer lots.
In other words, the 6000 STE was a sort of attainable import car from Detroit, and it worked. It got people all fired up about Pontiac again. The 6000 STE was perhaps the brightest light during one of GM’s darkest times. Yet, I would argue that most people have forgotten about the 6000 and the 6000 STE. There aren’t people paying $50,000 for these on Bring a Trailer, and you won’t always find one at a car show. I mean, contributor Mark Tucker somewhat recently showcased one for sale that was only $5,500.
The good thing about that is that a lot of enthusiasts are beginning to appreciate the forgotten cars of the 1980s. Find a nice Pontiac 6000 STE, park it at a car show, and I bet you’ll get plenty of people who will tell you about riding in one or driving one several decades ago. Today, a Pontiac 6000 STE might not be a fast car by any standard, but it could be a cool classic that you can own without breaking the bank.
Pontiac Points: 70/100
Verdict: The Pontiac 6000 STE was far from the best car Pontiac had ever built. At the end of the day, it was still an A-body car, even if it was a hot one. However, it was a car that brought happiness and smiles in a dark time, and that is always worth celebrating.
I really do NOT miss that era. Many people I knew had some variation of those square cars with different badges and they all kind of sucked. My grandmother had a Buick version. It had lots of transmission problems. The interior kind of reeked of plastic.
But there was a woman I worked with at my crapppy bus boy job who had a Pontiac with one of those “Iron Dukes” and it snapped a piston rod one day. You could hear it coming from blocks away- ” rangg-danga-danga-danga!” but yet she drove it like that for a year. A 3 cylinder car!
The A-body didn’t need yet another badge, but I’ve always thought that a more convincing and “transitional” Cadillac could have been formed from it than what was possible with the J-body Cimarron. Centuries were darn near as nice as a Cadillac anyway, and later had smooth 3800 power. So a contemporary, more right-sized spin on a “traditional” Cadillac was attainable, or a Euro-sporty flavor was certainly do-able if customers wanted that, as the 6000 STE demonstrates.
I’ve often thought this exact same thing. Caddy should have had a version of the A-body and not the J-body. As long as they put more effort into distinguishing it from the others compared to what was done with the Cimarron.
I thought these Pontiacs were attractive. And I was never a Pontiac fan. These looked good. The car mags said they drove well. And I have never even sat in one, so I will take everyone’s word about them.
My in-law’s ’88 Buick Park Avenue was as a lovely car as I could ever want. Screw Cadillac. The Buick could go around corners without scraping the door handles. A previous set of in-laws had a Mercedes 280 SE 3.5. To be honest, the Buick 3.8 (Ha! Take THAT, M-B) was better. The M-B was a lot older, so… And I was a Mercedes geek back then. But credit where credit is due.
My current Honda is a fine car. But that Buick was sublime. The styling was almost Jaguar-ish. The drivetrain was comfortably adequate as RR used to say. And for a car of its size and place in life, the engineers did an amazing job.
It’s been my take for awhile that, if you want to see the best of GM (esp. during the Malaise era) look at Buick (and Oldsmobile), not Cadillac.
Cadillac was the worst in that era. IMHO I wish we he had a DT level observer from that era within GM. But those were my parents’ cars and not what I bought. When I finally had enough money to buy cars, I bought things they would not.
I had a friend/colleague who had a Ferrari 330 GTC way back in the day, when we were news photographers, visit me for a week, last week. We are now in our late 60s. He daily drives a 2008 Audi S4. A week of taking him around the Seattle-Tacoma area in a 2017 Accord V6 and suddenly he’s on his phone looking for a car like mine. I used to look for a car like his.
I don’t mean it pejoritavely, but I’d consider a ’17 Accord V-6 to be about as Buick-like as you could get for these times.Get some higher-profile comfort-oriented tires/wheels on that thing and I bet it’d be ready for cross-country roadtrip duty, and probably get 30’s MPG the whole way.
No offense taken. However, I would suggest that a V6 Camry is even more “Buick-esque.” I rode in an Avalon ten years ago or so and it was even more so. And as I get older, a low mileage used one of those is starting to seem attractive. But I have a very narrow garage. My Accord’s mirrors clear the frame by about two inches on either side.
The Accord shod with the tires it has is fine. I’ve made multiple 1,500 mile + roundtrips this summer and now fall, dealing with a rapidly declining mother.
Making the trip from near Seattle to near Sacramento and back, it gets close to 40 mpg, (sometimes more, depending on headwind or tailwind) including going over the Siskiyous south of Ashland, OR. The summit of them is the highest point on I-5. 4,310 feet. Higher than the Grapevine/Tejon Pass N of L.A. 4,160 feet. And further north and hence, colder.
And as we head towards winter, I will be flying down there and renting a car because I don’t want to deal with snow and chains. Did plenty of that when I was younger and poorer.
Oh yeah. Avalon. The best Buick Toyota ever made.
Holy shit that Fortune magazine is brutal. How embarrassing. If that was my work, I don’t think I could come back from such a blow. I’d have to find a new line of work.
I’ve thought these were neat ever since articles started popping up on the internet about them. But growing up in the 90’s and 00’s I never heard of them and have no idea if I ever saw one (since they’re so hard to distinguish from all the other tired out A-bodies that were still straggling around the roads back then). Would love seeing one at a car show now though.
The earlier ones were kind of cool to me at the time because they appeared to have 6 headlights: the 4 sealed-beams + 2 integrated fogs beside.
More headlights always looks cooler for some reason!
I had a friend back in the day who was a GM at a Pontiac/Nissan dealership and drove one of these for a short time after he had a Nissan Maxima.
Sure the STE was nice – but it wasn’t nicer than the Maxima, nor was the interior appreciably better than my Mother’s Volvo 240.
Later when GM gave the A Bodies a sleeker rear window with the black plastic faux window behind the carry-over rear door windows – the car just looked wrong.
Maybe not better, but I think the updated rear window worked for the Century/Ciera, but that could be some degree of nostalgia as those were still new/recent when I was a kid.
The 6000 though, was just incongruous since the front/rear clips didn’t get a major update to go with. Celebrity would have looked even more bizarre.
I know it was more the style by then but I also thought the monochrome paint scheme of the later S/E & STE didn’t work like it did on other sporty Pontiacs, more like a cheap respray where they didn’t tape everything off.
The monochrome paint scheme didn’t even work on the AMGs that originated it.
Say what you will, I still think the Celebrity Eurosport was the best looking of the fleet.
There was one at my office earlier this year (we since moved offices and it didn’t so must have been another tenants), all blacked out and in good shape. Kinda cool to see.
I have a soft spot for the Eurosport wagon.
A former boss drove one of these back in the day. He was showing it off one afternoon and my biggest takeaway was the hood liner that said 6000 STE with the huge logo going across it. I will try to dig up a pic of it.
I thought these fell apart quickly….
My Dad used to say: ” Yup. Those are good for maybe 75,000 miles”
My holy grail for awhile has been a maroon 1989 Pontiac STE, just like I had during college. Unfortunately, in that last year, it looks like very few (about 1200) of that specific model/color were made. I loved it the first time around.
I still remember the 6000 STE on the cover of Car and Driver. It’s getting air and the cover says, ACHTUNG! Very cool. For everyone running down the car I can only say, you had to be there at that time. It’s what we had.
Me too, and DAMN!
Talking about having to be there at the time, in the Detroit area, circa late 1970’s-early 1980’s, the tension and worry was palpable.
I don’t know if you have ever had to reckon with a hard truth, particularly relating to a situation of your own making, or dealing with a fundamental concept of who and what you are, but that can be a very bitter pill to swallow.
For the era, this was really awesome. It wasn’t just wartime production (i.e., let’s make a super small cheap ass under-engineered car with a teeny engine so that it gets respectable mileage and stave off extinction), but a real effort to show that GM still had some spirit..
YES! And 16-year old me managed to convince my parents in 1986 to buy an ’84 STE and it was the best thing ever! The 2.8 sounded gnarly, the digital dash was cool, and it had a pretty good stereo with A FIVE BAND FREAKING EQUALIZER and even FOG LAMPS.
The days I got to drive that bad boy to school were the best and I was a total badass.
And after a year of “that hard car” (as my mom called it) they traded it for a Delta 88 plushmobile. But it was a fun year.
The equalizer!! Nothing said “I take my music seriously” than the equalizer!
Ah, but a buddy of mine had a Mazda with a “joystick” that allowed you to adjust the front/back/side to side of the sound. The first time I got in the car, I saw it, and did a few big ol’ circles with it, and it didn’t work.
I said “Andy, the joystick doesn’t work.”
He said “Yes, because the first thing every asshole does when he gets in the car is make the F—ing circles with the joystick!!”
I had a 94 626 with the “swing” button for the center dash vents…I want back, too
1980s America was an interesting time…
The 6000 STE also featured in perhaps the most infamous automotive comparison test of all time – the Car and Driver Baja Torture Test. They still had very positive things to say about it after going to the brink of insanity and survivability in it and 6~7 other cars for a week:
“Pontiac’s new 6000STE is a dandy. It nips at the heels of the Audi coming and going, and it’s the only other car in our group to rate above average in all nine categories. We knew we liked the STE, but frankly, we’re pleasantly surprised at the degree of its success.
For the first time in years, Detroit has a firm grip on building world-class sedans. The Dodge could use more polish, but the 6000STE is virtually there. It’s been a long time coming, we’d say. —Jean Lindamood.”
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15112441/escape-from-baja-mexican-sports-sedan-torture-test-archived-comparison-test/
Thanks for linking that. I remember reading it many years ago and it was like visiting an old Friend. God bless Jean Lindamood Jennings.
I think that was the test where PJ O’Roarke sank a car?
That era at C&D was the sort of automotive journalism that really spoke to me and sparked my interest in cars — and The Autopian shares that same spirit. I could TOTALLY see David driving in that Baja test and maybe Torch trying to sneak in a Peugeot 505 because you *could* get them in Mexico or some other tail light related BS.
In that comparison it’s like they were channeling the 2025 Autopian commentariat:
Thanks for the link, this was a great read!
There is a reason most of the GM/Ford/Crapsler cars of the 80’s are largely forgotten. They were complete and utter crap. Period end of sentence.
Once I turned 18 and had $500 to my name in 1986 I sold my shitty Pontiac Astre for $50 bucks and bought a used Honda Accord. I have not owned a single American car the rest of my life.
Those of us who grew up int the 70’s/80’s have no nostalgia for the utter crap that was being produced in Detroit.
Amen. R&T and C&D were my spank-bank. All I wanted was BMW (oh, and Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc). 6000 STE vs 533i/535i? No comparison. I know, the E28 was way more expensive.
Yea, to even consider there was a real 6000 STE vs 5 series comparison is ludicrous revisionist history.
Edited to add. I DEARLY miss the quality and type of car review journalism that C&D had back in the day. Autopian for the most part is the closest I have seen in that today. However there are still a few giant misses…..
To be clear here, the only BMW I mentioned at all was the 325, and I only mentioned it because the buff mags did. Audi also came up, too. I have access to Motor Trend’s entire archive and some older Car and Driver stories. Sadly, Motor Trend used to offer its archive for free, but not anymore.
Not picking on you Mercedes, just reminiscing on what at the time felt like pure poetic descriptions of cars when I was in my formative years and couldn’t afford crap. C&D was the best by far at the time.
To the BMW reference I was being more broad in that there was NO comparison to anything coming out of Detroit in the 80’s to even the crappiest of cars from Germany, or Japan for that matter.
Oh whew. I was desperately searching for mentions of 5 Series. All good!
Another fantastic article—you have been killing it lately with the best articles on one of the best sites. Not calling you out. I know many mags and GM themselves said they were in the same league. I’m just saying they most certainly were not. And the E30s were much smaller. This is e28/e23 size. The euro cars were WAY WAY more expensive, especially the ones that were larger so you can’t expect a $20k GM to compare to a $40 or $50 k BMW or MB.
The price difference probably kept and comparison from occurring. 80s BMWs were other worldly.
I keep reading Car and Driver archive reviews. They are so good.
Agreed.. romanticizing these cars is laughable.
Yo, speak for yourself and not all of those of us that grew up in the ’70s and ’80s. I have TONS of nostalgia for the utter crap being produced in Detroit back then. There was some world class garbage that I would love to have now (except the Ford Tempo, screw that abomination… well, maybe not the V6 model with the manual trans…). GM/Ford/Chrysler all made some terrible disposable cars that became some glorious garbage that I would love to own today.
It was *such* utter crap, in fact, that it made C&D’s Ten Best list three years running.
I owned a near-new ’86 STE not long out of college. Wasn’t perfect (it had issues with the lockup functions on the 3-speed automatic, and the fancy radio had issues that necessitated it come out for repairs at least once.
For the time, it handled pretty well, was reasonably quick, was comfortable and felt Euro-ish–a revelation as compared to anything I had driven before that. Plus, soooo many buttons, including on the steering wheel! Didn’t own it terribly long, but it was fun during that time.
The late 80s/early 90s facelift (tail lift?) that resulted in the rounded C-pillar looked kinda’ hideous to me, and by that time I had moved onto actual Euro cars.
The non-fancy radios of the era from GM were also problematic. A friend had a rundown 6000 with the Delco tape deck he had inherited from his mother that required a significant dash slap to get going every time he started the thing.
I rode in so many 5 -8 year old versions of these that were just absolute garbage already. My newest car is currently 12 years old, and it’s night and day compared to what a 12 year old car was like back then.
All of the rest of crappy GM cars and trucks of the era that I’ve had, other than the STE, had reasonably reliable radios. Yeah, cars have definitely improved–my newest car is 14 years old, and the average age of all the cars I have is right at 19.
My first car was a Celebrity Eurosport and I view these cars with rose colored glasses because of it. It had the 112hp carbureted 2.8, bit of an anomaly as by 86 they had the fuel injected 2.8, if I’d have known the Pontiac bits could get it another 20hp I’d have definitely researched that more.
I can just imagine GM feeling proud of these FWD sedans to compete with the rising Japanese competition, and the…frugal… K-cars from Chrysler, only to have the wind knocked out of their sails when the Taurus debuted. The Celebrity was the 1st to get replaced with the Lumina, and the 6000 only lasted 1 year more.
The Century and Ciera, which definitely fit the Buick/Olds drivers better style-wise, lasted another 5 years, that’s crazy to me to think you could get a Buick Century the same time as Saturn , and there could have been some previous year models sitting new on dealer lots when the EV1 became available. I mean they were front wheel drive and had 4 speeds but definitely had the late 70s sedan styling.
My first car was a Eurosport too! A hand-me-down wagon, with the FI 2.8. It was decently quick for what it was, though the interior was all manner of plastic-y terrible. It had only two gauges – the old school domestic horizontal speedo that by that time just screamed cheap American car, and a fuel gauge; everything else was lights.
But a classmate had a Century, and I remember that I felt I had the better car.
Great point about Saturn and Buick. If you weren’t around then, you probably think everyone is making up stories about the hype when Saturn debuted. “A different kind of car company.”
Same here! White Eurosport wagon with the 2.8 FI. To 16 year old me, it was pretty quick. Honestly it was a great all-rounder. Decent torque, decent mileage, and surprisingly good handling for a boxy wagon.
As much as I hate these cars my best friend in high school/college apartment mate/friend to this day had his mothers white Eurosport. It was a pretty good car. Much debauchery was seen by that car.
At the time, it seemed like the Eurosport wagon came in ONLY white or black. Also at the time, I was grateful it didn’t have fake wood paneling, unlike my friend’s Olds Firenza wagon!
I had one. ‘86? not sure. I liked that car. The digital dash was cool, the six headlights were cool, the callback to the grille shape of my previous Firebird was cool, the back panel was cool, it had nice wheels. Mine had velour or cloth seats, not leather, and did not have electronic ride control. Blue-green fluorescent display main dash with no needles at all IIRC (all bar graphs), and the radio with the 5-band EQ was red lit, I think along with the HVAC controls. .
“The Buick has roadability” roadability? Richard Trevithick’s Puffing Devil had roadability, in 1801.
Not to be contrarian, but I think the 70s were a way darker time for GM than the 80s. There wasn’t meaningful import competition yet, everything was getting bigger and bigger – until then suddenly it wasn’t – the mode was autopilot (first half) and then panic (second half). GM and the others had figured out they could increase their profit margin by cheaping out, and the cars really showed and felt it.
We touched a little on this last week, but the relative jump in build quality as GM moved into the 80s was truly palpable. Sure, it wasn’t good in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense, it was really noticeable, esp. as the decade wore on.
My take as well.
In terms of sales volume loss, market share loss, plant closures, layoffs, and financial performance, the 1980s were much worse for GM than the 1970s, they barely averted bankruptcy in the early ’90s, and the decade laid the foundation for their eventual collapse 19-20 years later. The ’70s wasn’t a great period for the company, but it was kind of a preview of what was coming.
GM finished 1980 with a $769 million loss and 46% market share, they finished 1990 with a $2 billion loss, 33% market share (and that was after demolishing and rebuilding or replacing virtually every manufacturing plant on a vast scale, acquiring new IT, robotics, and aerospace subsidiaries, expanding their financial services business, launching the Saturn project, adding new captive import brands, developing several all-new FWD platforms as part of a second round of downsizing, and increasing shareholdings in Japanese affiliates), they spent a staggering amount of money completely restructuring every aspect of the entire company from the top down over a decade, and had very, very little positive results to show from any of it)
I’ll always remember the first C&D review, which really leaned into the German comparison. The lead photo had the STE catching a ton of air, and the headline was “Achtung!”
IIRC, the lawsuit issue was from Oldsmobile owners who bought cars expecting to find a Rocket V8 under the hood, only to find a Chevy V8 instead.
If anyone is looking for a project. A cheap 1987 STE with some issues.
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Great story as usual Mercedes. These STE were nice but pricey for the day. Pontiac even offered a STE version of the replacement W bodies briefly. The interiors on the A bodies showed a lot more differentiation from each other compared to the exteriors. I remember when A bodies were literally everywhere! Very popular.
My high school auto shop teacher bought the AWD one new. It was sort of ok I guess. Back then 60’s musclecars were still affordable and all us high school kids had them. So this seemed kinda weak in comparison.
Thanks for Pthursday.
I don’t think there was much difference between the Pontiac 6000 STE and the Chevrolet Celebrity EuroSport beyond trim and graphics. That just maybe my hazy memories of the packaging, that is a while ago. They were cool looking functional dogs.
There were big differences between an STE and a EuroSport–all the suspension goodies and V6 were *options* on a Celebrity. Iron Duke four cylinder was the standard motor, even on a EuroSport.
I guess I never saw a base Celebrity Eurosport then.
2.8 V6 and 3.1 in the end and always the sport suspension on any I saw.
I was in Canada though and that might have made a difference in what was offered.
I wanted an all-wheel-drive 6000 so badly for a while. Drove one once, they are very cool. They are not easy to find anymore, and a nice one is even more difficult.
same here, always thought they were handsome. Im more a W body guy but appreciated the STE all the same.