Nice example of a handsome car. If I remember right the rap on these cars was that they were too "modern" for the traditional Olds audience and too conservative for the younger buyers Olds needed to attract. Always thought Olds was GMs most interesting Division and Buick the least. Olds died first and China seems to love Buick. Shows what I know.
They were too modern for the older crowd and too expensive for the younger set. Ultimately they suffered from the same problem scores of other GM cars did in the '90s and '00s: too many similar cars across the different lines with no real differences between them to justify bringing buyers in for them. Combine that with the typical jerk GM dealerships who refused to talk to anyone except for "this is the car on the lot, you buy it, no exceptions" it's no wonder they didn't sell well. Having a Northstar derived engine didn't help either as they already had a reputation for premature failure\expensive repairs needed around 75-80k miles by then.
The Aurora kinda-sorta replaced the Toronado as Oldsmobile's persona luxury car, and it was supposed to attract those who might otherwise buy a European car. But the Aurora could never save Oldsmobile because the car was more a niche product like the Toronado itself. Oldmobile's bread-and-butter cars were first and foremost the Cutlass, which accounted for half or more of Oldsmobile's sales for several decades, followed by the 88 line, which was the mainstream family car line Oldsmobile had to offer. When these began to falter, that was the beginning of the end. As elB noted, by the '90s, the distinctiveness of the offerings of GM divisions was gone, and GM thus had too many brands.
I remember the last year of Olds at the Chicago Auto show. They were all that “maroon” color, and they had heavy curtains throughout their display. It really had a funeral home feel to it. I felt badly for the sales people on the floor. It felt like those were the last 6-7 Oldsmobile’s in Chicago.
GM really went all-in on this in the '90s. "We're attracting a more upscale European car buyer" without any reason for those buyers to buy a GM car. Sure, the higher end Bonnevilles and Auroras and Park Avenues had innovations and "modern" features like HUD and fancy digital displays, but they were extremely expensive compared to similar offerings from Ford and Dodge and you didn't get an engine or transmission that was any fancier or reliable than the lower end Chevy equivalents in many cases - in some cases you got worse reliability and expensive repair bills. The performance was subpar and the handling for curving the roads wasn't there either. Buyers who were buying BMW 7 series cars were not convinced to switch over.
