1990 Oldsmobile Ciera Cruiser S review from North America

Windshield needs to be replaced.

Exhaust from the manifold back has gotta go.

Front swaybar is unhooked.

1 or 2 bent rims.

ECM or some other sensor is faulty.

E-brake cables.

Needs a radio.

I bought this car a few weeks ago for 150 bucks. I haven't got it on the road yet, because I haven't done the repairs to it. I need to hit up the junkyard to find the parts I need. I know I will find everything there, because these A -body cars are so common.

Overall, the car is in nice shape. There's no holes in the floor or rocker panels. Even the rear trailing arms (a common Abody rust spot) are solid. A few spots on the floor are starting to get flaky, so after I get them taken care of, the wagon is going to get rustproofed.

The woman who owned this wagon before I did put a lot of money into it, judging by the stack of receipts that came with the car. Oil pan and gasket, water pump, starter, alternator, tie-rods, wheel cylinders and rotors, A/C converted to r-134a, remote starter, transmission filter and fluid were all replaced from 1999-2002 according the the receipts. Oil changes appear to have been done regularly, as well as tuneups.

Right now, I've got a bad O2 sensor, plus a bad ECM or something related to it that's causing an occasional code 42 to be thrown. When the SES light is on indicating the code 42, it really runs bad. Terrible idle, stalls in gear, coughs and backfires through the throttle body. This only happens occasionally, but in a way that's worse, as tracking down the cause of a random sensor failure could be maddening.

I've got 1 or 2 bad rims which make the car shake terribly about 50 mph. It's totally undriveable at that speed. Since a few rims needs replacing, I'm considering finding some 16 inch rims to put on the wagon (standard are 14 inchers).

Front sway bar is broken, so the car really leans in corners. I doubt it's real safe like that, so that's getting fixed soon.

It's a fairly big car, with a moderately big engine, so fuel mileage isn't going to be as good as my 88 Celica, but I'm hoping to get at least 25 mpg on the highway out of the wagon. I had a 1990 Ciera SL sedan for a few months, and it has the same drivetrain as my wagon. It got an honest 27.5-28 mpg on the highway at 110 km/h. It never had a tuneup while I owned it, so I suspect fuel mileage would have improved if I had done the tuneup.

A/C system was converted to R-134a sometime in '99, it still works, but doesn't seem to blow very cold. I'll get it looked at once I get this baby on the road.