For decades, the Ninety Eight has been the top of the line at Olds-mobile - the divisional royal yacht.
But the arrival of the Olds Aurora marks the end of that status. Yacht it may still be, and with very good cruising credentials, yet it's no longer queen of the fleet. With the Aurora establishing a fresh, contemporary new direction for General Motors' old rocket division, it's clear that the current Ninety Eight belongs to Oldsmobile's past. Clearer still that major changes are in store for this big sedan.
In the meantime, though, some of the good old Ninety Eight virtues still have plenty of appeal. Like the Buick Park Avenue, which shares the same basic chassis, this is a big car with lots of room inside.
And with its hedonistic list of standard features, it's also a very good buy: a luxury car priced below the $30,000 luxury-car threshold.
Though the Ninety Eight has the same platform as the Park Avenue, there is no visual similarity between the two cars. For that matter, with its straight lines and hard angles, the Ninety Eight does not look like anything else, either.
As we noted, this is a big sedan - about the same size as a Lincoln Continental or Cadillac Seville, and only a bit smaller than the Chrysler New Yorker and Cadillac DeVille. And even though the Ninety Eight's external dimensions are very similar to the Aurora's, it's more than 400 pounds lighter.
Aside from some content juggling to bring the Ninety Eight into line with Oldsmobile's value-pricing program, There is only one significant change to this car for 1995.
A glance at the specifications table will show you that the engine options are the same as last year's: two versions of GM's corporate 3.8-liter V6, one supercharged, one not. However, the normally aspirated version, called the 3800 Series II, has been completely reengineered for 1995, and it's a brilliant job - more compact, lighter, smoother and, with an increase of 35 hp, far more potent.
Because it's a traditional overhead valve design, with two valves per cylinder, this may seem like yestertech compared with the overhead camshafts and multivalve cylinder heads dominating the powertrain scene today.
Don't you believe it. Overhead cam-shafts and 4-valve cylinder heads are advantageous in engines that do a lot of their work at high rpm. But overhead valve designs, with the camshaft down inside the engine block, are far less bulky, lending themselves to easier packaging.
And they're also very good at producing torque at low engine speeds - the basic grunt we employ every time the light turns green, or when we want to hurry safely into some rapidly closing hole in the traffic stream.
Beyond that, the 3800 Series II em-ploys up-to-the-minute engine/automatic transmission control electronics.
For 1995, the Ninety Eight comes in two editions: Series I, which qualifies as loaded by any reckoning; and Series II, which adds extras such as traction control, an automatic trunk pull-down, cornering lamps, a memory feature for the driver's seat, a heated driver-side mirror, and a Twilight Sentinel to save you from the fatigue of turning on your headlights at dusk.
The bottom line of the Series I window sticker is $26,695, including destination charge. The Series II costs $27,795. About the only significant options you can add are the supercharged V6 (225 hp, 275 lb.-ft.) and a sunroof (called Astroroof, in Oldsmobile-ese).
As much as we love self-indulgence, the Ninety Eight Regency Elite Series I (a mouthful of name if ever there was one) seemed luxurious enough, and that's what we drove.
