Car Stuff: Random Sighting #11

Since it's harder to get pictures of moving cars from inside another moving car, I look for subjects while out walking around my neighborhood. For today I have a car that I had passed on many a dog walk, and it doesn't appear to move frequently so I knew I could go back without the dog and get a few pictures of it.

This is an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, another one of those General Motors cars that was built for a long time. In this case they were around from 1982 to 1996. Initially the car was available in two-door and four-door body styles; a wagon was added for 1985, and the coupe was dropped after 1991. Its platform cousins were the Chevrolet Celebrity, Buick Century, and Pontiac 6000. (The Celebrity went away after 1990, the 6000 after '91; the Century hung on as long as the Ciera did.)

The basic design of these cars never changed during their run, but they did receive styling changes along the way. So how to pin down this car's year? The roofline of the four-doors was revised for 1989; it's hard to tell from the angle of this pic, but this car has it. Beyond that, there was a tail light change for '91, and there's an "S" model designation on the fender badge, which puts it between '90 and '94. I'm inclined to think it's from the latter end of that range, but regardless it's at least 20 years old. (Love the "aged to perfection" plate, though cars in Massachusetts are supposed to have front license plates.)

These cars are sometimes referred to as "cockroaches of the road," partly for how many years they were in production, and partly due to how popular they were when new, a combination that resulted in a lot of these cars still in use. So I wasn't too surprised to see this blue Ciera tucked away in this neighbor's driveway. I've seen other variants on the roads in our area, and I would have liked to get a picture of one of each model for this installment but I wasn't quite that lucky. Of course it's always possible I'll spot them later.

I said this car doesn't seem to move much; I have a feeling someone is holding onto it for sentimental reasons. But it does get driven, as I found one day last week when I passed the house:

Update, 11/21: I've been by the house several more times over the past week, and it appears that the Olds is gone for good.