Car Stuff: Random Sighting #17

Some of the cars in my neighborhood are regularly parked in front of their owners' homes, but I'm not always on foot when I see them. This week's example is a car that I tend to pass while riding in our car or on the bus, so when I happened to walk this route one day I was ready to get these shots.

If you remember the light blue Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera from back in November, this is its Buick counterpart, the Century. Just about everything I wrote about that car applies to this one as well. Now I just have to spot a Chevrolet Celebrity and a Pontiac 6000...

I think this one may be a year or two newer than the Olds; they were built through the 1996 model year, and something about this car has an aura of finality about it, both in the sense that it's from near the end of the car's production run, and in the sense that its owner, whom I suspect is an older person, seems to have decided that this would the last car s/he bought.

It's certainly well kept for a car around 20 years old, which suggests that it is driven infrequently. It also looks like it has those passive seat belts that used to be installed on cars before they had been updated with air bags. (Also, I need to remember to try to get interior shots.)

I'm pretty sure there are no longer any American cars offered with a front bench seat. Now that cars like this one, and others that appealed primarily to car buyers of a certain age like the Mercury Grand Marquis, are no longer in production, I do wonder what sorts of cars those approaching retirement age are buying. I think the closest current analogue to this car may be the Toyota Camry. Reasonably sized, comfortable, economical to buy and own, bland to the point of numbness...