1990-1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais Quad 442: Doing a Legend Proud

1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Quad 442

Americans can get very emotional about their muscle cars. The Big Three manufactures knew this as a wave of nostalgia fueled by Baby Boomer memories made muscle car heritage relevant. Not that it ever went away. Performance cars had increasingly less muscle by the ’80s. By then emissions and safety regulations had all but wiped out

1970 Oldsmobile 442

the conditions that spawned the ideal of putting a big engine in an intermediate or mid-sized car. The pocket rocket had become the new muscle car. The best the Big Three could do is evoke the spirit of the classic muscle car as bigger was what they did best. It was a common marketing ploy, that in retrospect produced some regrettable decisions.

Heritage Marketing
The worst instance of heritage squandering might be Pontiac’s decision to use the Lemans name for a small Korean built hatchback. When I was a toddler in the early ’70s, my father owned a 1969 Pontiac Lemans Tempest. It was a sleeper of a muscle car because it was equipped with the GTO’s big V8 but lacked the GTO’s scopes, fins and spoilers. By the time I was in college, the Lemans was a tiny three door hatchback made for GM by Daewoo.

It wasn’t quite so bad at Oldsmobile, who in the late ’80s used it’s legendary 4-4-2 moniker on the compact Calais coupe. The N-body Calais coupe on paper was not a bad starting point. It was much smaller and lighter than earlier versions of the Cutlass Supreme that the classic 4-4-2s were based on. As one of GM’s new front wheel drive sedans and coupes, the Calais was Oldsmobile’s least expensive car. Despite designations like GT and International Series, the Calais in coupe form with its formal roofline looked more like a mini Toronado than any classic muscle car.

W41 Quad 4 engine

Technological Breakthrough With Issues
For the 1990-91 model year, the top version of the Calais would be the 4-4-2 or Quad 442 model as it was often referred to as. The center point of the new “muscle car” was the 2.3L Quad Four engine. Unlike the earlier 442’s 5 or 6 liter V8 engines, the Quad-4 was a 4 valve per cylinder twin camshaft inline 4 cylinder engine. The technology in the Quad-4 seemed magical compared to the Iron Duke four cylinder. GM remained a proponent of classic pushrod engine well into the 2000s. The fanciest thing the company had done before the event of the twin cam was maybe using overhead valves or twin throttle body fuel injection (Crossfire Fuel Injection). GM of course had flirted with twin cam technology back in the ’70s with the Cosworth Vega. That project leaned on the British company Cosworth’s technology.

Like a slow kid trying to catch up in school, GM was just learning to make its own mass market DOHC engine. They studied German and Japanese designs by taking them apart to see what made them tick, like the Air Force trying to retrofit alien tech. The Europeans employed it in racing since the ’30s and on various sports cars. The Japanese by contrast had mastered twin cam technology in everyday cars and had been at it since the early part of the decade. They quickly dominated the segment with smaller cars that offered V6-like performance and four cylinder efficiency. This is why a whole generation (Gen X and forward) would be weaned on import cars, clinching GM’s market share slide for the next few decades.

Quad-4 equipped Oldsmobile Calais

Truth In Advertising
Oldsmobile was well aware of this trend and sought to get in on the fun. It would boast of power and efficiency in 442 advertising (two things consumers usually did not associate with Oldsmobiles). The Quad-4 equipped cars actually did offer V6 performance and four cylinder efficiency, especially by GM standards. There were other advancements like a distributor-less and wireless ignition system, something that’s common in modern cars, but in 1987 might have seemed like something from the future. It was logical that Oldsmobile would debut this technology, as GM was trying to position Oldsmobile as a kind of tech savvy step up from it’s new entry level Saturn division.

The Quad 442 was not just a looker, it had had the kick to back up the performance aspirations that came with the 442 moniker. 0 to 60 came in a tidy 7 seconds and top speed was nearly 130 mph. Not much to talk about by 2019 standards, but for the time it was impressive for a compact GM car, let alone an Oldsmobile. It was also efficient with a EPA highway rating of 36 mpg. Oldsmobile had a true performance car on its hands with more power than the Nissan Sentra SE-R, Honda Civic Si and BMW 3181. Despite besting or costing less than those cars, few remember the Calais 442. Only the Oldsmobile faithful who were mostly older seemed to notice that the 442 was one of the best performance bargains available at the time.

That was a shame because the attractive coupe offered things like a 5 speed manual transmission, full instrumentation with a tach, leather wrapped steering wheel and of course ground effects. The only thing that seemed like a real throwback to heritage was the 3-speed automatic transmission option. 1991 would prove to be a pivotal year for the 442 model with Oldsmobile moving from the W-40 to the more powerful W-41 engine.

With sales low, Oldsmobile would change up it’s formula again and add a 4-4-2 option package in it’s Achieva coupe for the 1992 model year. The few ’91 model year Calais based 442 badged cars with the W-41 engine (about 200) are considered the best and most desirable.

International Series sedan

The Quad-4 first appeared in the Cutlass Calais GT in 1987. It would also be available in the International Series, but in the 4-4-2, it had the W-41 High Output 180 hp application. With it’s chain driven dual overhead camshafts, the little Quad-4 produced an impressive power output for a smaller displacement engine of the time (American or otherwise), without the use of turbocharging. Oldsmobile’s other Calais engine options, all bigger (2.5 and 3.0) made less power. The Quad-4 and it’s derivatives would hang around in some form or another until the Ecotec would take its place years later.

GM being the big cumbersome company that it was in the ’90s was still offering more traditional setups in it’s other sporty compact cars like the Chevrolet Cavalier Z24 and Pontiac Sunbird GT. The Cavalier was perhaps symbolic of the old GM approach, needing a 2.8 liter V6 to make just 125 hp. The Sunbird GT was a bit more modern under the hood with a turbocharged 2 liter four making 165 hp. The technology behind the Quad-4 would eventually replace these old approaches to performance in compact applications.

1991 Oldsmobile Quad 442

The only problem of course was that initially the Quad-4 in all its variants was riddled with problems, causing many potential buyers to avoid Oldsmobile’s application altogether. Vibration and excessive oil use were just a few of the problems that plagued Quad-4 equipped Grand Ams, Sumerset Regals and Berettas too.

Problems aside, the Quad 442 came with Oldsmobile’s tasteful styling restraint. The interior was simple and straightforward with typical angular GM ergonomics. To Oldsmobile’s credit, it was less spaceship like compared to the Grand Am. The leather wrapped steering wheel and full instrumentation was one of the few clues the 4-4-2’s mission. It was attractive and never strayed too far from Oldsmobile’s conflicted image of stodgy near luxury and tech centric performance.

1990 Oldsmobile Quad 442 interior

Tasteful Restraint
The exterior performance cues were just as subtle, but more effective at conveying performance. The rear wing, larger wheels and a integrated front air dam at first glance might have been missed – like a real sleeper. There was also a small “Quad 442” label on the doors that in many instances was the only way to distinguish a sported up International Series coupe from the 442.

Of the three N-body cars using the Quad-4, the Calais was likely the least seen on the road as the Grand Am was the hot seller. There was no 442 sedan, but a less potent version of the Quad 4 with 160 hp was available in the International Series sedan. Besides its rims, it basically appeared like a four door version of the 442 coupe and offered more than adequate performance while leaning more towards luxury.

A Tough Bargain
Oldsmobile would drop the 4-4-2 designation altogether in later performance oriented cars. It would seem that the buyer who remembered the most powerful 4-4-2s from the late ’60s and early ’70s was just not interested in a front wheel drive compact pretending to be a muscle car. For the $13,000 plus asking price, the Calais 4-4-2 was more expensive than any Sentra or Civic, but squarely in Ford Mustang LX 5.0 territory. That car offered the closest thing to a classic muscle car formula you could get: a light body, big V8 up front and a live axle rear wheel drive setup. Needless to say it was the most popular performance car of it’s type in the dawning years of the Fox body Mustang.

In 1991, those who had no idea what a 442 was did not seem to care that it had more power than any Jetta, Celica or Prelude out there. They were more likely to choose those cars with their quieter more refined engines over the conflicted near luxury image that Oldsmobile projected. Regardless, the Quad 442 is a rare example of GM matching the imports and succeeding (for the most part).

Oldsmobile Calais Quad 442