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Mint 1992 Oldsmobile Achieva SC For Sale

General Motors introduced the Oldsmobile Achieva for the 1992 model year, dropping in as a compact model and successor to the Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais. Offered as both a coupe and a sedan, the Oldsmobile Achieva nameplate wasn’t around for long, eventually ending production after the 1998 model year. Now, this surprisingly mint 1992 Oldsmobile Achieva SC is up for sale.

This particular model looks to be in pretty good shape, despite the fact it’s got more than 40,000 miles and nearly thirty years of age under its belt. The two-door exterior is covered in white paint, which shows quite nicely on the soft curves and rounded shapes characteristic of early ‘90s passenger cars. Black grille sections occupy the center of the front facia, bookending the Oldsmobile logo in the center, while in the rear, we find a spoiler mounted to the trunk. Under the trim body panels is a set of five-spoke alloy wheels with a silver finish.

The cabin is awash in grey upholstery, including application to the wide front bucket seats. The cloth treatment is repeated on the rear bench, while the door panels, dash, and steering wheel all look to be in pretty good condition. Standout features include air conditioning, a tilt steering wheel, cruise control, and a CD player, all quite nice for the era.

Motivation is sourced from a 2.3L DOHC Quad 4 engine. The four-banger equipped in the SC produces 180 horsepower, and comes with a Ram Air plenum and vortex valve in the throttle body. Output is routed exclusively to the front wheels by way of a three-speed automatic transmission.

This 1992 Oldsmobile Achieva SC shows just 43,899 miles on the clock, and now, it’s on offer from Motor Car Group for $11,990.

How much would you pay for this mint 1992 Oldsmobile SC? Let us know in the comments, and subscribe to GM Authority for more Oldsmobile news and around-the-clock GM news coverage.

Source: Motor Car Group

Jonathan is an automotive journalist based out of Southern California. He loves anything and everything on four wheels.

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Comments

  1. Classic

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  2. I had the 2.3L DOHC Quad 4 engine in my Oldsmobile. I traveled the autobahn of Europe in the car. Although the motor was noisy, it performed well at autobahn speeds. The motor was noisy enough that one co-worker thought the engine was a diesel.

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    1. I know what you mean. I got a Pontiac sun fire with a 2.2 eco tech, cheap 4 banger. It is a great motor but doesn’t touch the 180 hp of this car, but one of the “features” of the vehicle is a lack of insulation between the firewall. I can hear everything that motor is doing. It’s noisier on the inside than the outside haha. Fun car given its 5 spd manual.

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  3. I had the 92 SCX. 5 spd Fast 4 cyl

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  4. I miss this time era in many ways. Coupes with high revving sporty engines. Stick shift transmissions. Several body styles and engine choices. You could also order it the way you wanted it mostly. You could also order interior colors other than black or grey. I so miss all of these things.

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    1. Not a show car or really a collectible yet; just an unusually nice low mile old used car. Maybe 4 to 5k. Problem is, once you put a few miles on it it’s just another old car and pretty much worth nothing.

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  5. The quad 4 brings back bad memories.

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    1. Yes it does! In usual GM fashion they go and design a forward thinking powerful and more efficient 16V 4 cylinder twin cam engine and then leave out a vital ingredient- balance shafts! It took them until 1995 to correct this issue.

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  6. Lexan Headlights Remember that, plus a dual cam from GM. I liked that car. Really did. The Motor had dual balancing shafts too. Did they ever try to get more out of that engine? Probably not hey why try ti improve anything right? Nice post

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  7. What a nice looking car! I know there were other things that may not have been the “best” on this car, but I just think it’s so much better looking than most cars on the road today, and after all those years. Not sure it’s worth $12 grand, but it’s nice.

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  8. I have an 85 delta 88 Royale for sale. Excellent condition.

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  9. Nice little car, but it’s just an Achieva, not really collectible unless it had maybe 4-5k miles on it for that price. I think it’s worth about half that. But there’s a buyer out there for everything somewhere.

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    1. That car was special ordered with w 41 cams by corporate as a promo car (see the option sheets, I think it was sales item 37, and the prom had to be modified for the automatic which made it extremely rare, rarer than the scx because it was an automatic with the big 185HP cams as it idled borderline too radically for a luxury showroom car as it had to idle 200 RPM higher than the stock LD2. I will be posting pictures of the normal cams and the much longer duration and higher lift W41 cams that are in that car. I held those cams in my hands that are in that car when I put a head gasket on it 18 years ago when repairing an oil leak on the same.. Notice the higher RPM tach but not quite as high as SCX. It is an unconventional SC version which was anything but the most mundane version with low miles the 16″ wheels and lots of other options.
      and many other options. new it stickered for $16,000

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  10. I have an Achieva, I bought it(in very good condition) about 2 ½ years ago and it had 46K miles, for $1,800. Unfortunately, the engine has internal damage. Its a very nice car, it drove pretty smooth.

    This looks very nice and the miles are great but I think the asking price is a little too high.

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  11. The mothers in thoses cars were only good for around 50 thousand miles. I worked on dozens of those cars

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  12. Well, they got a lot wrong on this. the LD2 is the “low output” Q4, LG0 was the High output. Someone put a red painted “High Output” coil cover on this and got rich selling bad info.

    this is a $3500-4k car tops as there is nothing special about it other than being clean. No HO quad 4 ever cam with an auto.

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  13. The seat adjusters (new design) tavern door handles and encapsulated glass quarter windows were a big program in our Fisher Guide plant in New Jersey. The N-body vehicle components we made represented a significant percentage of our production volume. Raw materials in one end of the building, finished hardware out the other. The plant stood for over sixty years, employed untold thousands, built Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber aircraft during WWII and was the beating heart of the area.

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  14. I bet it could only muster a 15.x 1/4 mile with the quad 4. Lesser engines were most likely in the 16-17 second range. Nostalgia is better in memory than reality.

    My dad had an Achieva sedan. Not sure what engine but it was pretty gross. I think it was a v6, but idk. Let’s just say if you were driving one, it’s because you hadn’t Achieva’d much.

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  15. Nice, yes but it is an Achieva with a quad 4.

    I had a 1990 Buick Regal Limited Coupe with the 3800 engine.
    Midnight Blue with matching velour interior
    Loved the car and considering a Reatta of the same era as mine would be next to impossible to find.

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  16. The balance shaft dogged the engine down. The only reason GM put them in was the people complaining. If you want a hi-po motor, expect it to sound like one. Notice the balance shaft engine set no records.

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  17. I had a 1993 red in color with v-6 engine love the car, Then got a bad accident in 1994 had To scrap the car so i bought a 1994 sx white in color also with the V-6 le pr 4 year no problem at all Remind me of good souvenirs which they make oldsmobile Again i have on 5 olds. Over the years

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  18. I paid $100. for my 97′ with 157,000 miles on it. I acheiva’d 4, going on 5 years of use out of her. Hate the gold color but I still wouldn’t pay 11k. Paint may happen next yr. but that white sure looks great! Love my 100 bucker : )

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  19. An Achieva W41 5-speed is worth a penny but not the automatic equipped Q4 models.

    One tragic fact was the Q4 was supposed to have a 240 hp turbo version available in the early 90’s that never happened. An stock turbo Achieva, Grand Am or Beretta smoking a standard Vette would had been too funny.

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  20. I had a red 1992 SC and from what I remember, you are absolutely correct. To get the Quad 4 HO that had 180 hp you had to get the stick. If you got the auto it came with the standard Quad 4 with 160 hp. Probably why they are not putting the actual HP numbers in the ad, if they posted the HO numbers that would be outright fraud.

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  21. At the end of the day its a 92 Achieva. Worth 1k. Add 1k low mileage. Add 1k for condition. Its a 3k car. You drive this 20k more miles you would be lucky to get 1200 for it

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  22. I’d pay $1. I’ll never buy an American car again.

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  23. I’d take that in a minute. It’s really nice. I really liked these back in the day too.

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  24. A problem motor plus not a very good car even back in the day I would say you would be a sucker to buy it

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  25. I had a ’94 S sedan and it had glass headlights.
    Ugh, this was supposed to be a response to someone mentioning lexan headlights.

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  26. The white car you are looking at has had the SCX cams installed plain and simple and is the same engine mechanically as the w-41. The prom/ecu was different related to rpm etc. as in the SCX. The big cams made the automatic cars a little lopey (which is why gm did not offer the highest performance version in the automatic cars). Like any long duration high lift cam applications with crank fired ignitions they required extra-tuning. With the automatic cars the ecu had to be modified for it to run properly and that car runs well which is one reason it is not your run of the mill achieva SC.

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  27. In reference to the 1992 white achieva SC 2.3L quad4 automatic (the car that GM allegedly never made): in reviewing my above comment I must clarify something I was not aware of at the time 18 years ago when I had the cams out of that car for a series of top end repairs and maintenance. From the research I have done from the information from the file on the car when it was in my possession the cams would have to had been the longest duration highest lift W41 cams by the looks of the lobes(lobes were bigger and more round and the cams were heavier than normal because of the extra metal on them) were and its idle characteristics before it came to me and after etc. which would have made them the 190hp versions as opposed to the standard 165-180hp, which would have also been the reason the prom had to be rewritten for this automatic car to run and idle properly. The owner had apparently not driven the car much since this time likely due to having so many other vehicles.

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  28. I’m just wanting to browse 92 or 93 Oldsmobile Achieva’s for sale and I’m not finding anything. I know there’s not just thousands of them out on the road, but where can I browse?

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