
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 17, 1995                   TAG: 9505170086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT                                LENGTH: Short

GM'S BIG OL' CARS CHUG OFF INTO SUNSET

The big, heavy rear-wheel-drive cars that for decades have been symbols of American industrial might are coming to the end of the road.

The last Buick Roadmaster, Cadillac Fleetwood, Chevrolet Caprice and Impala SS models will roll out of a General Motors Corp. plant in Arlington, Texas, sometime next year, victims of changing automotive tastes, GM said Tuesday.

The move is the end of an era.

``These are the big, heavy-bodied cars that tamed the frontier of the highway,'' Michael Marsden, dean of arts and sciences at Northern Michigan University and a scholar of the automobile in American culture.

The Roadmaster, Fleetwood and Caprice are direct descendants of Detroit's iron of the '50s and '60s, when tail fins, acres of chrome and massive V-8 engines symbolized the strength of the nation and its carmakers. Buick used terms like ``carnivorous'' to describe the vertical bar grilles of its portholed Roadmasters of that era.

But most of today's buyers aren't looking for 2-ton road locomotives with soft suspensions and steering that isolates drivers from the road.

Chrysler Corp. stopped making its ``boats'' in the 1980s, and three Ford models are the only other comparable vehicles in the market.

by CNB