1996 Oldsmobile Achieva problems
Owners have filed 116 complaints with NHTSA about the 1996 Oldsmobile Achieva. Electrical system is the most reported problem area, at 25% of complaints. Next are air bags (15%) and brakes (13%).
At a glance
- Complaints
- 116 filed with NHTSA
- Most reported
- Electrical system 25% of complaints
- Crashes and fires
- 12 and 5
- Injuries and deaths
- 23 and 3
- Typical mileage
- 81,000 miles 26 complaints with mileage
Source: NHTSA owner complaints
Where the complaints are
Share of this model year's complaints by the part of the car involved. One complaint can name more than one part, so the shares can add up to more than 100%.
When problems show up
View the numbers
| Mileage | Complaints |
|---|---|
| 0k to 20k miles | 1 |
| 20k to 40k miles | 1 |
| 40k to 60k miles | 5 |
| 60k to 80k miles | 6 |
| 80k to 100k miles | 2 |
| 100k to 120k miles | 2 |
| 120k to 140k miles | 4 |
| 140k to 160k miles | 4 |
| 160k to 180k miles | 1 |
| 180k to 200k miles | 0 |
| 200k+ miles | 0 |
What the data shows
Of the 26 complaints that include odometer readings, half describe a problem before roughly 81,000 miles.
Safety-related details: 12 complaints mention a crash; 5 complaints mention a fire; 23 injuries reported; 3 deaths reported. Its complaints are more severe on average than those of 93% of model years in our database.
Looking only at complaints filed within five years of the model year (so older and newer years are comparable), the 1996 ranks 3rd most-complained-about out of 7 model years of the Oldsmobile Achieva with enough data (55 complaints in that window). It is also covered by 4 safety recall campaigns.
What owners wrote
A few complaints as filed, shortened and with personal details removed. The first ones are among the most serious reports for this model year; the rest are typical.
Rear ended by another vehicle, lumbar support adjusted 75-85% to the front and my back got very strong stroke of lumbar support, resulted in herniated disk. Possible there is a design problem.
ABS brakes; failure on the ABS brake systems, causing the consumer to have an accident and the vehicle turned over.
Alternator,serp belt tensioner, serp belt, r& r alternator,r & r belt tensioner ... The tension acutally broke off and destroyed the other parts. How can this happen???? For only 43000 miles on this car thats ridiculous... Any help here/?
I bought my dads 1996 oldsmobile achieva, on about the 7-22-13, he had it at our mechanics car lot for sale and my trucks transmission started failing on me so I purchased my dads car, went to pick it up and now after 2 different mechanics and 5 weeks later they still can't get my car fixed so it will run,this is what it does,security light comes on and off flashing until it comes on fully all the time,dies and refuses to start, so I done some looking on the internet and found out that just about all of the…