I love these things and other Quad 4 Olds/GM products of the time. I remember being a kid and going with my older cousin to buy an Achieva 4-door with the Quad 4 and a 5-speed manual brand new, and they had a video running on a loop in the showroom of Quad 4 and Indy stuff racing around, including the Olds Aerotech concept car. Definitely left an impression on me!They were really cool cars at the time, and still are.
I nearly scooped a Quad 442 last year that showed up to the local junkyard complete, except someone removed the sunroof glass and left it off, which got the whole interior drenched with standing water after a rain storm. 
mtn said:
David S. Wallens said:
JG was driving this car when we met. :)
Tell us more about your first date, we want to hear about it!
It was a dark and stormy night....
Actually, JG, did we first meet at the Runoffs or was it at the Divisional/Tour/whatever at Lakewood?
David S. Wallens said:
Actually, JG, did we first meet at the Runoffs or was it at the Divisional/Tour/whatever at Lakewood?
Pretty sure it was that Lakewood event, which may have just been a local. I was on my way home from, I think, the Harrisburg Pro Solo and the ATL event was the following weekend.
I'll admit that the NVH was the first thing I noticed about the Quad 4 Achieva when we left the dealer on the one my folks got when I was 13. It was the S maybe? So you could get I think 4 engines, the 160HP/180TQ Quad 4, the 180HP/160TQ Quad 4, the W41 (they had a picture of one racing in the brochure) and a V6 -- a 3.1 probably.
I feel like back in the day a PROM swap could get you a 7800rpm redline and another 10hp but my memory may be failing me.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
APEowner said:
The Quad 4 was a great engine.
Although not a particularly smooth one, IIRC? 2.3L 4-banger without balance shafts.
Balance shafts are for closers.
bobzilla said:
In reply to Colin Wood :
190HP 7800rpm 2.3 in 1991. GM was making high hp high revving chain driven DOHC engines better than honda.... fight me.
Nope.
Now if someone at GM could have said "make this the engine in the base model also".
Noddaz said:
bobzilla said:
In reply to Colin Wood :
190HP 7800rpm 2.3 in 1991. GM was making high hp high revving chain driven DOHC engines better than honda.... fight me.
Nope.
Now if someone at GM could have said "make this the engine in the base model also".
Or "now lets make a decent platform to put this in".
bobzilla said:
In reply to Colin Wood :
190HP 7800rpm 2.3 in 1991. GM was making high hp high revving chain driven DOHC engines better than honda.... fight me.
TIL the Achieva SCX was 190hp and weighed only 2590lbs. In-line with Civic Si, Fiesta ST, Sentra SE-R Spec V, Ion Redline/Cobalt SS and others in that category.
bobzilla said:
Noddaz said:
bobzilla said:
In reply to Colin Wood :
190HP 7800rpm 2.3 in 1991. GM was making high hp high revving chain driven DOHC engines better than honda.... fight me.
Nope.
Now if someone at GM could have said "make this the engine in the base model also".
Or "now lets make a decent platform to put this in".
"So we can cancel it after a year of production and zero marketing effort"
Ironically the Twin Dual Cam got balance shafts and did become the base engine, and then got updated into/replaced by the Ecotec, which was GM's Red Hot.
I'm glad to see these cars finally getting some recognition. Jay Leno did a piece on them recently.
I have had a red 1992 SCX stored in my garage since 2008 hoping it would eventually become a collectible. Are we finally getting to that point? I'm ready to sell it. My wife wants her garage back.
kanaric
SuperDork
7/10/23 6:49 p.m.
IDK but cars like this have no nostalgic appeal to me lol. Like cool you have an almost 200hp engine that revs well, but you put it in cars like this that my 70 year old great uncle bought. It's pretty easy to see why GM never really had a name in the sport compact scene that anyone I knew respected.
In high school I probably could have got this for ultra-cheap, but a 1g Eclipse/Talon wasn't expensive then either.
I looked it up and this and an Eagle Talon TSi like what my mom had was the same price when new and it looks like a space ship compared to this. I wonder what other cars I could have got for ~$16.5k back then?
In reply to kanaric :
Back then, about $16k could buy you anything. I want to say that sticker on my SE-R was $12k or $14k. (Someone here can look it up.)
The Jay Leno piece on the 442 is great. That Quad4 sounds and looks great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeCN13rOcwM
Growing up I always thought of N/W-bodies and K-cars as boring looking and terrible driving vehicles. Now looking back, I now appreciate the styling, at least they weren't just jelly bean blobs rolling down the road like most newer vehicles.
Whoever was gassing up the 3.4L LQ1 "x-engine" obviously never had to change a belt on one or do any kind of maintenance on that horribly packaged powerplant.
DirtyBird222 said:
The Jay Leno piece on the 442 is great. That Quad4 sounds and looks great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeCN13rOcwM
Growing up I always thought of N/W-bodies and K-cars as boring looking and terrible driving vehicles. Now looking back, I now appreciate the styling, at least they weren't just jelly bean blobs rolling down the road like most newer vehicles.
Whoever was gassing up the 3.4L LQ1 "x-engine" obviously never had to change a belt on one or do any kind of maintenance on that horribly packaged powerplant.
You can literally do a belt on a 3.4 in five minutes.
gearheadmb said:
My friend had a base model in college. We called it the "Under-achieva".
JG called his the "over-achieva".
jstein77 said:
gearheadmb said:
My friend had a base model in college. We called it the "Under-achieva".
JG called his the "over-achieva".
Totally was. And from an era when 14s were the hot setup so you could get the “good” tires.
Warlock
New Reader
12/2/23 9:49 p.m.
bobzilla said:
EDIT: in 1991 Honda was struggling to make 150hp from their 2.0L DOHC B20. It wouldn't be until the mid 90's that honda was making the same power but less torque with the B18C5
Bah. By mid-1991, Honda was making 190 hp from the DOHC H22A, which went into the 4th generation Preludes, built by the thousands. Alas, those weren't imported to the U.S. for another year (late 1992...MY93), so the Preludes that competed in World Challenge against the Achieva from '92 to '96 were basically production 160-hp non-VETC H23A-equipped cars that came to the U.S. in late 1991 (MY92)...also built in the thousands. The win tally for four years of competition was about even...15 for the Achieva to 17 for the Prelude.
wspohn
UltraDork
12/3/23 1:07 p.m.
Just a note on the LQ1 engine that was mentioned. neat package but not fully developed nor completely reliable. Some of the Fiero guys played around with them. At 210 bhp the easier way to bet that was to use a 90 deg. V6 like the 3.8 or the slightly later 3.9 LZ9 (GTP) engines. I have always had chain drive DOHC engines in other cars and wouldn't particularly want a belt drive V6 especially when the belt needs changing and that is a fair bit of work (every 50-60,000 miles)
David S. Wallens said:
In reply to kanaric :
Back then, about $16k could buy you anything. I want to say that sticker on my SE-R was $12k or $14k. (Someone here can look it up.)


The actual window sticker from my 1991 Sentra SE-R. The car and the dealership are long gone but I still have all my paperwork.
wspohn said:
Just a note on the LQ1 engine that was mentioned. neat package but not fully developed nor completely reliable. Some of the Fiero guys played around with them. At 210 bhp the easier way to bet that was to use a 90 deg. V6 like the 3.8 or the slightly later 3.9 LZ9 (GTP) engines. I have always had chain drive DOHC engines in other cars and wouldn't particularly want a belt drive V6 especially when the belt needs changing and that is a fair bit of work (every 50-60,000 miles)
I would much prefer to do the belt on a Honda V6 than chains on a GM, Ford, Nissan, or Toyota V6. Especially the Toyota, step one after the engine is on a stand is remove oil pan.
In reply to bobzilla :
Yes, I had the prom swap and LSD for my 93 SCX from Chuck Hemmingson Racing personally installed at his shop. Yes, it did raise to 7800 ( at your own risk) and allegedly another 15-20 HP. Hemmingson (Chuck) or the Hacker Bros were THE ones to see about modding the W41, particularly the Achieva and Calais .
In reply to Feedyurhed :
I have all my paperwork, too. Just need to put my hands on it.
How was your car equipped? Mine was fairly stripped: no sunroof, no radio.
I've only ever seen two surviving C41 cars in 15 years of searching. One was a retired racecar out of Oklahoma that was a daily driver for the sellers wife. The other one was much more recent and was for sale by a dealership who I believe has had it from new. It looked like it was never raced and appeared to be in nearly mint condition. They wanted a lot of money for it.