customer complaints started dropping off after 1981, sales did too: diesels sold 43 percent less in 1982. The downward sales slide continued, not helped by stricter emissions standards - for the 1984 model year the diesel V8 was no longer offered in California for that very reason. General Motors had built a whole new plant for the V6 diesel, but sales thereof never broke 30,000 annually. Production ran at less than ten percent of capacity and much of the tooling had never even been unpacked by the time it was discontinued. In December 1984, General Motors announced the Oldsmobile Diesel engines would be discontinued during the 1985 model year. GM continued to offer Isuzu's 1.8-liter four cylinder diesel in the Chevrolet Chevette/Pontiac 1000, but after only 588 of these were sold in 1986, the company went on to abandon the diesel passenger car segment entirely for many decades. A class action lawsuit eventually forced General Motors to pay up to 80 percent of the costs of new engines. Used car price guides have always indicated much lower prices for diesel-engined cars and they remain undesirable in the collector's market. A large number of cars simply had their broken diesels replaced with conventional gasoline engines. The Oldsmobile diesel's reputation for unreliability and anemic performance damaged the North American passenger diesel market for the next 30 years. Although the engines were unreliable because of the head and problems with the ancillaries, the Oldsmobile diesels' strong blocks continue to see use in gasoline-powered race engines. See also List of GM engines References Diesel V6 engines V8 engines