By the time the Aurora was released, Oldsmobile was in need of a comeback as annual sales had fallen from a record high of 1,066,122 in 1985 to just 402,936 in 1993. Oldsmobile was competing for buyers against Japanese luxury imports from Acura, Infiniti and Lexus who offered similar products but benefited from a well earned durability and reliability reputation. As a symbol of its clean break from other cars in the lineup, the Aurora bore no Oldsmobile badging or script save for the radio-CD-cassette deck and engine cover. Instead, a new emblem consisting of a stylized "A" was used, foreshadowing a similar restyling of Oldsmobile's corporate "rocket" emblem for 1997.