I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)

omarman

A friend in HS drove a '70 Olds 442 W-30 which looked just like the one in the Dr. Olds ad. Good times.

fintail

stickguy

I figured you would get the joke.

fintail

I suspect 1980 wasn't the apex of the brand. But to be fair, a properly equipped 88 or 98 was maybe one of the better choices that year. Or get a diesel just for the laughs.

andre1969

One bright spot for Olds in 1980 was replacing the Aeroback Cutlass Salon sedan with the more formal notchback style. For 1979, Cutlass sedan sales were as follows:

Salon sedan: 20,266
Salon Brougham sedan: 18,714
Total: 38,980

For 1980, it was:
Cutlass sedan: 36,923
Cutlass LS sedan: 86,868
Cutlass Supreme Brougham sedan: 52,762
Total: 176,553

My guess is most of them were equipped with Buick 231s and Olds 260's, but the Chevy 305-4bbl, with 155 hp, was an option. They also threw a 160-170 (depending on what source you believe the most) hp Olds 350-4bbl into a handful of Cutlass Supreme coupes and called it the W30. I guess that, along with the Century/Regal turbos, and the Cordoba/Mirada with the copcar 360, were about as close as you could get to a "musclecar" by that time.

uplanderguy

In hindsight, I wouldn't mind an aeroback coupe '78 or '79 Cutlass Salon Brougham in that deep maroon color, just because you don't see them now.

Maybe someone else mentioned this, but with all the Olds talk lately remember that an Olds dealer was pretty central to the movie "Fargo".

uplanderguy

At a smallish (40-45 cars) local car show this morning, saw a Corvair that just grabbed me--an Artesian Turquoise (dark) '66 Monza convertible with the light aqua interior; 110 with Powerglide and the factory screw-on wire wheelcovers. Really striking, and the owner said it's really fun to drive too.

I'm going to my hometown (Greenville, PA) Heritage Days car show next Saturday July 7--they've had 700 cars in past years. My friend is still working on some stuff on my Studebaker but I sure hope to be able to drive it over. Typically after work on an old car, I like to drive it a few miles here and there before climbing in it and driving it 70 miles each way, but I'll have to do whatever I have to do, LOL.

tjc78

stickguy said:

I figured you would get the joke.

Lol ... I didn’t 

berri

Didn't the mayor in Animal House own an Oldsmobile dealership too

ab348

The Great Race ( https://www.greatrace.com/ ) came to town today. I was following the progress with the daily reports on their website so I wanted to track down the cars. That was instantly a problem: all they will reveal publicly each day is the start point and the end point with no info on the routing. I get it, they don't want delays and interference from overzealous fans, but there must be a way to at least give some hints of good vantage points.

The finish point here is a parking lot attached to a performance stage right on the harbour. But since this is Canada Day weekend, they have the lot closed for those festivities along with space for the tour cars. There is little parking nearby so you are looking at walking at least a few blocks and then making the rounds of the cars on concrete. With my pair of bad knees that wasn't going to happen so I sought them out on the way. Knowing where they were coming from and knowing they use secondary roads, I knew there were really only a couple of ways that they could get here. I spent over 2 hours trying to track them down with no success. I blame the organizers again somewhat since they only give about a 2 hour window of when they are expected to arrive. I really do think they need to do more at the venues they are stopping at to engage the public.

Finally I was ready to throw in the towel and as I headed home, I saw them - one block from my house! I grabbed a few pics. Missed the early pack of cars though. I wish the organizers would just make it easier to be a spectator.






^^^ This was a Japanese crew in a RHD Nissan Gloria. They were followed by 2 guys in a RHD Nissan Figaro with a banner on it saying "Japanese Press"

ab348

More pics:

ab348

Still more:

ab348

Last bunch:

Mr_Shiftright

Yes, although in the parade scene, where the Mayor is supposed to have provided "free Oldsmobile convertibles", all the cars are Buicks and Cadillacs.

Italian film star Cesare Danova played Mayor DePasto. He also appeared in Cleopatra and Scorsese's Mean Streets and on TV's The Rifleman. Interesting life story.

stickguy

I love the blues mobile. The big speaker is a nice touch.

benjaminh

@ab348 Thanks for the pix!

fintail

Cool pics from the race, if a Pagoda is eligible a fintail will be too, but I don't know if my car would appreciate such a long drive.

Speaking of 1980 Olds, anyone remember this car?



The seller had it on ebay for what seemed like years, with somewhat curt ad copy, making him look like the pedantic type who may not be a fun seller. Not sure whatever happened to it, the car had a reserve, which I suspect was huge. Nice looking car though, even with the Buick wheels - a Caddy with less flamboyance.

explorerx4

@ab348,
Great pics. I thought the black sedan was an Ambassador until I scrolled back up and saw your comment.
Your city places random street hockey goals along the streets?

ab348

I do recall that 98. The ads were quite off-putting. I used to know the reserve bit cannot recall it now.

@explorerx4 - that was tree protection from the construction underway in the background!

benjaminh

A few years ago I saw a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado in rough but seemingly running shape, and thought "what a shame." But here's a nice looking one imho that, when adjusting for inflation, costs less than when it was new. Seems loaded with most of the available options....

https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars/1966/oldsmobile/toronado/100967391








"Have a look at this beautifully restored 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado California car. This was Oldsmobile's luxury vehicle for 1966 and it shows in the amount of details in the overall general design of the vehicle. This Toronado is powered by a 425 cubic inch V8 Super Rocket engine with a four barrel Rochester-Quadrajet carburetor and is connected to a three speed automatic transmission. Other features under the hood include power steering, air conditioning, and original CA smog pump. This factory style interior on the Toronado is in excellent condition with all gauges and switches being in working condition and comes in its correct Dubonnet color. The front and rear Strato seats have been reupholstered and feel as good as they look. Other interior features include 6-way power seats, power windows, power antenna, remote driver side mirror, AM/FM wonder bar radio, and dual interior door handles. The exterior on this vehicle is short of stunning with its correct Dubonnet paint that is in excellent condition and with subtle details such as its hide-away headlights, chrome bumpers, and exterior moldings. This car sits on its original factory wheels that are wrapped in 235/75/15 Cooper Trendsetter SE tires that are stopped by power drum brakes all the way around. Take this sweet ride home and enjoy driving around in style with loved ones or take it to car shows."

ab348

That's a really nice Toro, but I don't know any that bring that kind of money.

omarman

I remember that car. And the seller copy included an explanation that his price reflected a return on his "investment."

explorerx4

Watched an episode of The Saint. The bad guys drove guess what? A fintail.

uplanderguy

ab348, that white Studebaker Hawk is a favorite model of mine (and others)--a '56 Sky Hawk. Rarer than the Golden Hawk that year. Hardtop body style, no fins, Stude V8 instead of Packard. My brother-in-law has had one for 40 years but it needs everything. Thanks for sharing those pics.

uplanderguy

RE.: That Toronado--for the longest time, I thought the styling was odd for such a large car. They've grown on me. I was thinking that color was a '67 GM color but that car is definitely a '66. It always blew me away as a kid to look inside one (or a '67 or later Eldorado) and see just how completely flat the floor was.

uplanderguy

Too lazy to look--Olds fans--could an '80 Ninety-Eight be bought new with the Super Stock wheels? (I think Olds called them that)--seems to me that some were color-keyed and others were silver/gray.

Mr_Shiftright

ab348 said:

That's a really nice Toro, but I don't know any that bring that kind of money.

$35K is a home run price and then some---but it does look like a very nice piece. I suppose $35K is a good starting point for negotiation. I would think the high $20Ks is the real money here.

I really like the early Toros, having owned one. I was very impressed with this car. Gas mileage was, of course, beyond atrocious, but with snow tires and chains this thing was utterly unstoppable in winter, and a very nice highway cruiser in finer weather. As for handling, well, you could muscle it through a turn at a good pace if you knew what you were doing.

This was GM engineering at its peak. Some cars become "classics" because they were just...dominant over their peers. This could be one of them someday.

omarman

The original Olds SS II wheels were painted dark gray and the SS III wheels were painted the "lower" body color. I was able to find a 1980 brochure with wheels and wheel cover options for the Delta 88.

fintail

This looks like a "type A" hubcap in action:



Someone must know the movie this is from

Speaking of adjusted for inflation, I will buy any Ferrari, Porsche, or Seattle area house at its 1966 price, adjusted for inflation

fintail

i don't know if a fintail was ever driven by a good guy in a movie.

explorerx4 said:

Watched an episode of The Saint. The bad guys drove guess what? A fintail.

Mr_Shiftright

In fact, Mercedes stopped providing cars for movies because of this image problem.

ab348

Olds 98 wheels use a 5x5" bolt pattern in this era vs a 5x4.75" pattern for the 88 wheels, so those SS wheels in the brochure will not fit. All you could get were 2 varieties of disc wheel covers, neither very attractive, or wire covers. That's why this guy went to the Buick wheels, which were available in a 5x5" pattern.

It took Olds another 10 years to come up with a road wheel to fit that pattern, shown as #7 here:

fintail

Two especially memorable (for me) bad guy fintails are the one in the underrated "On Her Majesty's Secret Service":




And Rock Hudson's car in the weird "Pretty Maids all in a Row":



IMCDB lists a few fintails for The Saint, including one that really resembles my car (I wager this is a bad guy car):



This is probably the one seen by explorerx4, as it and a similar car were in many episodes per imcdb:



That late Custom Cruiser is sharp on those wheels, same for the Buick counterpart which also could be had with similar wheels. I remember those were a pretty upmarket car when new.

Speaking of Olds hubcaps, here's a great shot of an 81 model from one of my favorite movies:

tjc78

fintail said:

Two especially memorable (for me) bad guy fintails are the one in the underrated "On Her Majesty's Secret Service": And Rock Hudson's car in the weird "Pretty Maids all in a Row": IMCDB lists a few fintails for The Saint, including one that really resembles my car (I wager this is a bad guy car): This is probably the one seen by explorerx4, as it and a similar car were in many episodes per imcdb: That late Custom Cruiser is sharp on those wheels, same for the Buick counterpart which also could be had with similar wheels. I remember those were a pretty upmarket car when new. Speaking of Olds hubcaps, here's a great shot of an 81 model from one of my favorite movies:

They’re here.....

ab348

I'm guessing none of the guys in those Fintails ever got away in the obligatory chase scenes.

Re. the Olds big-car wheels - the odd thing is that in the early to mid '70s they did offer a rally wheel for the big cars in the 5x5" pattern. It was called a polycast wheel and known officially as the SS IV. I guess they figured it was too sporty looking for a later 98 or Custom Cruiser.

stickguy

someone that lives at an apartment complex near me has an Alfa 164L that parks out near the road. White with beige lower panels. Have not seen close up, but from driving by looks clean. Big car though.

fintail

The OHMSS car is rolled in a fun ice racing chase sequence where it is battling a Cougar, and catches on fire immediately - note to self: don't roll the fintail. The Pretty Maids car is driven off a pier.

ab348 said:

I'm guessing none of the guys in those Fintails ever got away in the obligatory chase scenes.

fintail

Interestingly cast car, too, from a time before SUVs and CUVs, where something like that would sell to a relatively successful suburban family.

You may recall in Poltergeist II, it magically becomes a 1977 model, and is mangled in scene where it is attacked by tools in a garage:

tjc78 said:

They’re here.....

ab348

fintail said:

This looks like a "type A" hubcap in action:

Not quite, the car shown is a '79 I believe, so the wheel covers were different from '80 and up. When I had my '78 Delta it came with a set of awful aftermarket plastic wire wheel covers. They were intolerable so I hit the junkyards looking for a set of correct wheel covers. I could not find any at first but the "type A" ones were common so I got a set of them in the interim. I called them "space discs" because they were flat with just a slight crown and looked like a flying saucer. Later on I got a set of the proper type, which had a concave section just inside the lip and then a raised center. Most '79 98s seemed to get the wire disc option but a few had the style your pic showed:



If you recall, the GM B and C-bodies got a refresh for 1980 that was designed to reduce weight and improve efficiency. This carried over to the wheel covers. The space discs were very light and were flexible enough that they had a tendency to fly off the rim, which is probably why they were so easy to find in junkyards. The earlier ones were twice as heavy, much more substantial, and stayed put.

omarman

Spotted a 72-ish non-stock red Maverick Grabber with the "dual dome" hood and sport lamps. I was riding (up front) with an ambulance driver on the north side of town. She didn't see the little Maverick until I pointed it out. She's a Mustang fan (new gen) and not familiar with the Maverick/Comet from that era. But she was gushing "Wow!" after we passed it.

"Wow," is not the usual thing I heard back in the day when passing a Maverick back in the day. More like "woof!"
edit to add: what is that movie with the delta 88?

fintail

Interesting, I didn't think they'd go as far as to redesign the hubcaps. Funny you mention their tendency to detach themselves, too, as I am pretty sure I recall a scene where a hubcap flies off that pictured 79 model.

Hint: "auto-mo-beeeel?".

ab348 said:

fintail said:

This looks like a "type A" hubcap in action:

Not quite, the car shown is a '79 I believe, so the wheel covers were different from '80 and up. When I had my '78 Delta it came with a set of awful aftermarket plastic wire wheel covers. They were intolerable so I hit the junkyards looking for a set of correct wheel covers. I could not find any at first but the "type A" ones were common so I got a set of them in the interim. I called them "space discs" because they were flat with just a slight crown and looked like a flying saucer. Later on I got a set of the proper type, which had a concave section just inside the lip and then a raised center. Most '79 98s seemed to get the wire disc option but a few had the style your pic showed:

If you recall, the GM B and C-bodies got a refresh for 1980 that was designed to reduce weight and improve efficiency. This carried over to the wheel covers. The space discs were very light and were flexible enough that they had a tendency to fly off the rim, which is probably why they were so easy to find in junkyards. The earlier ones were twice as heavy, much more substantial, and stayed put.

uplanderguy

I remember seeing some '71-72 Delta 88 Royales with those wheels in ab348's post a few up from here. That's a nice-looking wheel I think.

andre1969

ab348 said:

Olds 98 wheels use a 5x5" bolt pattern in this era vs a 5x4.75" pattern for the 88 wheels, so those SS wheels in the brochure will not fit. All you could get were 2 varieties of disc wheel covers, neither very attractive, or wire covers. That's why this guy went to the Buick wheels, which were available in a 5x5" pattern.

It took Olds another 10 years to come up with a road wheel to fit that pattern, shown as #7 here:

And, in my opinion at least, that's not really an "Olds" pattern...they cribbed it from Buick, and just slapped an Olds center cap on it!

Until you had told me a few years back, AB348, I didn't realize that the C-bodies, and B-wagons, used the 5-on-5 bolt pattern. I had figured they all went to 4.75-on-5 when they downsized. Back when I had my grandmother's '85 LeSabre, I had found a pair of those Electra/wagon road wheels for sale at one of the Carlisle, PA, swap meets, and had thought about buying them. Guess it's a good thing I didn't!

As for that Olds Rally wheel that they used on the Delta 88's, I never liked the way the center cap was bloated up so much that it hid the lugs. I always wondered why they did that? On my '82 Cutlass Supreme, which used the 14" Rally wheels, it had a more normal-sized center cap. You could get the Rally on the '73-77 Cutlass, and I'm sure that was a 15", in some years at least...yet I never saw those with the over-sized center cap.

I guess though, if it's such a visual annoyance, I could always just change the center cap?

omarman

ab348 said:

I'm guessing none of the guys in those Fintails ever got away in the obligatory chase scenes.

Re. the Olds big-car wheels - the odd thing is that in the early to mid '70s they did offer a rally wheel for the big cars in the 5x5" pattern. It was called a polycast wheel and known officially as the SS IV. I guess they figured it was too sporty looking for a later 98 or Custom Cruiser.

Ha! The polycast wheel! My old '72 Delta 88 hardtop coupe came with those wheels and a 455 Rocket V8. Unfortunately rust was eventually able to stop that battle cruiser when nothing else could.

fintail

I swear our Tempo had "polycast" wheels, where the surface seemed almost kind of porous.

The 1979 88 is from "Sixteen Candles", the car destroyed by Long Duk Dong.

benjaminh

Some pages from the Buick brochure for 1905....

benjaminh

By 1910 Buick had become one of the cornerstones of General Motors. As they note in the brochure for this year, production had increased in five years from less than a thousand a year to about 40,000. As we know, even with all the changes, there are still some things about an internal combustion engine that are similar more than a century later....

andre1969

omarman said:

ab348 said:

I'm guessing none of the guys in those Fintails ever got away in the obligatory chase scenes.

Re. the Olds big-car wheels - the odd thing is that in the early to mid '70s they did offer a rally wheel for the big cars in the 5x5" pattern. It was called a polycast wheel and known officially as the SS IV. I guess they figured it was too sporty looking for a later 98 or Custom Cruiser.

Ha! The polycast wheel! My old '72 Delta 88 hardtop coupe came with those wheels and a 455 Rocket V8. Unfortunately rust was eventually able to stop that battle cruiser when nothing else could.

That must have been a rare beast, equipped that way. I always thought it was interesting, that it was somewhat common to see '71-76 Electras, LeSabres, and wagons, as well as the downsized RWD Electras and wagons, with some kind of sport wheel (Magnum in the early years, and that General Lee-reminiscent alloy in later years), but with Olds anything like that was almost non-existent. Seemed like it was hubcaps or wire wheels.

Nowadays, we tend to think of them as the same market...gargantuan, upper-price cars, but at the time, they probably were marketed to a different audience. I remember reading, awhile back, that a Buick Electra was the perfect car for an investment banker...not too conservative, not too flashy or risky. Supposedly, a Ninety-Eight meant you were too conservative, and wouldn't make your client enough money. A New Yorker or Imperial meant you were too willing to take risks, and might lose it all. A Cadillac meant you were making more money for yourself than your client...and showing off about it. And a Lincoln meant that you aspired to be the Cadillac guy, but weren't as good as fooling people into becoming your client. But, an Electra said you were trustworthy, successful, and a good risk.

I'd imagine that Delta was a fun ride, too, with that 455. I've seen old road tests of the '72 Centurion with a 455, and the occasional Caprice with the 454, and they were good for 0-60 in the 8-9 second range. Might be slow by today's standards, but the way those cars pulled strong the second you stomped it and threw you back in your seat was still good for a thrill or two.

benjaminh

1914 is the first use I've seen of this slogan: "When better automobiles are built, Buick will build them":

benjaminh

1918....