1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser

This one is close to my heart because it's the exact car we had when I was kid. Imagine 2 adults and 4 kids driving from Iowa to San Diego and back, with camping gear. And yes, usually one us was stretched out all the way in the back. I guess they don't let kids do that any more.

These cars, and their Chevy, Pontiac and Buick equivalents used to be everywhere but virtually none survived. See the odd vent windows on the second set of doors? Well, those were there because the windows on those doors didn't go down. On a sweltering Iowa day, that was less fun.

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2022 Greenwood Car Show: General Motors

After a two-year absence, the Greenwood Car Show is back and the weather was perfect. I'm going to do all my favorites in a few posts. Here are the GM cars.

I think this 1969 Camaro SS is a "tribute" car. It's done up like the very rare Camaro SS 427 sold by Yenko Chevrolet, but I see a number of things about it that don't look authentic.

 

1969 Pontiac GTO.

 

1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS 396. This looks completely authentic.

1970 Oldmobile F-85 Cutlass Rallye 350. A budget muscle car featuring GM's forced air induction system (makes car go fast).

 

   

1970 Oldsmobile 442. Top of the line.

 

A rare 1957 Chevrolet delivery sedan.

 

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.

 

1967 Pontiac GTO.

   

1955 Chevrolet Bel Air

 

Probably the most desirable Sting Ray. 1963 split-window coupe with fuel injection.

 

1967 and 1968 Camaros. The convertibles have the Rally Sport package, denoted by the hidden headlights.

 

1962 Chevrolet Corvette.

 

1967 Pontiac GTO.

 

1969 Pontiac Firebird.

 

1954 Pontiac. Sometime around August 1954, GM built its very last straight-8 engine.

    

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No wonder the communists called us 'decadent' - 1958 Oldsmobile 88

They say form should follow function. Well, apparently General Motors of 1958 did not agree. The design of this Oldsmobile suggests they asked ten people where they should bolt chrome pieces from a Buck Rogers spaceship onto the car, then they accepted all ten suggestions.

Almost everything about GM's 1958 cars were unique to that year. Despite the designs being all-new for '58, GM immediately decided to scrap them and copy Chrysler's "Forward Look" cars. Those cars, lead by the '57 Plymouth, were lower, slimmer, and somewhat less tarted-up with a lot of ridiculous chrome doo-dads.

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America's best-selling car: 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass

The Olds Cutlass was the best-selling car in America 7 times between 1975 and 1983, despite being a fairly large, mid-price vehicle. This is the base model, not a Cutlass Supreme. The Supreme got a whole different grill and front-end treatment. It probably has a V-8, though it's possible it's got a Chevy inline-6. Beginning in 1977, the Buick V-6 became the most popular choice for these cars. This car is parked outside a garage full of collector cars in Interbay. Why is it being saved? Perhaps it was garaged-kept for many years and has very low miles.

 

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1967 Oldsmobile Toronado

Folks have forgotten what an admired brand name Oldsmobile used to be. It was for a long time the most popular mid-price car brand in America, with the Olds Cutlass frequently the country's best-selling car. Olds was also an industry leader in innovation: the first car with an automatic transmission (1940), the first car, along with Cadillac with a high-compression V-8 engine (1949) and the first mass-production car with front-wheel drive. That last car was the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.

There's a long list of technical innovations created just for this car. I'm not going to go over them all, but take a look here. The early Toronados did have an Achilles' Heel - disc brakes were not available until 1967, and then only as an option. Depending on drum brakes to stop a 4,500 pound car with the engine and transmission up front is asking for trouble, and anyone restoring one of these cars includes upgraded brakes. 

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1965 Oldsmobile F-85

A favorite of mine, people tend to think of this as the Cutlass. But in these years, Cutlass was not a model, but an "appearance package." Thus it's possible to find for example the legendary 442 performance package on an F-85 fixed pillar coupe without the Cutlass package, as well as on the more common F-85 Cutlass Holiday hardtop.

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1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 convertible

A dying breed: Chrysler built its last convertible in 1971; Ford in 1973. GM held on longer, building about 25,000 copies per year of the car pictured through 1975. It was sold as the Chevy Caprice, Olds 88, Pontiac Grand Ville and Buick Le Sabre. The Cadillac Eldorado convertible held on until '76.

Imported convertibles faded away too. MG and Triumph went of out business. Fiat gave up on the US. Regulation killed the VW Beetle convertible. The only imported convertibles to hang on in significant numbers were the VW Rabbit and Alfra Romeo Spider.

By the mid-80s, American convertibles were back in the form of the Chrysler LeBaron and Ford Mustang. Unfortunately, those cars were built as coupes and then sent to third-party builders who cut off the tops and transformed them into open-top models. In other words, they were pretty much junk despite costing about twice as much as their hardtop brothers.

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1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 convertible

If this car is authentic it's one of only 436 Cutlass 442 convertibles made in 1964. That was the year that GM approved engines larger than 330 cubic inches for mid-size cars. Pontiac immediately introduced the GTO and Chevy the Chevelle Super Sport, while Buick followed up with the Skylark Gran Sport in 1965. For Oldsmobile, it was the "4-4-2", named for the original car's four-barrel carburetor, four-speed manual transmission, and dual exhausts. Love that air cleaner!

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Magnolia Car Show: 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass SX convertible

I'm a big fan of the Cutlass, but I had never heard of the SX before I saw this one. Made only in 1970 and 1971, it was GM's response to rising insurance rates for muscle cars. Normally, the VIN numbers of cars include a digit that varies according to the engine code (size of the engine).

From Hemmings: "In 1970, Oldsmobile blew one right past the insurance industry by stuffing its torque-monster 455-cu.in. V-8 into a Cutlass Supreme SX. By not giving it a unique VIN, new car buyers in 1970 and 1971 avoided paying increasingly high insurance premiums." "Total production numbers were low, with 9,374 hardtops and convertibles built. The rarest Cutlass Supreme SX was a 1971 convertible; just 357 were made."

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1962 Oldsmobile Cutlass F-85

Welcome to the premier post of Seattle's Old Cars. On this blog I'll be talking about the amazing old vehicles one can see in a city that has never seen road salt and that adopted an interest in imported cars a little sooner than most of America.

My special thanks to other web sites that inspired me: Seattle's Parked Cars, Portland's Old Parked Cars and Jalopnik.com's Down on the Street series.

We'll start with a favorite of mine, this 1962 Oldsmobile Cutlass F-85 2-door hardtop. The Olds F-85 first made its appearance in 1961, along with the very similar Pontiac Tempest and Buick Special. It was different from anything buyers had seen before, in that it was a front-engine, rear-drive car with a rear-mounted transaxle in place of a front-mounted transmission.

The '62 Cutlass was also the first mass-produced car offered with a turbocharger. Known as the Jetfire engine, it produced 215 HP from an engine of only 215 c.i.. The turbocharger required its own liquid-fueled cooling system. According to an article on ebay stories blog, the cooling system required, "a combination of methyl alcohol and distilled water, and was dubbed "Turbo-Rocket Fluid" by the marketing geniuses at Olds.  The fluid was actually used to cool the intake charge, and was instrumental to the proper working of the turbo-charger. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for collectors, as the case may be), many consumers were unaware that they needed to keep the resevoir filled with fluid, leading to both mechanical problems with the car, as well as some cars being retrofitted with a conventional carburetor and manifold". A '62 Cutlass with Jetfire engine in good condition sold at auction for $42,100 in 2014.

The Cutlass pictured appears to be largely original, aside from the rims and the addition of a 4-speed transmission. In the ten years I've lived in Seattle, I believe that, alas, it has not moved from this spot.

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