Can it really be 15 years since the last Oldsmobile rolled off the line? April 29, 2004, America's oldest car maker ended production. Back in the mid-Seventies, the Oldsmobile Cutlass was the #1 best-selling car in the country. Now a generation of Americans has grown up without experiencing a new Olds.
Let's hear about your Toronado, your Hurst Olds, your Quad Four, Bravada or even your Vista Cruiser.
Who has some merry Oldsmobile memories to share?
The car I basically learned to drive on and drove through high school. Upon hearing that it had a 305 small block, I was That Kid who told everyone it had a Corvette engine.
I've owned a lot of junk through the years, but the only car I'd kinda like back is a 66 Delta 88 two door hardtop. It was 14 years old when I bought it, and had left Regina for Arizona for the first ten years of it's life. Bucket seats, console, floor shift, 425 cubic inch Ultra High Compression Super Rocket V8. Use premium fuel only, it said on the air cleaner lid. Burned a bunch of oil, but it would still run 5500 rpm on top gear.
One really valuable lesson I learned was the importance of camshaft selection. I rebuilt it because of the huge clouds of oil smoke. I installed a jobber cam, and it took all the joy out of that engine. I also think I might have gotten away with doing the heads, because all the valve seals were blocking the oil drainback holes in the corners of the heads...
I rode to Washington DC in the back seat of a brand new 68 Delta 88. After Dad died, Mom traded it on a 2 door 71 Cutlass S with a gold block 350, which then became 4 door Cutlass Supremes later.
They were great cars for the day. I still fight desire/logic when I see a early 70s Cutlass for sale.
I will probably always bleed a little Oldsmobile gold.
I had a $400 see through quarter panel edition 83 custom cruiser that smoked for 30 minutes every morning. I drove it for 6 months then sold it for $400.
The wife had a 77 Cutlass Supreme that really liked. Wife thought it was time to have babies, so it went away for a 79 4 door Honda Accord. Now that was a great car.
My father still talks fondly about the time he bought a used 1977 Buick Regal coupe in metallic blue with a white interior and white Landau top. Then he and his buddy hucked the 231 V6 in the dumpster and dropped in an ultra high-compression 4-barrel Oldsmobile 455 out of a scrapyard 1969 Delta 88 and left the car the same cosmetically. Apparently it was an unholy burnout machine and a helluva sleeper.
I also remember him having a 1989 Cutlass Ciera that he picked up for like $1100 and drove until it had 280k miles on it. Then we sold it to a guy who ran it in a demo derby and the engine (2.8L V6) and trans were still intact and operating after the derby. The guy proceeded to pull the engine and transmission and drop them in another car. When he got it, it had a plugged up catalytic converter, so he had punched the guts out of it and for reasons unknown that car would always skip/stumble/run on 4 cylinders when started up cold. So he had it idling at the campsite and it was skipping and loaded that converter shell up with unburnt fuel, then all 6 cylinders lit off and it blew that converter apart like a bomb, literally pieces flying out from under the car. We then had to drive it 2.5 hours home with essentially open manifolds.
After the '89, he picked up a '95 Cutlass Supreme coupe. With 16" alloy wheels, that metallic orange/red color, a black leather bucket seat interior and floor-shifted transmission, that was probably one of the sportiest cars I had been in the time, at least it seemed that way to me. It handled decent, looked great (the roofline on those is a really clean design) and was probably one of the nicest cars I remember my parents having (It was a clean southern car with no rust, despite being 13 years old at the time). He picked it up for $500 because it needed brakes and intake gaskets (classic 3100 chocolate milkshake), put $250 into it to get it on the road, drove it 4 or 5 years without it ever needing anything, and then it got wiped out by a guy trying to run a red light (wrapped the radiator around the front cylinder head) and insurance paid him $2400 for it. He made out clean on it, but he still talks about how that was a great car and how much he misses that car. He had dreams of dropping it over a C5 or C4 Corvette chassis just for fun.
My father was an Olds guy. He may have had affairs with the occasional Pontiac and Nissan/Datsun, but Dr. Olds was prescribing is meds for years. Back in the 60's, he had a sleeper: a maroon 1966 Cutlass sedan with a Hurst-shifted 330ci V8 under the hood. He still tells stories about this thing! Imagine this, but with two extra doors:
After he developed knee problems, he had to ditch the stick and went with a '69 LeMans Sport with a TH350, but that didn't last long. Soon after, He found himself picking up a luxury yacht: a 1970 Olds 98 convertible, much like this one:
This car was the car I came home from the hospital in back in 1982. My sister and I used to call the old barge the "Big Green Booger Machine" due to it's snotty hue, but it was a really nice ride. It had a 455, and according to my dad, "That thing would throw you into the back seat when you floored it!". It got into an accident, and the engine seized when it sat waiting for replacement parts in the back of a body shop. My dad had it hauled home, and it sat for a couple years until it was hauled away in 1987. I remember my mother crying when they put it on the back of the truck. My dad kicks himself daily for ditching it.
While waiting for the 98 to get fixed, my dad bought another 98: this time, a downsized 1986 model. Looked just like this, minus the fog lights:
This one was ordered new with every option except Bose and the sunroof. It TALKED! It was so damn cool, and I thought it was a space ship when I was a kid. They had this one until 1998 when my parents went full JDM and bought a Maxima GLE. My mom still talks about this one too; she loved it.
Those 80s Oldsmobiles are the ones I think of. I can't say I ever really lusted after an Olds... oh wasn't there like a 442 or something? That was cool. And maybe there was a redo in the 80s that I remember being advertised as an M3 fighter. Wow.
Oh, and what about the Aurora? I kinda liked those for some reason.
I have to wonder, being called OLDsmobile couldn't have helped much for marketing in the newer, younger, better consumer world we live in.
First car was a 54 Super 88. In 97 it was the oldest car in the high school parking lot. Got it for $300. Should have never let it go.
Related fun fact: Oldsmobile founder Ransom E. Olds would later purchase land on the north edge of Tampa Bay to start a community known today as the town of Oldsmar, Florida.
My dad was an Oldsmobile man; 1955, 1958, 1968, 1984 then switched to Lincoln Town Cars (4).
He bought this ‘68 “98” and kept it until late 1984. 455, 4-barrel. 10mpg was the norm.
These are my sisters when we lived in St. Louis when my dad worked for Grinnell Fire Protection. Many times we had 4 kids in the back seat and one in a car seat up front. Many high school hijinks in this car.
The air cleaner trim was removed when my dad sold it for $500 and is in my garage.
Olds #2
I have a dream of buying a ‘70 Delta 88 and driving across the country. I did it last summer in a Sentra but would like to take my time in this cruiser.
Any excuse to post this pic 
We’re still making Oldsmobile memories. The kid always begs to take the old car so she can sit in the backwards seat.
In about 1960, our family car was a 1950 Hudson Pacemaker. One day, I got a ride somewhere in a neighbour's brand new company Oldsmobile. It had what you might call A Whole Lotta Torque compared to the Hudson. It also had a ribbon speedometer that changed colour as you accelerated. I thought that speedometer was the coolest damn thing I had ever seen in a car.
Ten years later, my Dad, the engineer, bought the classic Engineer's Car: a 1966 Toronado, later supplemented by (not replaced with) a '69. They had pretty cool speedometers too.
I sometimes wish I had video footage of the first time I drove the '66: I was trying to translate muscle commands learned on a '62 Rambler Classic with manual steering and roughly 27 turns lock-to-lock into correct instructions for power steering with what felt like about 1.5 turns. Luckily, this learning process comes with excellent & instant feedback.
The second car I owned was a 1976 Olds Cutlass Supreme. Looked EXACTLY like this one, except for the mud flaps and tires:
Nice looking car. Rode like a cloud. Got around 12 mpg in the city. I gradually came to hate driving it. The springs were way too soft and it would bottom the suspension over fairly tame undulations in pavement. It would try to swap ends on you if you were careless in a corner in the wet. I drove it for three years until I bought my first brand new car--a 1989 Mazda 626 LX 5-speed. The Mazda handled better, was faster, especially from say, 40 to 80 mph, and got three times the gas mileage.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
I agree but some of the best factory wheels were the Cutlass rallye rims.
My Grandfather had a brownish-bronze colored Cutlass Supreme from the early 80s when I was a kid. He kept it pristine and drove it hard. I remember it had like an orange interior and a bench seat, I think. I always thought it was kind of doofy, but then again, it was my grandfather's car and I had posters of Lamborghinis and Vectors and stuff like that all over my walls around that time.
Not sure what year, but it looked a lot like this
Datsun310Guy said:In reply to 1988RedT2 :
I agree but some of the best factory wheels were the Cutlass rallye rims.
Oh, I agree. The wheels were beautiful. Clean and waxed, it was a really good-looking car.
And it's been ten years for Pontiac...
My '61 Bonneville. 389ci 348hp tripower, with four speed manual transmission. 
I learned to drive in a 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. 2.5 liter. White, just like every other one out there. I've always been a crazy driver since the very first time I got to pick up a friend to bring him over to my house one spring. Just to show off/have fun/whatever I took a downhill 90 degree corner at 30ish, hopping a curb and then hopping right back out into the street. We jumped out and looked at all the tires -- still intact! So a lesson was learned that day but not a good one.
92 hp makes you into a momentum driver. I think everyone else out there had a car with more power. I would floor it at every stoplight or stopsign. I never, one. single. time got scratch. So my friends took to calling my corner-sliding tire screeching "white car scratch" :)
It met its demise early on April morning and I nearly did the same. I was passing a gorgeous classmate of mine (again with the attention bit) at highway speeds on a not-a-highway when the lane I was in revealed itself to be a turn lane at the crest of the hill. I wasn't worried since I'd driven through yards before, but this time I ramped off of one driveway, pirouetted and then skipped the roof off the yard, flipping back onto my wheels and almost landing on my crush (so to speak)- she swerved just in time. The Lord protects fools. The car was still running, as was the radio. The car was trashed though.
I later had an 89 Delta 88 and its cousin, a Pontiac Bonneville, both with the splendid 3800s in them.
Those were some good times, man. I have pictures somewhere
We had several Oldsmobiles while growing up--mostly Cutlasses ranging from the late-'60s through the Ciera. And we had Starfire, too. Then my parents bought a Maxima....
I miss my Intrigue, it was big, quick, and pretty easy on the eyes. The 1994 Delta 88 we had was big and quick.
My sister was born in an oldsmobile, on the way to the hospital.
I had a 76 gutless Cutlass. Bought it from a crackhead. It had seen better days but once I scraped the black spray paint off the windows it was driveable. The timing chain let go one day so I used the money I had saved for a move to rebuild it. Mondello ported heads, big nasty Lunati cam, Hooker super comp headers and aero chambered mufflers turned down before the rear end, Edelbrock intake and carb. All on the stock worn out bottom end and stock 2.73 rear gears. Predictably a rod let go a couple months later. But I was young, dumb and broke. As apposed to being old, dumb and broke like I am now.
Now a Pontiac/Olds story. I bought a 79 Trans Am that had a 403 Olds engine. Not stock and running nitrous. I have so many stories about how this car tried to kill me. But I'll tell you the story of how I killed it. One day on the way home from work it lost oil pressure. Instead of shutting it down I just kept driving it home, probably fifteen miles or so. The ticking and racket slowly getting louder and louder. After some time and investigating I found the oil pump driveshaft had broken. I pulled the hood in preparation of yanking the engine out but I needed to turn it around. I started it up and pulled it out to the end of the driveway. As I was sitting there waiting for a break in traffic a couple guys in a third gen Camaro drove by and revved at me. So being young and dumb I pulled out and chased them down. He shouted "five mile road" at the red light. We get there, line up and I had a hell of a launch. I steadily pulled away from him until we got to the first set of turns. He'd gain on me through the turns but I'd gap to him on the straights. I was the first one to the end of five mile road but the damage was done. It was barely running and overheating. They pulled up beside me and said "man that thing's fast, is it for sale?" I just laughed and said "yeah, really cheap too" It got me home but it seized when I shut it down. Wish I still had that car, it was solid and a WS6 car. But I swear it was possessed. Probably best I killed it before it killed me.
My dad had a '66 Olds Delta 88 when I was a kid, and then when I was in college he bought a '73 Cutlass Salon with the plush red pimpmobile interior. It was a nice car, and with the Salon suspension package it handled pretty well too (I guess good handling is relative...it was pretty good when compared to most US domestic cars of the time.)
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