1950 Oldsmobile 88 - Not a Cloud in the Sky

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of cars made before 1960...but I do have some exceptions. Our primer grey 1950 Olds 88 here being one of them and this one is for sale on Facebook Marketplace with an out of this world asking price. I forget what it is exactly but I believe it was around $20,000. I know. As if. 

General Motors needless if not senseless slicing, dicing, noodling and canoodling of their designs from year to year, under the auspice of creating artificial demand for new models, most often times, yes, subjective, ruined original designs. Mercifully, Oldsmobile left their new-for-1949 "88" alone for there's little to decipher a '49 from a 1950. They of course jumped the shark come 1951 but that's a blog for another day. 

Our subject here's mid-restoration certainly does it's lines no favors but we can still see the simple James Dean cool that knocked the world on it's tailpipe in 1949. All of GM's 1949 designs, save for the Buick's, were deep breathes of fresh air that hinted of a aeronautic if not space-age inspired design future. That future would be, being polite here, rather bumpy at times; looking at you 1958 Oldsmobile. However,  as the 1940's melted into the 1950's, the future appeared to not have a cloud in the sky. At least for Oldsmobile and General Motors. 

From this unflattering angle, again the primer does this car no favors as well, there's still some "Christmas Story Oldsmobile" here that I'm not a fan of; love the movie of course but not the "old man's Oldsmobile". That styling similarity is somewhat understandable given "the old man's Oldsmobile" and this car are but thirteen model-years apart. Makes the rapid evolution from this car to what Oldsmobile pushed out just thirteen model years later all the more remarkable. How did they get from here to there so quickly? 

There's no way anyone could have foretold of the hairy, gaudy, hoary rolling jukeboxes Oldsmobile pushed out at the end of the 1950's. GM's design guru Harley Earl seemingly gasping for straws as the dreary bells of retirement neared. That and the cattle prod that were the 1957 Chrysler's; nothing like a little competition to spur inspiration. Or was that desperation? His successor, Bill Mitchell, brilliantly taking his designs down a notch or several before settling down into his own 1960's through 1970's safety bumper groove. A groove that I believe was the greatest run of designs in General Motors history. Mr. Mitchell stepped down upon forced retirement at 65 in 1977. Imagine what he could have done with GM's 1978 intermediates and beyond. 

Ah, but our 1950 "88" here with it's still simple lines and just enough chrome to push the envelope on good taste. But what's really special about this car is in addition to it's handsome, arguably timeless styling it's what lies behind this elegant front end and under it's hood. 

Holy historical accuracy, Batman. This is an original Oldsmobile 303 cubic-inch, "Rocket" V-8 which has been rebuilt with period correct hot-rod accessories. The Offenhauser valve covers, the Edmund "two-deuce" intake manifold...comparatively speaking this is one hopped up "Rocket". 

This car would be a handful to drive despite the "Whirl-A-Way" Hyrda-matic (automatic) transmission behind that Oldsmobile Rocket. Worm and double roller (manual) steering and "self-energizing brakes" make for a lot of work for the driver. Air conditioning was rarely available on any cars of this period. 

Front end is rebuilt with "drop spindles" thus the "lowered look" which while not historically correct is period correct; I'm not a fan. Love the canopy over the windshield - a primitive way to block the sun back in the days before tinted glass. Our '50 is a long way from finished and even when done it still has far and away too much "'50's" in her to make it appealing to me. Especially at the asking price. Hope she finds a good home. 

1956 Buick Special - It's Always Cloudy in Cleveland

If it weren't for the late model blue crossover and 1971 vintage Buick Elecrra wheel covers, this photo of a 1956 Buick Special could have been from the 1950's or early '60's. Shoot, why not the early '70's as folks routinely used period incorrect wheel covers back then to "hippen" up an old car. 

Put some old-timey filters and it appears to be even more of a relic from the past. The photo, that is. The car speaks for itself. Funny, even when I was the same age as the kid in the picture these cars seemed impossibly old. 

The Buick Special was, historically, Buick's least expensive model and not surprisingly was most model years their best seller. Buick festooned "Special" to myriad other models as well but more so as a sub-brand as opposed to a distinct make. As if a badge of shame, Buick Special's of this vintage had three decorative venti-ports while all other Buick's had four. 

This literal barn find, more like a "garage find", with an asking price a very ambitious $8,000, is in fact "special". Two-door hardtops had been around if not in vogue for years but this was the first four-door hardtop. The term "hardtop" somewhat a misnomer since all cars that don't have a soft, convertible top are hardtops, but the term refers to a fixed-roof automobile with the styling of a convertible. 

You can't see it in this photograph, or perhaps it's been eroded away by sixty-five years of exposure of time or what not, but in the circle of the ornamentation on the trunk lid here, Buick called out not only the make and model of this car but the model year as well. Can't say I'm aware of any manufacturer ever do that before or since. 

There's a lot to this Special that makes it alluring and a lot, frankly that scares me as well. Four-door cars are the unloved entrails of the classic car world and I avoid them like I do folks with Covid. Its sky-high asking price would scare off as many would be buyers as having to find parts to rebuild this old Buick "nail-head" engine would be. Nail-head referring to the intake and exhaust valves on this engine that were long and thin like nails. 

At least she's somehow survived all these years and hasn't succumbed to the elements up here in always cloudy Cleveland. Or been in a demolition derby. 

1976 Buick LeSabre - Gas Pains

It's telling that some of the pictures I found on Facebook Marketplace of this 1976 Buick LeSabre are of it in a gas station. Gas prices have smashed through the $3.00 a gallon ceiling here in Northeast, Ohio recently and seeing this car has a twenty-seven and-a-half gallon tank, filling it up through the gas filler pipe behind the rear license plate is gonna cost the owner a small fortune. 

My Wonder Years coincided when American's were still feeling the after effects of the October 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo. Shortages ended when the embargo ended in March of 1974 but prices for gas stayed at or near embargo-esque prices as part of the negotiations to get the oil spigots back; thus making a Yank-Tank like out '76 here a major household liability. Not that it wasn't before the embargo but with gas at fifty to sixty cents a gallon as opposed to a pre-embargo thirty or so, modest American's with an average household income of under $13,000 who drove gas guzzlers like this had one of two options; buckle down and pay the stiff tariff or opt for something smaller and more fuel efficient. Neither sounded like particularly alluring. 

We know that shortly after General Motors rolled out their enormous 1971 full-size lineup that they had already begun work on downsizing their literal fleet but until they were ready, they scrambled to make their then current dinosaurs better on gas. Thanks to fuel injection, engine control systems, aerodynamics and automatic transmissions with myriad gears, nowadays it's not out of the ordinary for two-and-a-half-ton SUV's with four-hundred plus horsepower to get twenty or so miles to the gallon. Powered by a carbureted V-8 engine, a transmission with just three gears, a semi-aggressive axle ratio, nary a electronic engine controller and aerodynamics of a barn door, this LeSabre might get ten miles per gallon. On the highway with the A/C off and the engine in good tune. Six or seven miles per gallon turtle-ing around town if they stayed "off the gas". Suddenly four-cylinder Datsun's looked plenty alluring. 

Even prior to the embargo the adage of a big American car with a powerful V-8 engine had already begun to wane. Auto manufacturers struggled to comply with federally mandated emissions standards and their crude methods greatly impeded vehicle performance. Steps to improve gas mileage only made things worse. To improve gas mileage, Buick advertised a new camshaft on their 350 and 455 engines, our big banana here has the 350, that reduced valve lift to reduce airflow to improve fuel economy. The 3.08 rear axle was scrapped for a 2.56 as well. If you ever driven a bone stock, big old American brute from this time period no doubt you'd think something was wrong with the engine. Nope. Just the convluence of emissions plumbing and gas saving gimmicks construing to make cars of the mid-'70's perform poorer than cars built in the 1940's. Buick was so desperate to improve fuel economy that they even offered their V-6 engine on 1976 LeSabre's. 

The Great Downsizing Epoch that GM kicked off in 1977 chopped nearly a foot off of the LeSabre that replaced our dread-naught here, was upwards of three inches less wide, weighed roughly 800 pounds less and came with a standard 2.41 axle. Fuel economy was improved upon; instead of the obligatory ten miles gallon, a 1977 Buick LeSabre might get twelve to fifteen miles per gallon. Abysmal today but nothing short of clandestine back in the day. 

Better gas mileage, better handling and more interior and trunk space than before? GM's 1977 full-size lineup was a watershed moment of automobile engineering and, subjectively less so design wise. They repeatedly stubbed their bumpers subsequently downsizing the rest of the wares but for a moment, all was right with the then largest corporation in the world.  

As if my woe-begotten youth couldn't have gotten any worse, another gas crisis crushed the economy and driving habits of Americans again in the fall of 1979. If dinosaurs like our '76 LeSabre here weren't already chastised, that gas blitz that spiked the cost of a gallon of gas over a dollar-a-gallon reduced their resale values further still. Perhaps our '76 here was moth-balled then and just recently "un-barned"; if there is such a term. If there isn't, there should be. Yeah, "un-barned" just in time for another meteoric rise in gas prices. Somethings, I guess, never change. 

1967 Pontiac Tempest - Cammer

I don't know if it's more amazing that this 1967 Pontiac Tempest has never been cloned into a GTO or that it still has its original six-cylinder engine. The period correct Crager's and heavy duty leaf springs are amazing too. 

 

In a day and age when V-8 engines ruled the roost, Pontiac's overhead-cam six was certainly a horse (power) of a different color.  Something tells me that had this '67 been powered by Chevrolet's more mundane six-cylinder engine it would have been tossed decades ago. 

Also known as the "Pontiac Cammer", Pontiac built them from 1966 through 1969 and dropped them in into the base models of Tempest's and Firebird's. Why? That's a good question seeing that Chevrolet's  six had been the base engine in the Tempest from 1964 and 1965. And after the Cammer was dropped, Pontiac went back to using it as well.  

Legend has it or not, and the story varies somewhat depending on who you're getting it from, but the idea for "OHC-6" stems from the early '60's brainchild of the then head of Pontaic's Advanced Engineering team, John DeLorean. Yes, that DeLorean. DeLorean championed a Pontiac sports car that was similar in concept to Chevrolet's Corvette with one of the big differences being instead of being powered by a V-8 like the Corvette was, it would have a six-cylinder engine. Ah, but not just any six; Mr. DeLorean implored his team to think outside the box and take inspiration from Mercedes-Benz. 

GM executives ex-nayed DeLorean's Pontiac sports car known as the Banshee, although many styling attributes of it found its way into the 1968 Corvette. They did, oddly enough, green light  it's engine. At least for a little while. 

Why the expensive and complicated cammer made it into production is a head scratcher considering that it, save for a performance setup that was available on it, didn't provide significantly stronger performance than the Chevrolet-six did. Also, Pontiac's "base" 326 cubic-inch V-8 engine was cheap as dirt and made more horsepower and torque. Engineering for the sake of engineering's sake? Perhaps and there's nothing inherently wrong with that but it ain't a good way to run a railroad. With few takers for it, easy to fathom why it wasn't around very long.  

The Pontiac OHC-6 is now little more than a footnote in the annals of GM engine history; if anything its fiberglass reinforced timing belt rather than a chain helped advance the state-of-the-art of overhead camshaft engines. Personally, I bristle at the idea of separating this car from it's original engine after all these years - regardless of its unique and different pedigree. Perhaps the series of owners its had over the years has felt the same way. 

 

1963 Buick Riviera - Rat Pack Cool

With the exception of the 1977-1978's and of course the 1986-1993 models, I love all Buick Riviera's with these Rat Pack cool '63-'65's my favorite of them all. 

Our black on red beauty here is a '63 and is for sale in bucolic Akron, Ohio with an asking price of (he gulps) $15,000. Yikes. And that's with a price reduction of $5,000 too. 

New price is fair, I guess, based on its condition but it's certainly no bargain seeing the interior needs to be redone and the engine bay detailed. Who knows what else it needs. I'd think that kind of money for this better spent on something for sale way south of the I-70. Make that way, way south. 

Legend has it these cars were GM's swipe at Ford and their seminal four-passenger Thunderbird. Well, it wasn't their only attempt but it was their best effort; GM finally get the "Thunderbird recipe" down pat after learning the hard way that folks who appreciated the Thunderbird wanted more out of a "personal-luxury car" than bucket seats and a floor-shifter nestled in a fancy console. 

Oldsmobile's half-baked 1961 Starfire and Pontiac's 1962 Grand Prix were little more than, allegedly, sporty versions of existing models as opposed to a unique, clean sheet design like the four-passenger Thunderbird was or what became known as the Buick Rivera come 1963. Hey, I wouldn't kick either the Olds or Pontiac out of my garage but given the choice between a Starfire, Grand Prix or one of these you already know my answer. 

Originally a design exercise shepherded by GM VP of Design William Mitchell, what would become known as the Buick Riviera, was first pitched to Cadillac to be sold as the "LaSalle II" hearkening back to Cadillac's companion model that GM discontinued in 1940. Cadillac rejected it, Chevrolet did too under the auspice they both had too many models at the time and didn't need another one. 

Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick were far more interested with Buick winning an internal contest for the privilege of marketing and selling it. The "Riviera" moniker one Buick had used on a series of convertibles going to back to 1949. 

What's in a name? Some say Buick's recycling an established nameplate hindered the Riviera's chances of beating the Thunderbird at the box office. Despite being less expensive than the then current Thunderbird and better reviews of it, Riviera never outsold Thunderbird. Perhaps the more restrained styling of the Riviera wasn't to buyers fancy back then as well. That we'll never know. 

I happen to be a fan of the "Bullet 'Bird's" and can't tell you honestly if I'd choose this over one if I was alive and of the means to afford one back then. Anyone got a time machine I can borrow so I can find out? 

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