1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass S - Was S for "Slow?"

What's the slowest car you've ever driven? For me it's a toss up between an HT4100 powered 1982 Cadillac Sedan deVille and a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass with Oldsmobile's 260-cubic inch V-8 I test drove back in the day. That and an old friends 1.6-liter, 1984 Chevrolet Chevette. Something tells me, though, this 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass "S", that's in painfully mint-condition but has a Buick 231-cubic inch V-6 still nestled between its front fenders, might be slower than any of those cars. 

In more ways than one, power is over rated. However, you do need at least some semblance of it to make life enjoyable and to make driving at least somewhat less than a chore. No such case here with a car weighing the dark side of two-tons and saddled with an engine making 105-horsepower and 185-foot pounds of torque. Throw in a soggy 2.4:1 rear axle, perhaps even a 2.29:1, and zero-to-sixty might come around in about seventeen-to-eighteen seconds. However, in a car this big, that'll feel much longer. And it's not just "off-the-line" that this car is slow. Merging with freeway traffic and changing lanes will need to be judiciously planned too. Did the "S" in Cutlass S denote "slow?"

How and why did General Motors sell a car so grossly underpowered? Blame the 1973 OPEC embargo that doubled the price of a gallon of gas. What was worse, gas prices stayed high after the embargo hammering sales of large, thirsty cars. The Big Three were left scrambling to make their gas guzzlers better on gas and on paper, at least, putting six-cylinder engines in big heavy cars like this made sense. In reality, the "little" engines were over-worked negating most fuel economy gains. Especially around town. 

Through my foggy windshield, the Buick V-6 puts a serious damper on this very cherry Cutlass. It's for sale down near Akron with a $19,995 asking price. Seems a heady price to pay for a car that's going to be quite the handful to drive. Especially with today's over powered monsters zippy around you. Fossil fuel or electrically powered. Perhaps at half the cost I could do the mental gymnastics to perhaps make a crate engine swap make sense. To do that right could run you five, seven or even ten-thousand dollars. 

This car, that has only twenty-four-thousand miles on its forty-five year old ticker, worth thirty grand? Perhaps to someone but most certainly not to me. Twenty-thousand dollars but with a perfect "LS swap" already performed? Umm, let me sleep on that one.