1968 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe - The Look

I need another blog about a Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe like I need another hole in my trunk, but I thought I'd do a quickie today on this nice looking '68 that popped up on Marketplace recently not far from the Triple Wide. Asking price is $15,000. 

To review, the Impala Custom Coupe was new for 1968 using the formal rear roofline the Caprice coupe used. While I prefer the formal roof over the exaggerated, almost cartoonish swoopy fast back of the Impala Sport Coupe. how and why Chevrolet sold two-distinct versions of the same car, and got away with it, is nothing short of amazing. Then again, Chevrolet in the 1960's could sell a moldy ham sandwich on four-wheels and sell a quarter million of them. 

For your fifteen-grand, which I think is a ton of money for this car, you'd get what appears to be a fairly clean looking car but look deeper, and we see there's a "396" engine tag on the left front fender, a "307" tag on the right front. 

Poster of the ad claims this car has the 307 so good to go there, but what's up with the 396 tag? 

Rust? Accident? Something's up. Small detail? At $15,000, I don't think so. For the asking price, even with the flaws this car has, if it had the 396, I'd think it might be priced just about right. 

Zoom in and we see the seats are awash in black duct tape too. I don't know, for 15-grand, I'd need little things like the seats to be clean and engine tags to match. My wife probably wouldn't notice the engine tags at first, the taped-up seats she'd notice for sure and give me, "The Look of Death". 

I can live with the Chevy rally rims, these weren't available on non-SS models in 1968, Fender skirts on a '68 Impala coupe? Not a factory available option. 

If you have to have this, it's better bought closer to $10,000. The mis-matched engine tags, patched up seats along with the tiny engine, that comes with the Powerglide two-speed automatic it was born with, is enough to have me continue my search. 

 

1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass SL - Hard Pass

I've had five Chevrolet Lumina\Monte Carlo's, so I know a thing or two or ten about General Motors GM10 and W-bodies like this 1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass SL. This 168,000-mile redhead popped up for sale on Marketplace recently not far from the Triple Wide with an asking price of $2,500.

Seeing I'm perpetually in the market for a two-thousand-dollar beater and being a fan of these cars you'd think I'd be all over it. Well, while priced right, the combination of this engine with 168,000-miles on it, Cutlass' my least favorite of the GM10\W coupes and it being red all conspire to have me making a hard pass on it. 

Let's start with that engine, General Motors' LQ1, 3.4-liter, dual-overhead-cam, 24-valve V-6 they put in all GM10\W-bodies except the Buick Regal's. It was GM's first DOHC, four-valve per cylinder V-6 and was their answer to the Yamaha built, 3.0- and 3.2-liter DOHC V-6 of Ford Taurus SHO fame. Incidentally, while the poster of the Marketplace ad says this car has the "3400", the LQ1 was never known as that. The GM 3400 was a different engine although they're technically related; both started out as GM's 2.8-liter V-6 that first powered Chevrolet Citations back in 1979. GM built it from 1991 through 1997. 

There were a number of reasons for its short production run. The LQ1 was expensive to build and for customers to maintain and, frankly, it wasn't a very good engine. It was sluggish, thirsty, noisy and a bear to work on. Additionally, GM's "3800 Series II", an engine they had all along and eventually replaced it with, was smoother and more responsive, simpler, less expensive to build and maintain, made almost as much horsepower and torque, got great gas mileage and was bulletproof reliable. Parts are plentiful for it these days as well whereas LQ1 parts are hard to find. You'll pay through the throttle body for them too. 

Additionally, while I'm not a fan of any of the four-door variants of the GM10\W-bodies, the Oldsmobile Cutlass coupes are my least favorite of the two-door's. Especially these cladded-up 1992-1997 models. I don't think cladding per se to be an issue, it's just that in certain applications, like on these cars, it appears fussy, tacky and unnecessary. Hey, if I wanted a mid-'90's Pontiac Grand Am, I'd get a mid-'90's Pontiac Grand Am. The red finish does nothing for it either. 

On the inside things get a bit better although the monochromatic theme gets a little dreary after a while; these buckets are fabulous and except for a nick or two here and there, appear to be in great shape. If the air blows cold, whoever bought this did pretty well for themselves and they should keep it until something goes wrong with the engine. You never know, if the engine was well-maintained, the buyer could get three or more years out of it. They might get three months out of it too. 

I still find it amazing how in less than twenty-years, Oldsmobile went from being one of the best-selling automobile brands in the world to oblivion. Many blame the lack of sales of these cars for their undoing, seeing that in the height of Oldsmobile's success forty percent of their sales were Cutlass', there might be something to that. 

Oldsmobile sold these cars through 1997 replacing it in the middle of the model year with the Intrigue. Sales of the Intrigue, which were only available as four-door sedans, while good at first, tapered off quickly, Oldsmobile discontinued production of the Intrigue after the 2001 model year. GM shuttered the Oldsmobile division after 2004.