1977 Oldsmobile 442 - Barber Poll

Cars like this very worn out 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 were my dream cars when I was in my late teens and early twenties. This is for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $3,200. Bonus, the original driver's door comes with the sale. 

Here's what it would have looked like new. Or restored. Quite the looker, no? Even in this barber poll motif. 

Color coordinated interior too although that black seat belt buckle poking up next to the drivers seat makes me wonder if this interior is original to the car. Not that it matters. A lot can happen to a car in forty-five years. 

As is the case with many an old car up here on the cusp of the Great White North, rust is a major concern. Especially with regards to the structure of the car. This is not the rustiest bucket out there and that mouse hole is just advanced surface rust. Poster of the ad claims the "frame is solid". I'll take their word for rather than make a four-hour round trip to see for myself. 

Same here on the lower rear, passenger side quarter panel. That this this is sitting on grass makes me believe it's not going to be the driest old car either. 

Something tells me this Oldsmobile "Rocket 350" is not running and would explain why this hasn't been moved to pavement. Maybe they don't even have anything paved? At best it should be indoors. Plastic bags in the air cleaner to stop mice from nesting in there tells me this bubba has been sitting out here for while. 

This is what the engine room looked like when the car was new although that's an Oldsmobile 403-cubic inch V-8 and not the Olds 350 like our Facebook Marketplace find has. The Oldsmobile 403 was an Oldsmobile 350 with a larger bore. You'd find this engine in a number of Pontiac Trans Am's in the late Seventies too. 

For 1977, available engines ran the gamut on 442's from a Buick V-6 through every available Oldsmobile engine at the time. That included the dreadful Olds 260-cubic inch V-8 although with that motor, you could get a five-speed. Yes, a five-speed. FE2 "Rallye Suspension" was optional so the 442 package, at its most rudimentary, was a trim package. 

Poster of the ad says the brakes, exhaust and radiator are bad and the car has some some electrical issues. At least they're honest. They don't mince words about the rust either. Sigh. 

This another prime example of let's "put it out there" before winter comes? Which, newsflash, it's all but done up here already. Price is knocked down from $3,500. NADA pegs these high retail at around $19,000. average around $13,000, fair approximately $6,000. There's no NADA value for poor or basket case - which this one most certainly appears to be. Might be fun to make into a rat rod but not at anywhere near $3,200. 

1983 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight - Knock Some Sense Into Me

Back in what must have been 1987 I test drove an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight coupe just like this '83 and thought seriously about buying it. Not sure why I didn't; perhaps fifty-something me got in touch with then twenty-something me and knocked some sense into me. 

It's funny how as I've gotten older my taste in cars has gotten younger. Well, it's either that or more, dare I say, sophisticated. When I was a kid I was a fan of the bigger is better idiom that drove the literal bulk of domestic automobile sales in this country right up until the first gas crisis started in October 1973. If it was big I liked it. Make that a big coupe like this thing. 

In the inter-meaning decades I've come to appreciate a vehicle's actual overall performance above and beyond its size, styling and ability to cocoon. If a car can't handle, brake and accelerate well, what's the point of it? Not that styling doesn't matter, most certainly does, but in the case of my wife and I searching endlessly for a Mini Cooper to replace our oafish 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe, what I like most about those little pocket rockets is their power and slot-car maneuverability. I'm actually ambivalent towards their styling which depending on the car, tends to be too cute.

Not that these cars weren't sophisticated but their mission in life didn't require them to be. You know, honestly, I'm being kind. Compared to today's over-engineered cars they were as complex as a Radio-Flyer wagon, but, again, with their sole purpose to isolate the driver and passenger from the road, they didn't need to be anything more than that. Unfortunately, the younger, monied buyers Oldsmobile really wanted and needed wouldn't be caught dead in these things as they opted for more, ahem, sophisticated fare, from BMW, Audi, Mercedes etc. 

Amazingly, and for the most part, this '83 Ninety-Eight has all but the same mechanical DNA with the first Ninety-Eight that debuted in 1940 and even older makes and models dating back to the turn of the century. That would be turn of the 19th to 20th century. Body-on-frame construction, engine mounted up front driving a rear wheel through a "live axle" sprung from the frame on leaf springs and tube shocks. A-arms with coils up front, recirculating ball steering. 

"98", or "Ninety-Eight", first appeared on an Oldsmobile in 1940 with the "8" allegedly denoting a 90-series Oldsmobile with an eight-cylinder engine; although, there was never a six-cylinder 90-series. The "series" nomenclature replacing the very simple Oldsmobile "Six" and "Eight" models. If you're a fan of "A Christmas Story", the old man was an "Oldsmobile Man" and his stead was a 1937 Oldsmobile Six. 

This Ninety-Eight is for sale near my home in Cleveland, Ohio by the same guy who's got that quasi-resto-modded clone of a 1978 Cutlass for sale; that car is in the left garage bay. He's asking similar money for this one too making him either a goggle-eyed Oldsmobile fan or he's got way to much money wrapped up in both of these cars and he's trying to recoup his spending. Good luck with that, amigo. 

He's asking $13,500 for this and that might be more of an absurdity than the $17,000 he's asking for that Cutlass. He claims this is a "fresh 403" just like he does for the engine in the Cutlass although any cues I could muster that this is a 403 is lost on me; this looks like the soggy Oldsmobile 307 cubic-inch till it was born with. The 307 was a smooth and long lasting little motor but in terms of offering contemporary performance, you'd best look elsewhere. Even the high performance version of this engine found in 1983 and 1984 Hurst\Olds and 1985-1987 4-4-2's wasn't exactly a ribald powerhouse. 

Power bench seat with individual seat backs. Wow. That's so Oldsmobile back then. If the driver needed to be up close and top of the steering wheel that also meant the front seat passenger had to have their fact squashed up against the dash and windshield. Might as well sit in the back which was appreciably gigantic. 

Oh, this thing is not with out its merits. It appears to be clean remarkably clean as a whistle and those huge wheels, while ugly as sin, no doubt stiffen up its suspension and improve handling. However, I'll pass on this road trip down memory lane. Especially at that asking price. Not quite sure what price would have me drafting a cashier's check for it but it certainly wouldn't have five digits in it. 

 

1978 Oldsmobile 442 - A Clone of a Different Color

In biology, a clone is defined, "as an organism or cell, or group of organisms or cells, produced asexually from one ancestor or stock, to which they are genetically identical". Remember Dolly, the sheep? She was a clone. In automotive circles, clones are vehicles modified to resemble one that is similar but by many accounts is quite different. For instance, a plain-jane, six-cylinder, 1964 Pontiac Tempest altered to appear as though it's a 389 cubic-inch GTO complete with all the trimmings, is a classic example of an automotive "clone". Oh, it may look like a GTO, it may drive exactly like one too but in the "numbers-matching", persnickety collector car universe, it most certainly is not. Years ago (car) clones where verboten but over the last twenty to thirty years, particularity with the advent of resto-modding, older cars rebuilt with modern components, clones are less the red herring they used to be. 

They're still not for everyone, especially ones priced at our near the cost of the "real" car it's emulating. Which brings us to our subject today, this 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais impeccably cloned and sort-of resto-modded, although historically incorrectly, into being, of all things, a 1980 Olds 442. Wow. Certainly this is one of the more unique clones that we've seen - especially done up as well as it is. I mean, if you didn't know this car did not exist in this body style for 1978 you'd never know. 

Over the years we've prattled on about our disdain for General Motor's 1978-1987 "A-bodies" but this thing here might be an "A-body of a different color". What kills any notion of it for us is that the owner has it listed for sale for $17,000. Yikes. Can't blame them for asking that much as it would seem they have quite a lot "in it" but we'd like to examine the noggin of the person who would pay anywhere near that for it. Yes, they fully disclose it's a"clone" but the dark side of twenty-grand for a clone of a, excuse me, a 1980, 442? That's beach front money for a car that's anything but beach front property. 

Now, as we've pointed out before, it's not that the shrunken GM "A-bodies", known as "G-bodies" from 1982-1987, where bad transportation conveyances; they were actually pretty good all things and the era considered. More than a foot-shorter and around eight-hundred pounds lighter than what they replaced, they rode and handled with an aplomb not seen before on a GM mid-size car. Hot-rodders like them too because they have full-perimeter frames and a huge engine bay that can swallow gigantic mills without having to modifying the hood. Blow the hood out and the sky's literally and figuratively the limit. They also had more genuinely usable interior room than the "big on the outside, small on the inside" blimps they replaced. Stylish and oh-so-tasty looking blimps but blimps nonetheless. 

Some deride that they were more "up-sized compact" than "downsized-intermediate" but that would imply that size was the end-all and be-all; although their being significantly smaller than the "compact" Nova's, Skylark's, Phoenix' and Omega's which they were sold next to for two-model years (!) certainly didn't help. Nope, the problem was actually quite simple...they...was ugly. The homeliest of the sordid bunch the Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the Pontiac Grand Prix a close runner-up. The Buick Regal was meh; the malaisiest of the lot in the height of the malaise era. However, the Oldsmobile Cutlass coupes where somewhat of an exception, save, of course, for the slant-back Cutlass Salon's. Buick's Century's shared the same hysterically awful body; 1978 and 1979 on two and four-door models, for 1980 on the Century Sport Coupe only. Thankfully someone upstairs thought better of it and banished it moving foward after 1980. 

"442" first appeared on an Oldsmobile Cutlass in mid model year 1964 when Oldsmobile cobbled together a sporty version of their new midsize two and four-door sedans as a literal reaction to Pontiac's GTO; it was more or less the Cutlass they sold to police departments. As if Oldsmobile needed to return Pontiac's salvo but back then GM's myriad divisions openly competed with one another. Sounds crazy now but it's amazing what you'll do when you have a near monopoly on anything. 

Originally denoting a four-barrel carburetor, four-speed transmision and dual exhausts, 4-4-2, Oldsmobile conveniently changed the meaning of the numberical acronym as they saw fit on and off again for approximately twenty model years. We won't count the 1990 and 1991 Cutlass Calais 442 as a "real" 442 although on a handling course it could slice any previous 442 to ribbons. 

Not that the 1978 "442" was real either based on what the moniker had previously "meant" but somewhat amazingly given it was the early days of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), Oldsmobile held onto the 442 for 1978 and 1979. But...and it was literally a big butt...they festooned "442" to, actually, more like glued "442" decals to -  a coupe version of the Cutlass Salon; if you look close enough to the righy side of the trunk lid just to the left of the right rear tail lens you can make it out. Mercifully, for 1980, "442" appeared, as it should have in 1978, on the notch-back Cutlass Calais as the 1979 Hurst\Olds was. There was no "442" for model years 1981 and 1982; the Hurst\Olds came back for 1983 and 1984 with the "442" appearing again for a last ride from 1985 through 1987. Again, we obnoxiously ignore the 1990 and 1991 442. 

Far be it for us to ask why anyone would go through the trouble of building this car but you have to hand it to them, this car is tight. This paint job alone couldn't have been cheap, unless they're a body shop person and did it themselves, and seeing this thing has a TKO600, 5-speed manual, which'll run you a good $2,500 by itself,  means they didn't skimp on the details. 

Well, maybe they skimped just a little although we don't know how long ago the engine swap was done but that blue paint on the valve covers does appear fresh. At least they kept it "all-Oldsmobile". The Oldsmobile 403, which was never offered on any 1977-1979 GM "A-body" let alone a Cutlass, was a good torquer back in its day, not so much a horsepower maker, but it's no modern General Motors LS engine. This engine was the replacement for the Oldsmobile 455 and was essentially an Oldsmobile 350 with a larger bore. A bore so large, in fact, that similar to what Chevrolet did with their "small-block" based 400 engine, the cylinders were siamesed. 

In a 3,400 pound GM "A-body" with a race car inspired 5-speed,  the 403's three-hundred twenty pounds of torque no doubt mean this thing can really go. Apparently the 403 has a "mild build" but there's no more info on it than that. No word on the rear end or suspension but with the 442's W-30 handling suspension, that our clone purportedly has, it may have made the most of a humble but adequate base suspension set-up. 

There's the issue of the brothel-red interor clashing with the handsome exterior paint job but it's not that out of the question that Oldsmobile could have offered a "real" 1980 442 with this interior\exterior combo. Still, clash is clash can and it might be the only serious ding we have about with this car aside from we feel it way, way overpriced at $17,000. The saying goes, buy a restored car -  don't buy a car and restore it. You'll never get your money back. Makes you wonder why some folks do but, bless their hearts, we're so glad they do. 

Gosh, so...how much would we offer for this? Maybe...ten grand? And that would be all the money in the world. Perhaps a little more if it had an LS in it and the rear end was built; "real" 1980 442's could be had with as tiny as a 2.56 back there. Certainly seeing what kind of shape this is in and being apparently fresh and all, at least the paint job if not the "mild-build" on the engine, if this was a 1973-1977 "real" 442, shoot, even a clone although that would be about as odd as this thing is, $17,000 would seem almost reasonable. For any 442 at that price in this shape before 1973 you'd pay probably close to $40,000. That's getting up there. 

If anything, whomever did this up is is an Oldsmobile person and we applaud a stellar effort of building a car Oldsmobile should have built in 1978 in the first place. Just don't ask us to pay the price of admission to own it.