A parts car, destined to be picked clean and then discarded as scrap, or a project that just became too overwhelming and/or pissed off the landlord and/or wife to the point where the junkyard seemed like the only way out? Impossible to say. In any case, it appears that a few bits and pieces- including the engine and transmission- remain on this Olds.

Here we see a trio of hip Cutlass buyers choosing their Middle Malaise Era rides of choice. The Cutlass Supreme offered "style, value and good gas mileage," while the Cutlass Calais boasted bucket seats, special suspension, and full instrumentation." Naturally, the Cutlass Supreme Brougham was the pinnacle, with "richness inside you'd expect in bigger, more expensive cars."

It's pretty rough, and plenty of parts have been picked from it by now, but the all-important roof glass remains. There's an example of today's Engine Of The Day honoree under the hood, too- looks like a 2-barrel 350. Nice Bondo-y patina on the tailgate!

The alley next to Lee Auto Supply is technically a street (it has a name), so it's fair DOTS game when a Lee employee buys a parts car while on the job and leaves it in the alley for the day.

I'm positive that this is a Cutlass, and I'm 90% sure it's a '71. It appears to have been hit pretty hard on the right front, prior to being gutted, but it might yet be the basis for a project Olds. We've been so short on Cutlasses in this series (so far just this '69 convertible and this '67 Vista Cruiser) that even one as rough as this makes the DOTS cut!

Yesterday's 1975 Stutz Blackhawk escaped getting a black eye with 57% of you nodding in unison over both its fifteen grand price, and Elvis-endorsed pedigree. Now let's again jump into Mr Peabody's Wayback machine and move ahead a year for our next American Idle contestant.

Nineteen seventy six. America's bicentennial year. It was in this year that Saul Bellow won the Nobel prize for literature, Rocky served an uppercut to the box office, and a little known peanut farmer from Plains Georgia no longer needed to lust in his heart for the presidency. David Pearson achieved one of the most spectacular Daytona 500 victories ever that year, with a paint-trading spin involving Richard Petty's car coming out of the final turn, before coaxing his smoking wreck of a Mercury across the finish line at 30 miles per hour. Now that was racing!

Also that year, despite fuel shortages and cojone-robbing emissions controls, American manufacturers dominated the auto market in the U.S., holding down the top spot against insurgent, and more economical, rivals from Japan. The Oldsmobile Cutlass grabbed the gold ring for the first time ever during this turbulent year, enabling Olds to move into third place in sales, eclipsing both Plymouth and Pontiac.

Here's an example of that top-selling '76, in buckskin, offered by an individual who really, really, really likes his Cutlasses. As it hails from the bicentennial year, the 350cid engine under the hood is an Olds Rocket V8, not a corporate parts-bin motor, as it wasn't until '77 that production limitations forced the covert insertion of Chevy engines under the hoods of the Cutlass', causing accusations of deceit from car buyers upon discovery. Olds' advertising tagline of there era was Can We Build One For You?, but apparently, no, they couldn't from '77 onward.

There's not much to be said about the car itself- it's rocking the colonnade coupe "A" body, and that 350 motor is backed up by another 350- the TH350 3-speed slusher. The buckskin paint is shinier than a tax-payer's wallet, and the engine mods probably help drivability and put a few more ponies in with the 235 installed at the factory.

It's unlikely that you will be able to find another exemplar of the era in this nice of shape at any price. Despite the non-functioning horn, extracted A/C (what, it never gets hot in Detroit?) and worn-out weatherstripping, where could you find still-functional plaid swivel seats? Or a space-saver spare that's bigger than the tires on your current car? And when was the last time your car's bumper weighed more than you do?

But sixty nine hundred dollars to step into a time capsule from the disco era? Is that an age that should be revisited, or worse, sustained? At any price? What do you think, does $6,900 put this Cutlass on the top of your sales charts? Or does that price swivel you right out of the driver's seat?

You decide!

Detroit Craigslist or go here if the ad goes the way of Oldsmobile. Thanks to Psydiphekt for the tip.

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The General whacking Olds was especially painful, given that it was the oldest American marque still making cars. In fact, if your car company wasn't named Daimler or Peugeot, it was younger than Oldsmobile. Was the fact that the world "Old" was right in the name of the 107-year-old brand part of GM's decision to put it on the chopping block by the '04 model year? Marketers probably cringed every time they saw those three letters and then contemplated the ever-increasing average age of Oldsmobile buyers.

I don't have much of a personal Olds ownership history; the only Oldsmobile that I ever drove much was a purple '69 Cutlass that I bought for 100 bucks from a friend when I was 19, after she loaned it to someone who got drunk and slid it into a tree. The entire passenger side was completely trashed, but it had a rip-roaringly powerful 350 4-barrel engine (and it was purple) and I couldn't resist making the deal. However, I can make the claim that the very first car I ever rode in was an Oldsmobile: a '56 with the 324 V8.

Now it's your turn. What was your first-ever Oldsmobile? Did you love it (Dynamic 88) or hate it (Starfire)?
Photo source: Old Car Brochures

I went to college in SoCal during the mid-to-late 80s and often took the 430-mile drive back to the East Bay, nearly always on Interstate 5 (rather than the slower, prettier Highway 101 or the stuck-behind-'66-Dodge-pickup-full-of-refrigerators Highway 99). In those days, most people died of diptheria by age 30 and cameras depended on toxic silver salts to capture images; I was doing a lot of photography at the time and generally dragged the ol' Canon AE-1- and occasionally a thrift-store Kodak X-11 shooting 126 cartridges- along on my trips. I posted a few of these back in '07, in addition to the MGB-GT I-5 adventure slide show. Many of these shots were taken from the passenger side of my then-girlfriend's '78 Olds wagon, while others were taken from the driver's seat (yes, operating a full-manual SLR while driving isn't such a great idea) of the MG or my '65 Impala 4-door.

Here's a car you don't see every day: a 1991 Olds Cutlass Calais Quad 442. The last of the Olds 442s! Unlike the Million Dollar '70 Olds 442, this one is priced- at the time of this writing- in the four-figure range, and it's a rare one- only 204 were built. The seller claims the 190-horse Quad Four was good for 14-second quarter-mile runs in this car, which is pretty good for a front-drive GM car of its era, and the styling is very much of its time. You could go faster for less money, but it's an interesting bit of Detroit musclecar history. Is $8,500 a Nice Price… or is it time to head over to Booth Numbah Two for the crack pipe?
[eBay Motors, thanks to Maymar for the tip.]

It's one of the all-time legendary musclecars from the Golden Age of hot GM A-bodies: a 1969 Hurst Olds 442. The seller doesn't provide much description, other than "BACK IN JUNE OF 69' GEORGE HURST & LINDA VAUGHN WERE SEEN IN THE BACK SEAT OF THIS CAR DOING THE 69," which we find disturbing as well as uninformative. Still, it's got to be the real thing, and no doubt any prospective buyer knows chapter and verse about this particular car's history anyway, what with the small-world nature of the high-line musclecar milieu. A million bucks, though? What do you think?

[eBay Motors, thanks to ChucksBullitt for the tip]

I found this Cutlass on the same block as the 1954 Ford Mainline and the 1947 Plymouth (and, yes, that's an old Dart parked behind the Olds). This East End block features two old-car aficionados living across the street from each other, each with quite the impressive stable of street-parked classics.


This Cutlass doesn't seem to move much, but at least the shady trees keep damage to the convertible top to a minimum.


I had a friend in high school whose father had purchased a brand-new '69 Cutlass (purple, of course) immediately after immigrating to Alameda from Okinawa; truly an example of the American Dream in action. When my friend turned 16, she got the Olds, which she proceeded to drive at a maximum speed of 17 MPH... until one day she loaned it to a friend who drunkenly slid it into a telephone pole, destroying the entire passenger side. It still ran great, so I bought it for $50 and proceeded to indulge in some of the finest hoonage of my teenage driving career. That 350 engine and Positraction rear were made to order for guh-narly burnouts, and there's nothing like that "Dah-WOOOOO!" sound you get from a Quadrajet carburetor (especially when it's accompanied by Motörhead's "Bang To Rights" on your low-end early-80s cassette deck).


Seriously, GM needs to bring back the marker lights in the shape of the make's logo.

We're going to talk about this 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible first, because the seller is only going to offer this deal for, and I quote, "a VERY LIMITED time!" Now, you might hesitate to call this, uh, deal a car, since in fact it is a big heap of Oldsmobile-themed parts. However, you can turn this heap of parts, plus some time and money- well, OK, a helluva lot of time and money- into a beautiful Cutlass convertible that will turn heads at any locale you deign to grace with your presence. It looks like you get neither engine nor trans, but maybe they're buried in the heap somewhere; anyway, you can always build up a lugnut-snapping 455, add Rock Crusher transmission, and drop 'er right in. Just so's you know, the seller does "NOT HAVE TIME FOR TIRE KICKERS AND LO-BALLERS," so you'll need to let your 15 Benjamins do all the talking right away when you show up.

That Cutlass is a nice "car," sure, but sometimes when you're shopping for a heap of parts you want a Pontiac heap, know what we mean? Of course you do. That's why we want to pull your coat about this heap of parts associated with a former 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix convertible, which you can obtain for an unbelievable 2,500 bucks! The best thing about this listing is that there are four photographs, one of which shows a very nice Grand Prix, but the seller states "The two pictures of 'whole' cars are for reference only, and not the one for sale," so it's impossible to tell what you would actually be buying! Talk about establishing negotiating leverage! One of the photos shows what appears to be a Pontiac engine; maybe it's included and maybe it's a Ram Air 455! Don't listen to your fears, though- listen to your heart! Your heart says you need a great big convertible from The General, doesn't it? Well, there ya go!

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Hot damn, a Lotus Esprit S2 for under five grand? Yes, folks, that's no typo! You hand the gentleman $4950 and you leave with a genuine 1979 Lotus Esprit S2 boasting a mere 35,000 miles on the clock. You'll note we didn't say you'll drive away in an Esprit, because there's the little matter of some fire damage; the seller doesn't go into great detail on the subject, but the engine compartment area looks awfully scorched. If you're willing to throw in another $2900, however, the seller promises to repair it... though the definition of "repair" is, how shall we say, not spelled out here. But come on, it's a Lotus Esprit! A 140-horse 4-banger was sheer lunacy in '79, and just look at how beautiful it is! We'll be the first to admit that this car doesn't look so strong in the parts availability, reliability, and ease-of-repair departments, but... well, that's where the "Hell" part of Project Car Hell comes in!

Who among us doesn't want a big Detroit musclecar from the Golden Age of the breed? Yes, a midsize coupe with great big rumbly engine and unapologetically flashy trim, a car that exudes confidence and optimism! The GM A-body musclecars of the late 60s are especially good, with their 4-link rear suspensions and mean-looking lines, but who can afford a genuine GTO, big-block Chevelle, GS, or 442? Well, if you're willing to dive into the glowing, lava-spewing entrance to Project Car Hell, you can! Howzabout a '69 Olds 442 for the you-must-be-dreaming righteous price of $3500? Where's the catch, you ask? Well, it doesn't run... but you probably figured that, and anyway the original 400 has been replaced by a 350. No problem for a wrenchmeister of your caliber! But, see, there's the "targa roof" the seller has installed. Yes, you read that correctly: this 442 has been modified with a "custom removable Targa top, fabricated using factory convertible components." Oh, and there's rust. And the interior's trashed. Don't let that scare you, though- all you need to do is weld the roof back together, build a 400 or 455, fix all the rust, and.... well, actually you should let that scare you.

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