Since we had a Plymouth yesterday, we need to have an Oldsmobile today. I dug through my stash of DOTS car photos and could find only one Olds ready to go (and we've only seen two of them prior to today: a '64 Jetstar 88 and a '77 Custom Cruiser wagon). Does Alameda have an anti-Oldsmobile bias? Such are the mysteries of the Island That Time Forgot. Anyway, here's a 1968 (or maybe it's a 1969- damn if I can tell the difference; Olds experts, please tell us what we have here) Cutlass convertible, to bring our total count of Alameda Oldsmobiles up to three.
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.