Oldsmobile Cutlass 3rd Gen

The 1968 car reads as a scaled-down full-size Oldsmobile, and that was deliberate. Stan Wilen's studio kept the division's formal vocabulary on an intermediate body: a split grille with vertical bars that became an Oldsmobile signature for the next decade, a long hood over the 112-inch two-door wheelbase, and a coke-bottle flank creased more softly than the Pontiac and Buick versions of the same shell. Two rooflines carried the range. The Cutlass S used a fastback Holiday Coupe, and from 1970 the Cutlass Supreme got a formal notchback with a squared-off rear quarter. That is the roof that sold. Vertical taillights arrived for 1969 and stayed. The 1970 Rallye 350 is the outlier and the most forward-looking thing here: Sebring Yellow over urethane-coated bumpers finished in the same colour, black and orange decals, a blacked-out grille and yellow-painted wheels. Body-coloured bumpers looked strange to 1970 dealers and looked normal by 1980. The Vista Cruiser kept its raised rear roof but swapped the split skylight of the previous car for a single piece of glass.

There is no factory road-racing record here, and the reason is corporate. GM's January 1963 ban on factory competition was still in force across this entire generation, so Oldsmobile's involvement had to be arranged at arm's length and aimed at the drag strip, where a dealer could carry the work. That is where the Cutlass actually ran. Oldsmobile backed a five-car W-31 effort through Smothers Brothers Racing in 1968 and 1969. Jim Waibel campaigned the King Oldsmobile-sponsored 1969 Cutlass S convertible in NHRA G/Stock, cut the ribbon at Gainesville Dragway and ran the inaugural Gatornationals in it. The heavier W-30 442s did the rest of the Stock and Super Stock work, and the whole programme reached buyers through the Dr. Oldsmobile print campaign rather than through results. The generation's most public race appearance was ceremonial. A 1972 Hurst/Olds convertible paced the Indianapolis 500 with Jim Rathmann driving, the first pace car to carry an automotive parts manufacturer's name rather than only a carmaker's. Oldsmobile sold 629 replicas of it, 130 of them convertibles.

The Cutlass never landed a film role anyone remembers, and it did not need one. Its cultural work was done in advertising first and in driveways afterwards. From 1969 to 1971 Oldsmobile ran Dr. Oldsmobile, a mad-scientist character in lab coat and monocle with a crew of assistants, selling the W-machines to buyers who could not afford the insurance on a big-block. The year before, the oldest surviving American car brand had tried to shed its own name with the Youngmobile campaign and slogans like 'Youngmobile thinking' and 'Young it up'. It was a strange thing to say about yourself, and it worked. What followed matters more than either. This body is where the Cutlass became the car most American families would picture if you said mid-size Oldsmobile, and the nameplate went on to build 632,742 cars in 1977 alone. The 1972 Supreme has had a long second life too, turning up regularly as a lowrider build, which for a lot of people is the only 1968-1972 Cutlass they have ever seen up close.

Corrosion is the whole story and everything else is maintenance. The rear window channel is where it starts, and because the water goes into the trunk rather than onto the floor, a car can look sound while the drop-offs behind the rear wheels have already gone. Lower quarters, wheel arches, floor pans, cowl seams and the frame near the suspension mounts follow in that order. Northern cars are worse, and vinyl-top cars are worse again. The drivetrains are not the problem. Oldsmobile V8s are heavy, conservatively built and long-lived, and the Turbo Hydra-Matics behind them are among the toughest automatics GM ever made. What they do is leak, because nobody sealed an engine properly in 1970, and they run hot when a fifty-year-old radiator and a tired fan clutch are left alone. The nylon-toothed cam gear in the original timing set sheds teeth with age and is worth changing before it picks its own moment. Trim is the quiet frustration. Mechanical parts are everywhere. A correct Cutlass Supreme grille surround in good condition is not.