Featuring: Jack B. and Bark M.
Back in April I did a post on a green 1980 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency with the 350 CID diesel V8. At the time it was available on Craigslist. Well, it sold. During this past summer the new owner, Ed Kelly, dropped me a line via FB. He’d seen the original article while doing a web search, and went, hey, that’s the same car! My car!
What can I say about the GM diesel V8 of the late 70s and early 80s that hasn’t been said by countless others? Many people hate them, some love them, but most either want to forget them, or already have.
But tonight I saw this on a Facebook group I’m in which is called Finding Future Classic Cars. As a big fan of these full-size top-of-the-line Oldsmobiles, I had to check it out.
Remember Oldsmobile? Sure you do. Well, most people born before 1990 do at any rate. As a kid in 1980s Illinois, my neighborhood was full of them. There was the next door neighbor’s daughter’s beige Cutlass Cruiser station wagon, with wire wheel covers. Her husband had a metallic root-beer brown Custom Cruiser. Across the street and two doors down lived a cedar metallic 1982 Cutlass Ciera Brougham. About a block away, a friend’s mom had a white FWD Firenza hatchback. Expanding further outward, one of my classmate’s parents had a triple burgundy Cutlass Supreme coupe, and both my aunt and a cousin had a 1976 Cutlass Supreme Brougham and ’77 Cutlass Supreme coupe, respectively. So yes, I am familiar with the make, even now, over a dozen years after the marque’s demise. But what I remember best are not the Aleros, Auroras and Bravadas seen in the make’s final years, but the plush, velour- and leather-lined gunboats of the ’70s. Like the Ninety-Eight Regency. Continue Reading →