Saturday, February 04, 2023

The Saturday Morning Post: Flashback Cars



Back in the late 1970's I worked with Alice, who had an identical Oldsmobile convertible to the one in this photo.  I had the hardtop coupe of the same car, in the same color.  They were a big cars. 

Alice was a retired federal bureaucrat, she put in her 30 years with the Feds, retired, bought a bar in the DC area. As she described it, she and her business partner drank up all of the profits.  While she was in rehab, a friend stopped to visit and described this pretty convertible on the showroom floor, and Oldsmobile had just announced that they would no longer build a convertible.  She bought it sight unseen from her hospital room, the dealer delivered it to her when she was ready to be released from inpatient therapy.  

After that she moved to Florida, with a couple of other retirees, into sort of a Golden-Girls arrangement.  She was selling real estate for a little extra income and to keep her mind occupied. A couple of times she put the top down with real estate for sale signs in the trunk, and had to have the rear window replaced. When we went to evening events, she was our designated driver (thank you Alice, we wouldn't have made it home without you a couple of times.) 

Seeing this car at the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction, brought back my memories of Alice.  I hadn't thought of her in years.  She was in her 60's, back in the late 1970's.  Unlikely she will read this. I think she would be happy that her car, finally made it to collector car status.   I checked the auction results, the car sold for $25,300, about 4 times what the car sold for new. 


15 comments:

  1. And to think the coupe was considered the small version. They were cruise ships.

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    1. I owned a four door version in white at one time, my Oldsmobile era. They were massive.

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  2. They were huge consumers of resources and huge polluters, but what grand cars the 'Yank Tanks' were, as we called them. Their on road handling was generally very bad, but they floated along the road like you were sitting on cloud. The likes of them will never be seen again.

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    1. Something like 10 miles to a gallon in town, and 16 on the highway.

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  3. Those big old boat cars slay me.
    Alice sounds like she had a wonderful complicated fun life.

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  4. My dad had one of those big cars but it was a Mercury Marquis. We called it Bubba. I learned to drive in Bubba except I could not parallel park that car to save my life. When it was time to take my driving test, my dad rented a Chevy Nova to help me with the parking portion. He knew!

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    1. My father had a huge Chrysler.

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  5. Great story! Yeah, those cars were boats in drag.

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  6. Alice sounds like she was a real pistol!

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  7. I love a good land yacht! My father-in- law had a Buick Le Sabre that looked a lot like that. I fell in love with it.

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    1. My father had a series of Buicks after 1977

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  8. Every year I think not too far away there is an old car auction. I'm told people fly in from all over to attend and bid on these beuaties.

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