I’ve ragged on about GM’s badge-engineering Deadly Sins, but like all sins, one has to learn to take advantage of them. Tired of your Chevy El Camino’s dull and boring front end? A complete face transplant awaits at the Pick and Pull. What will this summer’s fashionable El Camino wear? Pontiac? Buick? Naw; an Oldsmobile.
Just make sure to pick up some of the Oldsmobile badges while you’re there, to make the transformation complete.
And don’t just stop with the front clip; get the doors too, so that you can enjoy the upgraded comfort of genuine Cutlass Brougham door trim. And are those Cutlass seats as well? Only the hard core Cutlassphiles can tell us that. A dash transplant get a bit more complicated though…
There’s just the problem of the non-matching paint. That’s why I always drive a white car; one can always find suitable donor cars in that color. I’m trying to figure out what new front clip I can graft onto my Xb; I’m getting tired of it. Too bad they didn’t make a Lexus version.
[I promise a more in-depth El Camino CC sometime soon...it is summer, though]
Nice lookin ute and an easy upgrade, primer grey is good easy to match an cheap.
Why swap for Olds door panels if you aren’t going to do the steering wheel too?
I was about to comment on how I did not recall the manual transmission being offered on these when I noticed the column shifter. Either that or he has an automatic with 4 overdrive ratios.
It’s been quite a while since I shot that and talked to him, but my memory tells me he replaced the engine and transmission too.
What a fantastic creation. The slot mag wheels go with it quite nicely too.
Love it! For all the trash-mouthing of badge engineering, it opens the door for some creative re-assembly with just garage tools. Like the Volare cab with an Imperial front end, that I drove for a shoestring suburban cab company. Or the Thunderbird-Ranchero I once saw. Or my YJ-CJ Jeep…the possibilities are endless, limited only by free time and willingness to dismantle, possibly destroy, maybe the only car you can afford.
Auto styling for the beer-belly-unemployment set. Time, wrench set, beater, and Pick-A-Part. GO!
A buddy of mine collects Oldsmobiles and a couple of years back at the nationals, there was a guy that actually made a conversion like this one with a ’76 or ’77 Cutlass front end. He called it “El Cutlassino.”
A while back, saw on eBay an El Camino with the driveline, and much of the interior, of a Buick Grand National. Black, of course.
Locally, there’s a guy with an S10 pickup sporting the front clip from an Olds Bravada – plus full Oldsmobile badging. It’s painted a light blue that I suspect was a Bravada factory color.
And xB, really? You could make it a Toyota bB, of course.
I really like the results, as there is for me something special about Oldsmobiles, surely just because they were not sold in Chile, where I live.
Here is a similar project, but with a better result.
http://ripituc.blogspot.com/2011/04/oldsmobile-cutlass-el-camino-supreme.html