1962 Cutlass by William Rubano
(originally posted 3/4/2011)
How did the Cutlass eventually become one of America’s best selling cars for years on end, after such a rather modest beginning? And why would it then fade and die so suddenly? These are the weighty questions we will be pondering and attempting to answer in our many-chaptered Curbside Classic Complete Cutlass Chronicles (“CCCCC”).
The Cutlass was born during the most creative years of GM: 1960-1963. It was a time when GM invested massive resources in its new compact cars, the 1960 Corvair and the 1961 Olds F-85, Buick Special, and Pontiac Tempest. They all bristled with innovative features, but were a short-lived and modest-selling phenomena, and the Cutlass only found its real success quite some years later.
The first factoid is that the Cutlass didn’t start life as as an actual “car”, but as a high-line trim model of Oldsmobile’s new-for-1961 compact, the F-85. Like the Tempest and Special, the initial focus was on a more compact and thrifty way to experience GM’s mid-level brands.
The Cutlass coupe didn’t appear until mid-year, sporting bucket seats and other distinctive trim to distinguish it. Essentially, it was the corollary to the 1960.5 Corvair Monza, which the first American sporty-compact car to popularize the genre. GM’s 1960-1961 line of new compacts may have been developed right in the depths of 1958 recession, which favored stodgy Larks and Rambler Americans. But GM very quickly realized two things: that the very practical and cheap Ford Falcon was going to gobble up an outsized share of the new compact market, and that sportiness and luxury could be sold, for a healthy profit, at that. The unexpected and outsized success of the Monza gave Buick, Olds and Pontiac the green light to rush their versions into production too.
GM’s 1961 compacts were a fascinating trio: the Pontiac Tempest , the Buick Special and the F-85. They shared their basic Y-Body unibody shell with the Corvair, although it was of course reworked for the conventional front-engine rear-wheel drive configuration, and their wheelbase was extended 4″ (from 108″ to 112″) at the front. But they retained the Corvair’s basic passenger compartment intact: stepping from a Corvair into Cutlass or Tempest brings that fact home. In automotive history, that makes them quite unique indeed: the same basic car built in both rear and front engine variations.
And with an incredible palette of engines too. The Corvair had its air cooled boxer six, the Tempest a four cylinder cur down from a V8, and Buick developed a sweet little 215 CID (3.5 L) all-aluminum V8, from which it would also derive its cast-iron V6 for 1962. That’s another story too.
Before we delve into the unique Cutlass qualities, what also sets these 1961 compacts apart is their styling. GM designed them to look like almost perfect 7/8 scale models of the big Pontiacs, Olds and Buicks; quite, unlike the approach Ford took with the Falcon. Frankly, Ford probably had the right idea. As cute as these mini-me cars are, they were none too roomy. Their 112″ wheelbases were three inches longer than the Falcon, but the Falcon’s more upright seating probably had them beat. So it only made sense to emphasize their sporty qualities.
Strictly speaking, it was the Falcon’s slightly longer and more stylish offshoot, the Comet, that really competed with these cars, and very effectively. The Comet was perhaps a surprise hit, and sold as well as any two of these GM compacts combined.
Although the popular Corvair Monza is often given credit for paving the way for the 1964 Mustang, it might be more accurate to say that the Cutlass, Skylark and Le Mans really did a fair bit of that too. If GM had given these coupes a more overtly sporty design with a longer hood and shorter tail, they could have been quite the hit.
The Cutlass arrived with a 155 hp version of the V8, which really wasn’t quite the same as the Buick engine. Olds engineers redesigned the cylinder head with larger valves and a different combustion chamber, and added a sixth head bolt. And with the mid-year arrival of the Cutlass came an optional “Rockette” high output version, with a four barrel carb, higher compression and whatever else it took to elevate output to 185 hp (gross). That made it it a moderately brisk number, in my experience. The illicit details that led to my first assault on the 100 mph barrier are described in greater detail in my Auto-Bio #9, but let me just say that my steamy experience was fairly symptomatic of these early aluminum V8 cars.
Issues with corrosion from the wrong mixture of materials, along with major porosity and other casting problems led to overheating like that which shut me down prematurely. And it wasn’t just the high speed alone; this Cutlass’ engine incessantly ran hot, and opening the hood was like peering into a hot Frigidaire oven. GM was happy enough to be done with it after 1963 and send the whole thing off to England and into Rover’s waiting hands.
We can’t not talk early Cutlass without touching on the legendary turbo-charged Jetfire version that appeared in 1962. In a classic GM move, it had to play the dangerous role of being the first to adopt a relatively untried new technology, only to get its turbos fingers burned. Both the Corvair and Cutlass turbo engines arrived the same year, and I suppose in relative terms, the Corvair Spyder’s engine was the more successful, given that it was made all the way through 1966.
Both of them used a similar “pull-through” arrangement, with the unusual side-draft carburetor hanging just off the turbine as in the Corvair’s set up. Because of the intrinsic lag of these primitive turbos, the Jetfire’s compression was kept high (10.0 to 1) and boost fairly low (5 psi). That led to a serious detonation problem which had to be quenched by a water-alcohol injection system. Does this not have GM written all over it?
Needless to say, the Jetfire quickly developed a bad rep, despite its impressive 215 hp output, which put it at the same one hp per cubic inch that the Chevy 283 attained (without turbo) in 1957. Maybe Olds should have just gotten Zora Arkus Duntov to do a bit of moonlighting for them. Many of these were soon converted to normal aspirations by dealers.
The Cutlass had another problem, which surprised me when I drove it. GM not only made it look like a big car, they managed the nigh-near impossible by making it feel and handle like one. What a bitter disappointment for what could have been such a nifty little car. The power steering was quite slow and numb, the suspension too soft, and the whole thing wallowed, drifted and plowed like Grandpa’s big Delta 88. What an accomplishment! Maybe the shocks were worn out on the one I drove. But even the high-tech Jetfire didn’t rate any proper suspension improvements. I guess the budget got blown by the turbo.
The infamous “Slim-Jim” Roto-Hydramatic was jerky and slow to shift down, never mind the rep it soon developed for certain expensive weaknesses. This transmission was specifically designed to fit in this little car. One wonders if GM actually made any money on these ’61-’63 Y-Bodies, given all the unique engineering that each division was throwing at them (the Buick Special even had its own automatic!)
The 1963s were restyled to look even more like the full-sized Olds, but the extra length was all extra sheet metal hung out over the ends, which obviously didn’t help handling either.
Some like the cleaner ’63 look, but the artificially packed on width and length spoil the original’s fairly tight package. To each their own.
That of course would all end soon enough. And although the loss of divisional independence has often been lamented, these cars tend to give a pretty convincing case otherwise. The second generation Cutlass, along with the rest of the new 1964 GM intermediates, was to be a highly pragmatic affair, the next step in the consolidation of the GM’s divisions, for better or for worse.
Related reading: 1962 Buick Special CC 1963 Pontiac LeMans CC 1960 Comet CC
Other than their draw-through configuration and approximate boost pressure, the Jetfire turbo and the Monza Spyder turbo systems don’t have much in common. The Corvair turbo didn’t have a wastegate, for one, where the Olds not only had a wastegate, it had a failsafe switch that would pop it open (effectively killing the boost) if the water injection tank was empty, to prevent engine damage. In contrast, Chevy just knocked the compression ratio down a point and accepted turbo lag as the cost of doing business. The Jetfire was about as sophisticated as you could get in the pre-computer era, although it was dreadfully expensive to engineer and build.
The irony was that a lot of the service problems that cropped up were the opposite of the ones Olds expected. They were concerned that people would drive it too hard, but in practice, the more common issue was that owners didn’t drive them hard enough, which caused its own problems.
I’m reminded of something C / D said about the Vega when they first tested it — that it was built to the numbers, performing well in all the objective measurements, but falling down in the subjective areas.
How could it fade and die so suddenly? Easiest question ever. The W body happened in 1988.
The rear drive Cutlass coupe was (after the 1981 redesign) the best looking and most popular of the G-bodies in the late ’80s, and it was still wildly popular among rear-drive traditionalists, even in 1987. They were EVERYWHERE in Middle America.
Then the Ws came out, and not only were they not rear-drive cars anymore, driving away the traditionalists, but the Cutlass Supreme was the least attractive of the bunch. Where I live it took a LONG time for W-bodies to become popular. It’s why the A bodies hung on for so long – at least they were selling.
At the same time as the Ws came out, Olds brought out its disastrous “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile” advertising, which turned off existing Olds fans and didn’t appeal to the people Olds wanted to sell to.
Those two factors killed the Cutlass.
I have to say that these are my favorite Cutlasses. I just think Idea wise they were perfect American Cars, just not all the way baked (the noted numb steering, the leaky and slower that the Special/Skylark’s Turbine Drive 2spd Automatic, The Jetfire… in general).
But I think inherently there was enough good here that was lost in the Body on Frame 1964 “truly” Mid Sized Cutlass (for one I like both the swoopy 61-62 styling and the bejeweled “Junior Starfire” 1963 styling and find the 1964-67 Cutlasses a bit plain in comparison). I don’t think the BOF Cutlasses immediately after were all that much more roomy, considering they were about a foot longer than the 1961. And gas mileage definitely didn’t peak in the low 20s like the Aluminum V8 could (? well… maybe a standard tune 330?).
It’s sad when GM kills a car when they finally get it right. It’s even sadder when they kill one before really putting any thought into it. Same goes for the Gorgeous 1962 Special/Skylarks. I can pass on the Tempest…. that big 4 always seemed a bit ridiculous.
Jetfire is such a great name. Pity it only lasted a few years. A sick twisted part of me thinks that if Olds went with names like Jetfire rather than bland names like Intrigue they might possibly be still around.
My cousin Larry, who went of to Reed College, and became a serious pothead, had one of the Turbo F85s. Pretty sweet car.
My Great-grandmother, who was still alive back then, owned a the Buick version (non-turbo). It was her last car. My mother inherited it, but traded it pretty soon. Yes, that is the same Great grandmother who had owned a Baker Electric before the Great War.
One of the real GM tragedies was giving up on that little aluminum V8, instead of perfecting it.
There is an actual service station around the corner from where I live. On top of it being a service station with two garages, it also sell 100 octane gasoline. I believe the price today is $8.39.9 a gallon, but 100 octane is still pretty scarce. When I moved in here about two years ago, there was a 1961 or 1962 Cutlass coupe sitting out back on flat 13 inch tires, wihch has since vanished. It had the V8, but no radiator. I thought about trying to buy it, but finally realized that none of the Y-bodies combined a manual transaxle, rope drive, and the aluminum V8. GM. Who knows what would have been possible if they’d died.
Regarding the combination of the aluminum V-8, manual transaxle and rope style driveshaft, the Pontiac Tempest & Lemans was available with a manual transaxle and the rope driveshaft was standard. The Buick version of the aluminum V-8 was available as an option over the Pontiac slant 4 for the 1961 and 1962 model years. In 1963 Pontiac used their own cast iron 326 V-8 as the optional V-8..
My parents bought a new 61 F-85 station wagon. This is the first family car that I can remember. It was that reddish maroon (as shown in the Jetfire picture above) with a white roof. Fat 1961 whitewalls with dog dish hubcaps.
I vividly remember this car. My family’s experience with the aluminum V8 was one of frequent overheating. The car probably lived at the extreme high edge of normal temp, but we will never know because GM was too cheap to give you a temp gauge. The ritual was that the idiot light would pop on, mom would pull over, shut it off, open the hood and sit for about 15 minutes. The aluminum must have dissipated heat pretty quickly, because this would take care of it. My parents ran a 50-50 antifreeze mix year around, which was unusual in those days. They took the car on a trip to Florida and were stranded for hours after a pump jockey popped the rad cap and spewed anti-freeze everywhere. It was not easy to find anti freeze in Florida at that time. As for the turbo, it occurs to me – what a great idea: take an engine that can barely be cooled enough to run, then raise the compression and blow hot exhaust gas into the intake! Brilliant!
The wagons were unique for one other reason: these cars used a liftgate instead of the more traditional tailgate. Unlike the 70s liftgates, the rear window electrically lowered. This was before car seats, so my folks would fold down the rear seat and leave my sister and I to ride around in a gigantic playpen. I also remember the stern warning to stay away from the rear gate because if you didn’t slam it securely, it would sometimes pop open. Somehow, neither of us kids got spit onto the asphalt. My sister did nearly get strangled when she slid into the gap between the front seatback and the edge of the folded rear seat. She fit pretty well until she got to her head, then she couldn’t get back out. This was partly due to my short mother who had the drivers seat all the way up, creating a big gap. But this was before Nader and the NHTSA, so the fix was :”Don’t do that again!” instead of a recall.
Still, my mother loved that car. She still remembers it as one of her favorites ever. However, she never forgot the lesson: never buy a car in its first year out. (Although my parents ignored this rule when they traded the 61 wagon in for a 64 Cutlass hardtop – which I will hold until the next installment of CCCCC).
I’ll save my stories for the generations of Cutlass that I’m familiar with. But Oldsmobile was always close to my families heart and my father and I both signed the Oldsmobile Club of America’s online petition to try to save the brand. We knew it was a symbolic act but we had to do something. Oldsmobile was viewed as a step up for us, what you graduated to after Chevy and Pontiac when you could afford it. (I guess we bought into GMs marketing scheme.)
The cars being discussed in this post are as old as I am and I have virtually no memory of them. We are looking at these cars through the lens of contemporary vehicles and their nearly perfect behavior. I can remember my father and older brothers talk about their cars from years past having a number of problems that we would not accept today. They were considered part of the ownership experience.
One of my early car memories involves a Jetfire. My dad had transferred to Oldsmobile Product Engineering in 1961 and had one as a company car sometime after that. I don’t remember if it was a ’62 or ’63. It was either a prototype or an early production car since he was in the Experimental group at the time. He was excited that such a small engine (for the day) had so much power. I still remember him remarking about it as the turbo spooled up on wide open throttle acceleration. Only 10 years old, I was still quite interested when he described a turbocharger and how it works in response to my questions.
In that era, GM was making so much money they were searching for ways to spend it! There was great concern that the government would break the corporation up due to its near 50% market share and great profitability. It was said- If there were 5 major product innovation ideas being considered, Chrysler could only afford to pick one and better hope it was the right choice, Ford could afford to try 2 and GM could just go ahead and fund all 5!
The diversity of powertrains in these cars was amazing. It was not mentioned in Paul’s post, but Tempest also shared the rear transmission and independent rear suspension of the Corvair. In many ways, these cars were way ahead of their time. Unfortunately, these new technologies were fraught with quality issues as well as sensitivity to improper or inadequate maintenance by customers. I worked for a Zone Service Manager in the late ’70s who told of his earlier days as an Olds Service Representative when the aluminum V8 was current. He said he used to drive slowly from one dealership to the next because he knew he would be facing irate customers when he got there!
As technically interesting as these early Cutlasses and their platform mates were, they were commercial flops. Sales were poor, costs were high and they hurt their divisions quality reputations. Unfortunately, the lesson GM took was to stick with conventional, slowly evolving product change instead of revolutionary change. Organizational difficulty in executing radical innovation while maintaining quality would come back to bite them when CAFE demanded far more revolutionary changes in the early ’80s.
In the 1964 model year, GM decided to go to a larger, more conventional design ‘A’ car and sales took off. The fact is that customers far preferred the larger cars with bigger, much more powerful engines. F85/Cutlass went to 310HP 330CI V8, Tempest/GTO had up to 389CI and the muscle car era was born. The more conventional cars were very successful in the marketplace, while the surviving “oddball” Corvair would slowly fade away, gone after the 1969 model year. Monza, even with the turbo, simply could not compete with Mustang’s V8 and Camaro/Firebird were the result .
My only brush with Olds was a ’67 442 back in November of 1974. It would have been my first car. But I was 17 and didn’t know about the old bait and switch. I had the cash ready and, maybe even down, on it at Ford dealer now long since defunct. Instead, they sold the thing to somebody else and pushed me toward a ’68 Pontiac Catalina. My dad strongly advised me against it, but, as I said, I was 17.
My first and only bait-and-switch experience.
And the only Pontiac I’ll ever own.
The Jetfire deserves recognition for giving us one of the most bizarrely suggestive car commercials of all time. Watch the ladies in the back seat . . .
How could I forget about that one. Thanks; and I’m going to slip it into the story.
That commercial looks like it was written and made by Ed Wood, complete with cartoon lightning bolts and badly suggestive writing. My favorite is “Testing! Harsh, probing, merciless testing!”.
Was that a Mercedes that the Jetfire passed? It looked like the rear end and side of a 180 or a 190. If it was a 190Db, well, ANYTHING could have passed it. On the other hand, the 190Db could lay down a smoke screen worthy of squid ink, too.
Turbo rocket fluid? WTF?
The daughter of my parents’ next door neighbor had one of these new in 1963. She was a bit of a wild ass, I remember her swirling up our hill cul-de-sac and executing a high speed turn just before screeching to a halt at the curb next to our driveway. She always drove one-handed, with the left arm/hand resting on the window sill upright holding the roof on. I remember the whine of the turbo racing up our street. Funny how images like this stay with you forever, I will always remember the Jetfire this way.
Exactly – what in the world is Turbo Rocket fluid?!?! What chemical is in it and why do they need a special fluid for a turbocharger?
…and if that was a 190 Merc that the Turbo Rocket passed, there is a fair bet it is still going (albeit slowly)!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_%28engine%29
It’s not for the turbocharger per se, but for keeping the temperature of the intake charge down to prevent detonation. By the time turbos finally caught on 20 years later, engine management systems were available that could control timing based on a knock sensor (much easier and more effective than having to refill a bottle), so no manufacturer ever used it again.
But it does work, and can still be seen occasionally on hot-rodded turbos!
These bucket seat-and-column shift early sporty compacts look so odd. Surely they could’ve thrown in a four-on-the-floor with the Cutlass/Futura/etc. packages?
I know they got a 4-speed option in ’63 – including the Jetfire!
The Jetfire with its small 215 turbo V8 was quite expensive for a compact car in 1963 – even a Pontiac Tempest with the larger 326 and more horsepower cost a lot less as did the Ford Falcon Sprint and Mercury Comet S-33 with the 260 V8. By comparison, the longer and even larger engine 1964 Pontiac GTO with its 389 V8 of 325 or 348 horsepower was a better value than the ’63 Jeftfire as it had a starting price of $300 less and the GTO included many items not found on the Jeftfire including a heavy-duty suspension, Uniroyal Tiger Paw redline tires on 14-inch wheels (Jeftfire had ordinary blackwall tires on 13-inch wheels) and a 3-speed manual with Hurst floor shifter. The Goat vs. the Jetfire amount to a whole lot more car for less money – so much that Olds responded initially to the GTO with the 4-4-2 in mid-64 with the hottest 330 V8 rated at 310 horsepower and defining it as 4-speed transmission, 4-barrel carburetor, 2-exhaust pipes – the 4-4-2 would get a larger engine for 1965 to be fully competitive with the GTO and definition changed to 4-00 cubic inch engine, 4-barrel carb, 2-dual exhausts. And like the GTO, the 4-4-2 was a better value than the Jetfire thanks to a larger size and an engine with double the cubic inches and a lot more horsepower!
Yeah, it’s an all too familiar story. A manufacturer comes out with some kind of sophisticated engineering feat, only to get flattened by a cheaper, traditional, old-tech competitor. It happened with the Falcon which handily outsold the Corvair, then, again, with the GTO which easily bested the turbocharged V8 of the Jetfire.
Besides the whole undercutting the price of the more expensive Jetfire, it doesn’t sound like the smaller displacement engine of the Olds handled any better than the Pontiac. Combined with the more intensive maintenance requirements (overheating and that whole ‘rocket fuel’ thing), well, it’s no wonder that people flocked to the GTO and the Jetfire sold poorly.
It would happen again a couple of decades later with the SVO and 5.0L V8 Mustangs of the eighties. The V8 Mustang just killed the SVO, which ended up only lasting three years.
SVO vs. GT: Your characterization is not entirely accurate. One could get a GT model for *much* less than any SVO. The 5.0 LXs were even less expensive. The SVOs were generally loaded to the gills with equipment as they were positioned to be more of a “European Gran Turismo” style car. The GT was just the top of the line V8 Mustang of the day, nominally a muscle car. More a broadsword than a scalpel. I’m sure if they had sold SVOs in numbers even approaching the GTs they would have soldiered on after 1986.
When I bought my 1986 Mercury Capri 5.0L Sport Coupe (why oh why did they have to drop the RS designation that year?) I had been cross shopping an SVO. The Ford dealer in my area absolutely refused to negotiate with me on price of the SVO. Unfortunately for me, there weren’t any others nearby, so, no SVO for Geo.
The Capri was just as fast, and in my case, just as well equipped as the SVO I had been interested in. Additionally, mine was $3K less expensive out the door and our L-M dealer at the time was really rather good with customer service, especially in light of the horror stories I’d heard about the local Ford dealer.
But the main factor going against the SVO was price. Why spend $15-16K (in 1986 dollars, today almost $35K) when you could get a tried and true V8 ‘Stang for much less, have that great exhaust rumble and not have to worry about possible turbo issues? I loved the idea of the turbo SVO, although my ownership story with Ford turbos is not good, I was willing to try again. It wasn’t until I got my Dodge turbo that I was really happy with them. Another story for another time.
The GTO was not available in 63, so comparing the 64 GTO to the 63 Olds is not really comparing similar cars. The 64 Olds and Pontiac are midsize cars rather than compact size. The GTO was the first so called muscle car. I am not an expert on what happened to the muscle car competition.
The aluminum V8 was expensive to build and was gone by 64 in any case. I don’t think that there was a Jetfire in 64 either.
Though it’s not necessarily a comparison of similar cars, it was an example of comparing a small car with a small turbo engine vs. a slightly larger car with a much larger engine. And as car prices usually go up year after year, particularly when a car is upsized such as the F-85 and Tempest, the BOP intermediates actually had lower sticker prices in 1964 than their ’63 senior compact predecessors – this was due to the fact the more conventional engineering of the ’64 cars such as the larger cast-iron block V6 and V8 engines made then cheaper to build than the technically more interesting 61-63 cars. And the ’64 GTO and (4-4-2) were way cheaper than a 62-63 Jetfire and offered “more bang for the buck” – more cubes and horsepower. along with greater reliability. Now comparing the ’63 Jetfire with other “hot” cars of that year, the Jetfire cost a lot more than a Falcon Sprint or Comet S33 with a 260 V8 whose “real world” performance nearly equalled the Jetfire without all the headaches and the $3,100 price tag for the ’63 Jetfire could have bought you a number of even larger cars with humumgous engines such as a Dodge Polara or Plymouth Fury with a 426 wedge, a Chevy Bel Air or Biscayne with a 4-speed, dual-quad, posi-traction
409, a Ford Galaxie with a 425-horsepower 427, or a Pontiac Catalina with a 421 HO and 3-2 barrel carburetors plus a Hurst shifted 4-speed and Safe-T-Track rear.
My brother-in-law owned a jet black, two door with the 330 engine. He lived In western Canada, known for its cool, dry air. He raved about his Black Beauty, and never complained about it ever overheating.
Several years later, despite being the proud owner of a 63 Corvette 327-4 spd convertible, he still rued the sale of his F85. He still has a large framed pic of his beloved, with the Rocky Mountains in background, displayed above his office desk.
Go figure!?
Since this first ran, I have developed a better appreciation of the personalities of the BOP divisions. Harold Metzel, who ran Oldsmobile, was its former Chief Engineer and had come up thru the Olds engineering ranks going back to the late 1920s. It was probably the purest expression of an “engineer’s Division” as anything outside of Chrysler Corporation at the time. The whiz-bang Jetfire just brings this point home as probably the most technologically ambitious thing out of GM at the time.
Pontiac had the benefit of being almost as engineering-centric but with some guys like Knudson, Estes and DeLorean who had a genuine feel for what the customer really wanted. This probably explains why Pontiac was the first of the three Y body cars to stick a big displacement conventional V8 into the Tempest which, of course, turned out to be the winning formula.
The early sixties GM “compacts”, including both generations of Corvair, are easily my favorite American cars of all time. I refuse to look at them from a business perspective at all – yeah, I’m sure they lost a ton of money and it was oh-so-easy to just do real 7/8ths scale Intermediate cars (I love the ’64-’67s too, but not as much), but the compacts were built at the peak of American style and were the most ambitious cars GM ever got into showrooms. They a had look and feel that was both distinctly American and international all at the same time, which I don’t believe any American manufacturer has been able to repeat as successfully.
Maybe they were too ahead of their time, but I have to believe that had GM kept refining these cars, or at least carried over some of their innovative features into the next generation, they’d have been in a much better position 10 years later when their cars began looking like dinosaurs. If ROVER, of all companies, was able to get the aluminum V8 working properly, I have no doubt GM could have within a year or two.
You seem to have forgotten the Vega, and then the 4100 V8 and then the Northstar, although with better head bolts the Northstar would have been a decent engine.
That’s exactly what I mean; if they’d already gotten the kinks worked out of the Buick V8 back in the 60s, it wouldn’t have been such a challenge working with aluminum later on.
I am fairly sure that they did continue to experiment with aluminum. In the early 60’s the problem was more with coolant and I am not sure when that problem was really solved. I think that it was probably around the end of the 70’s or even in the 80’s. The problems with the engines that I mentioned varied, the Vega engine may have had some coolant problems along with what ever the other problems were. The current coolant is probably less than 10 years old (orange stuff).
The problem isn’t with the coolant, it’s that they were losing coolant because the decks of the aluminum blocks were warping when they got too hot. GM did continue developing them internally throughout the 60s, like most other large manufacturers, and the Vega (like the Jetfire) worked perfectly in a lab and on a test track. It wasn’t until people actually started driving them like real cars that the problems set in.
I really don’t know how much of a difference it would have made, but like I said – I’ve got to imagine an extra 7 years or so of mass market field testing would have helped in some way going forward. It takes GM about three years to get any new technology sorted out. The B-O-P compacts, and the expensive, high-tech machinery inside of them barely lasted that long.
My Buick history book states that there were corrosion problems in the cooling system, due to a combination of things. But this engine was expensive to build and combined with warranty costs, the decision to reengineer the V8 into a cast iron V6 made a lot of sense at the time.
I will agree with you that GM’s (or other manufacturers) testing is not a replication of what the actual owners will do with the cars in day to day use.
I also have figured out that the orange coolent (Dexcool) probably dates back to somewhere in the 80s or certainly in time for the northstar engine. I have not had a cooling system problem (except water pumps) with any of my cars.
I remember working on a friend’s ’92 Seville 4.9l that had the orange goo, but my ’89 Cavalier didn’t – so I’d pinpoint it to somewhere between those years!
Classic Curbside Classic Complete Cutlass Chronicles, or CCCCCC. Say that fast enough and you sound like you’re imitating the car noise on the phone to Car Talk.
I like the description of the water-alcohol injection and the issues leading to it. Sounds like an expensive, elaborate and elegant solution to a problem that never should’ve existed in the first place.
I looked over my Buick history book to see what light it might shed on the early compact cars. The Corvair was first and development started in the mid 50’s. The BOP compacts were based on the Corvair unibody as pointed out by Paul Niedermeyer. Chevrolet brought out the Chevy II in 62 and apparently wanted a car sized between it and the full size Chevy. So the BOP compacts then became mid size with body on frame. Supposedly this made the bodies quieter, which I think was a problem with the first compacts.
We had a ’63 Cutlass in blue just like the ad. My Dad called it ‘The Royal Barge’… So much for being compact.
“Because of the intrinsic lag of these primitive turbos, the Jetfire’s compression was kept high (10.0 to 1) and boost fairly low (5 psi). That led to a serious detonation problem which had to be quenched by a water-alcohol injection system. Does this not have GM written all over it?”
No, not really.
The idea of charge cooling with alcohol/water injection started around WW2, I believe it was the German Luftwaffe’s ME109 & FW150-series that had this feature along with North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft. I don’t know who was first, but this was well proven technology by the mid-1950’s when GM was looking at designing these cars.
Like others noted, the problem(s) with turbocharging production car engines really weren’t solved until the knock sensor and cheap electronic engine management systems came along. Chevy’s design was super simple, which made sense with their position in the hierarchy. Oldsmobile was the high-tech division, it only made sense they have a German-level of complexity in their offerings.
Had the other systems in the car been as robust as they needed to be, there may have been more acceptance of these engines back in the day. Imagine how different the 1973 Oil Embargo would have affected us if we’d had 4.0L turbocharged V8s in all of those land yachts were piloting back then. Well, those and a continuation of the four-speed automatics that GM had been famous for in the 50’s. I never understood the retrograde development of three speed automatics instead of pushing forward with four and more speeds…
I understand your point. Perhaps I didn’t make my point clear enough: it’s not that the idea of the technology was necessarily flawed; it was the execution. The Jetfire was not adequately developed and tested, and turned into a major problem almost from day one. Owners were unhappy, and many were converted by dealers back to normal aspiration.
Realistically, Olds rather blew it with this one, in a way that all-too often came to represent GM overly-quick dive into a new technology without adequate development and long-term reliability testing. That’s does have GM written all over it.
Keep in mind that the four-speed HydraMatic had no torque convertor, just a fluid coupling, hence it really needed four gears. First was very low, typically it upshifted to second before one crossed an intersection. First gear made up for the lack of the torque multiplication of a torque converter. These transmissions shifted quite jerkily, especially as they aged. And fourth gear was not on overdrive, just direct.
The three-speed torque converter transmission was much more in keeping with American demands and expectations. And the Europeans didn’t generally have overdrive transmissions, manual or automatic, until after the energy crisis.
But yes, it would have been a foresighted thing for GM to develop an overdrive four sped automatic sooner. Instead, they relied on very low numerical rear axle ratios to keep engine speed down, which worked with big engines well enough. But not with the downsized ones to come.
Hmmm overly ambitious and complex cars with all new unproven/untested technology, loads of money spent, poor execution and an unsuspecting public left with many issues to contend with and pulled out of production a short time later. Yes these were IMO GM’s first Deadly sins long before the Vega, 5.7 diesel, X-bodys, 8-6-4 fiasco and the dreaded HT 4100. Yes this was a road that the general would go down time and time again with history repeating it’self often.
Even still I find these car’s really interesting from a historical perspective and things such as aluminum motors, independent rear suspensions, turbo V8’s with a form of knock retarding and the unique transmission were all way ahead of there time.
Hi glad to find this forum as i have a 63 cutlass convertible with a factory 4 speed ok its been stilling / garaged since 02 now would like to do a brake up- grade & put a duel master and notice there is very little clearance between the frame & master ok has anyone figured out how / want to use ?
Also has anyone had any luck / ideas on get the block drain plugs out ? not the freeze-out plugs i tryed this way back then & could not get them out to really flush the system as the guy i bought it from just loosened the fuel line enough so i could not run it long ! on its maiden ride around the block a few times the hot light came on & i turned it off & rolled to home ! well its time to get this out & on the road so would like any help on this Thanks
Unassuming start for a car I suspect few either inside or outside GM guessed would become the biggest seller in the land.
Also, “Rockette” makes me think of something that definitely isn’t a V8 engine…
The ascension of the Cutlass isn’t too hard to figure. It was simply the right car at the right time in the Sloan Hierarchy. Chevrolet was always been the bottom rung, then Pontiac assumed the role of the performance division during the go-go sixties. Cadillac was always the premium luxury brand, with Buick just slightly below.
That left Oldsmobile as the middle brand when performance ceased to sell due to insurance surcharges and OPEC in the seventies. The Cutlass was perfectly positioned as a poor-man’s personal luxury car. It was possible to get a very nicely equipped, stylish Cutlass coupe for less than a Monte Carlo or Grand Prix, and GM scored big with that formula in the mid-seventies.
I read somewhere that Oldsmobile originally wanted for make the F85/Cutlass front wheel drive and power it with a transverse engine, but the idea was deemed to expensive for a compact car. The result was Olds went to a modified Buick alumnum V-8 and the front wheel drive idea was shelved for a future project, the Toronado. Had the F85/Cutlass been front wheel drive, each of the GM compacts would have been truly unique!