Is this a fitting-enough contrast to the Bond Minicar? It’s even sporting a Coppertone tan. The beach house is a lot less fussy in its design than the ’59 Olds, though. Traction in the soft sand? No problem; this Olds looks like it’s hovering well above it.
It’s white sand…
The wheels are buried under the Olds, compared to ’59 Wide Track Pontiacs!
This is the very color my 1960 Oldsmobile is. Copper mist metallic.
When I turned 16 in 1963, my father owned a 1959 Olds 88 four door “hardtop” (i.e. a sedan without a B pillar) in turquoise. His Grandmother (my great-Grandmother) had given it to him when the 1954 Rocket 88 she had previously given him, went TU.
It was a beast to drive, as you had no idea where the corners or sides of the vehicle were. I told my brother that it felt like driving a mushroom. I remember driving down a street near our house and scraping the sides of a number of the parked cars. I was to scared to stop or to say anything about it.
Fortunately, within a few months Dad sold the 88 to the African-American gentleman who worked in the gas station where he parked his car during the workday and bought new 1964 Pontiacs. A Tempest for Mom, and a Bonneville for himself. I enjoyed driving those cars.
This Olds is more of an aircraft carrier – you could land a fighter jet on it!
My cousin received her first car – a new 56 Chevrolet – for Christmas from her folks. It was a two-door sedan, real bottom of the line with Powerglide only. Three years later she had a good job as a telephone operator and was still living at home so she bought a new 59 Olds 88 convertible, white on white with red interior. I was only 9 or so and don’t know about the handling but I loved riding with her with the top down and the ribbon speedometer crossing into red.
At the time her folks still had their treasured 55 Olds, the first four-door hardtop. They hated the styling of the 58 but the whole family loved the 59 and encouraged my cousin to buy the convertible (I think they made the down payment). My second favorite GM 59 model, the first being that wide-track Pontiac with the split grille, very cool.
Never had one of these. Never got close to having one of these. I was an infant when they were new; and as we all know, these didn’t hold up well over time.
But when I was a kid, there were still a few around. Our next-door neighbors, the wife had a 1964 Olds convertible; (and I was buddies with one of the boys) so I had something to compare to. The old Olds looked…alien. The odd stretched lettering in the grille. The weird dogleg windshield post. How could these be the same type of car?
It was like looking at a steam locomotive next to a streamlined diesel. We were SO ignorant, so long ago…five long years before…
Cars changed a lot in five years in those days. Compare a 54 Olds to a 59 Olds. The dogleg was not one of Detroit’s better ideas though the goal behind it – a panoramic vision windshield – was cool, better than the restricted vision greenhouses of many cars today.
My recollection is that in the rustbelt where I grew up, the 59 Olds held up as well as or better than most. One of my high school buddies had a nice 59 4-door hardtop in 67; its body was in very good condition, at least up to the point when he rear-ended a parked maintenance truck late at night while speeding. Despite severe injuries, he lived to tell the tale.
You’re not kidding about the visibility, I read a car review recently that praised the car for having the A-pillars moved forward “for better visibility”… Would I be too cynical if I thought that “feature” was copied from the press release?
Mon contrare, just passing thru . . . . As I progressed into adolesence (the beginning of the 70’s) there were still a large number of these Oldsmobiles, and Pontiacs (and Chevies and Cadillacs – although I don’t remember too many ’59-’60 Buicks) cruising all around the Bay Area. Of course, NorCal is gentle on cars, provided they’re maintained. Bondo was usually for dents – not rust. I disagree that these “didn’t hold up well through time.” Olds was the only one of the ’59 GM family that did NOT have an “X” frame – in fact, Olds made a big deal of this in their advertising (ladder frame with cross members).
Well…different climates and different social tastes, yield different results. The 1959 and 1960 Olds units rusted horribly in the rear quarter panels, aft of the wheels. Many, many Oldsmobiles would have big sheets of metal broken off on three sides and flapping in the breeze.
The fashion didn’t hold up either. By my earliest full memory, 6 or 7 years old, these cars were for old fuddy-duddies and people who couldn’t afford anything else. They were, as noted in another spotlight, a popular car at Demolition Derbies.
It was an era when an eight year old car was an old car, and even if not rusted out or overly worn, was to be discarded as junk…as valueless.
We had a neighbor with one of these. Probably around 1968 or 1969 she was my Cub Scout den mother for a year. It was really unusual for someone to drive a car that old in our neighborhood. I remember really liking the car – I was surrounded by Oldsmobiles as a kid, but this one was old enough to be interesting. I remember the big brake pedal that screamed “POWER BRAKE” at you, and although suspended, had a rubber bellows under the pedal going into the floor. I also remember the cool speedometer that would turn colors.
These things hung around for quite awhile in my area, but would eventually get pretty ratty and rusty. They seemed to go into old age beater-dom better than the later models, because the 1960 was the last Olds with the real old-school HydraMatic. The 1961-64 cars with the Roto-HydraMatic seemed to disappear sooner.
What a contrast, the overdecorated cars of the time contrasted with the ultra-simple architecture. Olds, to me, was an “old” man’s car. So the relatively young models painted into the ad fit the car almost as well as the mid-century beach house. Olds has mostly been my least favorite GM car, styling-wise. Even the diagonal headlight Buick looked better in ’59. Engineering leader, styling laggard.
That GM copper metallic acrylic lacquer was very popular. My uncle got his ’59 Chevy in ivory and copper two-tone, a real nice combo.
Love the artwork; the car styling not so much. Don’t care for it from the front, rear, or side. Still if it had the quality of our family’s ’60 Super 88 convert., I’m sure the owners loved them. Pretty color.