Photos from the Cohort by Hyperpack.
Here’s a generation of Oldsmobile that has only sporadically appeared at CC, the 1970 Delta 88; itself a slight restyling of the 1969 models and riding on the ’65-’70 B-body platform. Regardless of the rare sightings, the line sold fairly decently back in the day. So unlike this sample, the brand was anything but frozen in the sales charts at the time. Not yet sizzling hot, as the division’s rise wouldn’t hit its stride until ’72.
It looks like what we have here is a Custom Town Sedan or just a plain Town Sedan. It’s a bit hard to tell, between the snow covering and the missing trim. And I know it may be hard to see, but the back end does show a Toronado-esque influence that the Delta 88 line adopted back in ’67.
Even by this date, Oldsmobile’s marketing was grappling with the ‘Olds’ issue in its name. A byproduct of the youth-oriented culture of the late ’60s, I guess.
So way before the “This Is Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” era, these Oldsmobiles were Youngmobiles. “Escape Machines” meant to take you away from daily tedium. Should you be tired of dealing with computers (yes, that’s what those boxes in the background are) at your daily job, an Olds -or Youngs?- was the way to “lift you out of the ordinary!”
I’m honestly not sold on that whole Youngmobile idea, and pretty much find it rather silly. But after all this time, I’ll agree that these old Oldsmobiles do serve as Escape Machines, if not quite in the way their advertising originally suggested. To purchase and drive one today would certainly be an Escape Machine to the past, where Oldsmobiles existed. Like the ones my father’s coworkers used to drive. Never mind all that Youngmobile nonsense.
Related CC reading:
Wait a sec! What’s that second-to-last line in the last ad? Wiper/washer control on the shift lever? 20 years before GM moved it to the turn signal lever? I’ve never heard of this, has anyone else? Is there a picture somewhere of this option?
I never noticed that before!
Here’s a brochure image – looks to me like the windshield washers are controlled by a button on the end of the shift lever. It’s a little unclear from the ad text, which says “wiper/washer” – since that suggests that the whole wiper operation is on the shift lever, which doesn’t appear to me to be the case… but maybe I’m missing something.
These were handsome, very well built, durable, and comfortable full-sized family cars, the best choice for a large car in those years, and quite superior is structure and quality to their 1971 to ’76 B and C body successors. At the time Lansing consistently achieved the highest quality rating of any GM assembly plant. A fine choice for families and long distance travelers who needed a big car and great value for the money. The 350 offered plenty of power, the 455 wasn’t really needed except for trailer-pulling. I wish one could buy one now.
In the back ground of the ad for the blue Delta 88 there are several girls attending to the most advanced computer system available in1967.Reel to reel data being manipulated ,sorted and configured…..That brings back a flood of memories for me, but I do not remember sexy girls in mini skirts as “computer operators” as they were called in my day.
I was thinking mostly the same thing, but then I did a Google Image search for “Computer Operator 1970” and over half of them were women, although not necessarily in miniskirts and sexy.
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=9fc63cc73e9e59b8&sxsrf=ACQVn0-QehUxeuSsJaRBEHuYiUjb9adojQ:1709741655638&q=computer+operator+1970&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr3qmAhOCEAxXfMzQIHZfbCSMQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=1536&bih=756&dpr=1.25
I’m pretty sure what we’re looking at here aren’t the actual computers, but just the 9-track tape drives that stored data for them. But as explained in this TVTropes article – https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComputerEqualsTapeDrive , the actual mainframe computers were often housed in boring metal boxes, and before personal computers became a thing in the mid-’70s, the tape drives with reels spinning furiously back and forth were what was most associated with “computers” for most laypeople.
Yes, tape storage has long been associated with computers. I’ve worked with some odd computers in my time; one was a Fairchild that had a Kennedy mercury column tape drive that had to be loaded before you could perform any operation; it had a (small) hard disk but the disk was only used as scratchpad memory (kind of like a cache, albeit not a fast one) that was volatile so that it would not retain data (or maybe more accurately data on it was suspect) after powering off than on again.
Back in the day also worked with cassette decks with digital certified tape for dropouts, on DEC PDP-8 (and later a Radio Shack TRS-80 mod 1) as primary storage, but mostly use tapes for backup media.
Back to the car, my Aunt had a ’69 Olds like this bought new, don’t know what happened to it (we never lived closer than about 3 hours driving distance from my relatives) but I wish I might now get something similar; it seems to to be a good car for a retired person I am now, though the fuel mileage isn’t probably good, it would make a great highway car with proven drivetrain. Fourty years ago I wouldn’t have looked at this car twice,but now I’m older,appreciate a smooth riding car with easy ingress/egress now that they’re hardly common anymore. Guess for some reason I like things that are like that more than what’s currently common.
I think that there were actually quite a few women employed in data centers as a lot of the work was what was still associated with “women’s work”. Keypunch, mounting tapes, loading card decks, pulling reports (like, literally pulling that continuous form greenbar paper out of the printers) etc. Not to say that there weren’t women doing other things as well.
I believe that the second lady from the left is attempting to take dictation from that big tape drive.
I started my computer programming career in 1969 as a co-op student from university. My boss was an exceptionally capable woman, and although all the computer operators were men, many of the programmers were women. It is true that all the data entry workers (keypunch operators) were women.
Disc packs replaced the tape drives as time went along. The disc packs could hold more info, but still required manual intervention.
https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/disk-pack
However, this too moved to servers with terabyte of data storage. If you watch YouTube videos on Google data centers, its racks and racks of servers and a just a handful of maintenance personnel. No operators in sight running around to load discs or tapes.
Yup, a young mini-skirted office worker was going to go buy a four door hardtop “Youngmobile” instead of a Maverick.
The dad of a friend of mine had one like the 4-door in the data center picture. He was a dentist (just passed a few weeks ago 1 month shy of his 100th birthday). It was really the perfect car for him. Big, comfy, like riding around on your couch. Sufficiently luxurious enough for someone in the dental arts…but conservative and not over the top showy like a Cadillac.
It had the strange effect of making everyone within 10 feet of it seem about 20 years older than they really were.
I remember driving one of these sometime between 1975 and 1979 for a week in L.A. My 1972 Mustang fastback was at the body shop for minor repair and they arranged a Blue (as above) over white/white convertible from Rent-A-Wreck next door for me. It was in near-perfect condition. Great top-down cruising fun but not something I was unfamiliar with as these boats were the cars I grew up with in the family. We never had less than full size.
Thanks for the memories! The pictured 70 88 is the exact same year and color as my first car, my parents hand me down. Memory fades but it was just the basic model with few electrics – manual windows and door locks for example.
Can’t tell if this one has a vinyl roof or if it was just white painted (as was mine). Ours had the 350 which was a slug off the line but could float effortlessly at higher than legal highway speeds forever.
The old man replaced it with a 74 88 Royale with a 455. That thing could do burnouts for blocks.
Each of my new car $ale$ Manager$ had one of these with the, IIRC, W-33 455 option. They did MOVE for such a big car, as I found out when I “test drove” them!! 🙂 They could sooooooprise some “muscle cars” of the time; plus just about give you whiplash when one floored the “loud” pedal! DFO
I had my own term for cars like this, as a kid. ‘Large and lumpy’. I found them overstyled. Fender flaring, a bit too much. Made the front and rear track appear too narrow. 1971 version slightly better.
Even though I graduated from high school in 1970 and was very much into cars, I have zero recollection now of the “Youngmobile” advertising campaign.
My mom’s friend got a blue, “69”. Had a black top, cloth (fabric seats), a/c even. We thought it was the “poshest”! lol
I do remember how much it was rusting , approaching “1973”.
Yike!
Never thought of it as any kind of a “young mobile” though.
My dad bought a new 1970 Delta 88 hardtop sedan in light green with a black vinyl roof ( Dad wanted a gold one like your photos) and drove our family to the Grand Canyon and back to Ohio. It was 13 days on the road and nary an issue with that car. We owned it until dad replaced it with a 78 Custom Cruiser wagon. Dad
I think the “washer / wiper” on the gear shift only activated the washer & wipers as a quick clean of the windshield. 3 or 4 passes & sprays then back to off. The wiper controls were still on the dash. This was a time when GM wiper systems would only spray the washer when the wipers were in a certain position on the windshield.
At least that’s how I remember them, but it has been a while…
Roger
I have one with 455 and 46,000 original miles