The model names of Oldsmobile’s muscle cars had always confused me just a little bit. The naming of similar models from other makes didn’t seem all that cerebral. I could make sense out of what an SS396 or SS454 package would add to a Chevrolet Chevelle, “GTO” sounded perfectly organic for a high-performance Pontiac, Plymouth’s “Road Runner” was named after a really fast cartoon bird from Warner Brothers, and “Cobra” was what Ford tacked onto anything and everything performance-related. However, the midsize muscle from Oldsmobile always seemed to leave me scratching my head. I called it a “Four Forty-Two” for years before learning what the 4-4-2 nomenclature had originally stood for when that model was introduced for ’64. That was similar to how I had referred to it as “Pokey-man” before I understood more about what Pokemon actually was.
And then there was the Hurst/Olds. Why wasn’t it an Olds Hurst? Or an Olds Cutlass Hurst? And where did it fall in the performance hierarchy relative to the 442? The original Hurst/Olds had appeared for ’68, based on the then-new generation of Cutlass 442. George Hurst and his company specialized in manufacturing high-performance parts and had wanted to expand the footprint of Hurst Performance by working directly with automakers.
Over at GM, Pontiac was uninterested, but Oldsmobile bit, and the ’68 442 was a beast. It stuffed the biggest Olds 455 V8 rated at 390 horsepower and 500 lb.-ft. of torque into their A-body. The 442’s uprated suspension was basically unchanged. What had also really set the original Hurst/Olds apart from the muscle car field was its silver paint scheme with black stripes, as well as a host of comfort and convenience features. Just over 500 were built that year, with about 10%/90% split between being pillared coupes and Holiday hardtop fastbacks.
The H/O reappeared for ’69, but after that, it seemed to make sporadic appearances. It returned for 1972 through ’75, then again for ’79, and finally for ’83 and ’84. It seemed to be running a relay race with the 442, with both models passing the baton back and forth as each surfaced and the other disappeared. It was considered a big deal when the Hurst/Olds came back for ’83 for the fifteenth anniversary of its first appearance. A significant amount of to-do was made of its high-performance, 180-hp Olds 307 small block, which featured a host of engineering enhancements including a Rochester four-barrel carburetor and a hotter camshaft. Hurst was known for its high-performance shifters, and there was one such, three-lever “Lightning Rods” unit in the ’83. I’m not the guy to explain how it works to you, but even as someone who knows how to shift a manual transmission, I hope the Lightning Rods are easier to operate than they look. (They probably are.)
Along with its G-platform cousins the Buick Regal T-Type (and eventually, the Grand National) and Chevy Monte Carlo SS, the reborn Hurst/Olds seemed to signify that General Motors was committed to bringing some old muscle car magic into the ’80s. Just over 3,000 of the ’83s were sold, with prices starting around the $12,000 mark (about $37,400 in 2024). This was significantly more expensive than the ’83 Regal T-Type, which started at about $10,400 ($32,200 / adjusted) and also boasted 180 horses from its turbocharged 3.8L V6. The ’83 Hurst Olds was capable of going from zero to sixty in the upper-eight second range, with a mid-sixteen second quarter mile time and a top speed just shy of 110 mph. These figures were decent for the time.
Our featured car is an ’84, identifiable by its paint scheme of silver paint on the upper body with black accents on the bottom and red pinstripes. This was the inverse of the ’83 model’s black-over-silver look. The donor car was the top-shelf Cutlass Calais, which was then converted by Cars & Concepts out of Brighton, Michigan. This was before the Calais was introduced for ’85 as an N-Body compact to replace the Omega, and also before what had been called the Cutlass Calais was now (again) called the Salon. Another 3,500 Hurst/Olds models were sold for ’84, at starting prices that had crept up slightly by $600. The powerplant remained the same as the previous year.
When I had seen the featured car during that misty morning on State Street in Chicago’s Loop district, I had also noticed it had a temporary tag out back. I could imagine the pride the new owner of this car had felt at having snagged such a low-production model, even if it wasn’t going to burn up any dragstrips. Curiously, out of just over 16,500 units of Hurst/Olds produced over nine, non-consecutive model years, it was the final two years in which the most copies were sold. The ’75 model on the Colonnade platform was in third place, with just over 2,500 examples produced.
It seems so far removed from today’s automotive landscape to think about an Oldsmobile luxury muscle car with a high-performance shifter. Also, in the two years since these photos were taken, much of the retail has disappeared from this stretch of State Street, with both the Vans store and Kay Jewelers having closed these locations. Hopefully, this nice Hurst/Olds has done anything but evaporate like mist since then in the hands of its then-new owner.
Downtown, The Loop, Chicago, Illinois.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
The brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.
Related reading:
- On the 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst; and
- On the 1978 Oldsmobile 442, both from Jason Shafer.
Having seen a silver ’88 to ’90 Olds 98 this past Saturday (parked next to an ’88 to ’91 Crown Vic, oddly enough), I got a bit nostalgic for Oldsmobiles. While the nostalgia has elapsed, it was great to see this, one of the best Oldsmobiles of the 1980s – if not the best.
The ad explains how to use the three sticks but it doesn’t answer the more important question of why they were put there. I suppose because they could.
It’s been said before but I have to say it now…these were perhaps one of the most successful refreshments of a car body in GM history. The ’78 to ’80 models were okay, but these updated Cutlaii are much more attractive and, frankly, dignified looking. Yes, that’s subjective.
Joe, you’ve inspired me. When I retire, I am going to move to some random large city and just walk around downtown with a camera.
Jason, I like to think that those Lightning Rods were put there as a theft deterrent. “If they can’t figure out how to drive it, they can’t steal it.” Your last sentence inspires me – that may actually end up being my plan if I’m blessed that way!
Reminds me of an incident some years back when a local auto theft was thwarted when the perp demanded the key of the victim’s Saab, climbed into the drivers seat, then fled on foot when he couldn’t find the ignition, which, of course, was on the floor.
Never knew this three stick monstrosity ever existed. Amazing how this thing ever got to production.
Really peculiar trans, from that brochure it’s a regular four speed automatic on the left lever, while the middle lever puts it in second and the right lever puts it in first, when the left is in “D” position.
Maybe it can be used in drag racing like a Lenco transmission.
Here’s a more detailed explanation as to how it worked:
It wouldn’t be a Hurst/Olds without Hurst equipment, and topping that list was the company’s Lightning Rods shifter. The four-speed automatic below the center console was a specially prepared TH200-4R unit controlled by three separate shift levers. Taken from left to right from the driver’s seat, the first lever traversed through the P, R, N, O/D, and D positions. The main lever was the only one needed for normal driving, but if a little competition arose, the driver could pull the main lever down to the “D” position, then pull each of the other two levers back as well. That would hold the transmission in first gear, allowing a shift to second when the first lever was bumped forward; similarly, third gear would come when the middle lever was bumped forward. Overdrive would be held off until the main lever was pushed back up one notch. The transmission itself had special programming from the factory to hold gears under full throttle to a maximum of 5,200 rpm (first to second), 4,900 rpm (second to third), and 4,400 rpm (third to fourth).
I’m pretty sure I would kill one of these if I ever tried that competition shifting. Thanks for posting this, Paul. I think I did read that. I started this rough draft all the way back in 2022 and finally dusted it off to finish it.
Reading the “Lightning” ad, it essentially sounds like the shifter worked like a manual version of the currently very common shiftable automatic transmission. I encounter these constantly in rental cars (and even in vehicles like Pacifica minivans). Usually, if my time with the vehicle is long enough, I try them out and soon enough give up on them and go back to regular automatic mode. There’s just no real point in them that I’ve found, other than to give you something to do with one of your hands; but since in real life I drive a manual transmission car, I see no reason to pointlessly use my hands when I might as well take a break and let the car do the work.
I’m fairly sure that if confronted with three leavers, I’d quickly get confused and just use the middle one. That’s just me.
I just don’t see what the lightning rods do that a regular one row floor shifter can’t, as far as performance manual automatic shifting goes the old Chrysler slap stick seems conceptually superior and leagues more intuitive than this contraption. And indeed actual aftermarket ratchet shifters work more that way than the lightning rods, did anyone actually install lightning rods as an aftermarket upgrade? We’re they even available outside this sticker special Oldsmobile?
I agree, I row my own on the car with a manual, I never touch an auto shifter outside of PR and D, especially on modern cars with electronically controlled shifts, you’re not going to beat the computer. I’d feel like quite the dork pulling these levers in the company of passengers.
I agree entirely with your statement that you’re not going to beat the computer.
But hope springs eternal among humanity that they will somehow beat the computer…or at least look and feel cool trying.
I realize that the argument about not beating the computer is exactly why some people maintain that there’s simply no point to a standard transmission car and hence question my hardcore preference for them. To which I say that I’m happy to row gears in my car that has no other way to change gears. Once this car exits my life I won’t try to emulate the experience on the next car (which if it’s new will almost certainly have to be an automatic). The whole shiftable automatic (in modern cars at least) seems a lot like adding synthesized vroom-vroom sounds to EVs. What’s the point? Maybe we should superimpose a horse’s butt on the windshield of a horseless-carriage? Just to make people feel like they’re guiding the fastest horse ever?
Hummmmmmmm….maybe there’s a market for that.
Yup! And as a manual transmission car owner I certainly have that romantic hope I can beat the computer on that perfect run as well, its the old ‘steel drivin’ man’ tale.
I was very close to mentioning fake engine sounds in some EVs haha! Just like it there’s only one sense you’re picking up through it; Audio, but an EV still feels distinctly different from an ICE car no matter. Likewise there’s such a different sensation to manual automatic shifts vs a real manual transmission shifts, from the clutch to the H pattern to the mechanical sensations that resonate through the shifter(on some cars) to the change in exhaust note as you let off between shifts. I’m not anti-automatic, just as much as I’m not anti-EV for that matter, but there’s this weird thing with them emulating supposedly inferior technology to broaden their appeal.
I’m afraid that I *am* anti-automatic, I can’t stand them. If I lump together my drivers and projects (10 in all), one (project) is a slushbox and I’m working towards a manual conversion on it, I have the gearbox.
They did offer the Lightning Rods as an aftermarket kit for many popular transmissions and they did find their way into some cars usually Pro-Street style cars where the fact that they looked similar to the shifters for Lenco transmissions to fit the them. Of course the ratchet shifter became the norm for drag racing with an auto box.
I’d be curious to try the shiftable automatic (I’m sure I’ve rented a car with one), but risk-averse me probably wouldn’t go nuts with it. I did really enjoy shifting my Mustang’s five-speed.
The point was to look like the shifters used in the Lenco transmissions as was very popular in drag racing at the time.
I see an uncanny resemblance with the 1969 (1970?) Olds, when compared with the pic in the ad.
Same upright grille with the center divider, dual headlights, same under the headlights turn signals, and vents under the bumper.
They certainly carried on the Olds look on these for a long time.
This one’s a 4-4-2
That’s my ’69 Cutlass Holiday Sedan that Mopar Lee has posted a pic of here. A former Oklahoma car that I had repainted a couple years ago by an excellent craftsman (the pic is pre-paint job), and the 350 Rocket V8 rebuilt from the ground up using all GM NOS and US NORS parts (cost me a bundle). Original vinyl top and interior in great shape, a zero rust Western car I had transported from OK, still have original plate and title. Being in my mid-70s now I’ve contemplated selling it, but with significant reluctance, as it’ll be the last and one of the best of 15 Classic Olds I’ve owned.
I guess some of the styling cues were carried on, but missing much of the panache of the ’64 to ’72 Cutlass, that’s for sure, one of GM’s best.
What a small world. Does this count as some iteration of the “CC Effect”? Nice Cutlass!
Thanks Joesph! It’s the distillation of my 60 years in the hobby and hundreds of cars for my vision of the ideal car for everyman… and specifically, the Last of the Mohicans, for me.
I love that Olds had such a strong, visual identity for so long, even by the time it had been diluted by the late ’80s. There was no question about it when you saw an Oldsmobile for such a long time.
180HP from 5 liters? 0-60 in 9.8 seconds? Dark days indeed.
Where did you get that 9.8 second number from? The factory claimed 8.5 seconds, and Car and Driver did it in 8.8 seconds. That was considered pretty quick back even in the sunny ’60s.
As to the 180 net hp, that would be roughly equivalent to 250 or more gross hp. That also would have been pretty decent back in the sunny ’60s for a 5-liter V8, except for a few hairy solid-lifter cam engines.
Not really all that dark, given the tremendous challenges of meeting both emission and CAFE regulations at the time.
As a point of comparison, the ’67 Barracuda S with the four barrel 273 V8 (235 gross hp) did the 0-60 in 9.2 seconds. A ’67 Mustang GT with the 4-barrel 289 did it in 9.7 sec., and a ’67 Camaro with the 275 hp (gross) 327 did it in 9.1 seconds. The net hp of all of these would have been roughly comparable to the Olds. These were all considered “quick” cars, if not exactly supercars.
It’s right in the “Lightning under control” ad above, which is odd, because if anything they’d typically puff up (down?) the actual number to look better than it actually was. I’d believe 8.5 to 8.9 to be the correct figure. As mentioned the 307 in that state of tune was quite credible for the time and comparable or better to those ’60s models and with a bit of tweaking could be made considerably better for those who wanted more, 307s were tough and could take it. Perhaps Joe Padavano would chime in with his experienced Olds commentary.
I missed that. Odd; as there’s references elsewhere to an official 8.5 second time. It’s still in the ’60s ballpark for its weight and engine size.
I tried to find period tests from when these were new, and IIRC, the upper 8-second 0-60 time I cited was taken from one.
Great photography!
Thanks!
Hurst/Olds could be abbreviated, as you’ve done Joseph, to HO which sounds like High Output. Whereas Olds Hurst is just OH. Not very exciting.
People in Ohio may disagree with you, especially in about 2 weeks from now. (The Solar Eclipse.) 😉
Haha! Nice.
So it sounds like the lightning rod shifter essentially is the same as a typical 4 speed automatic. At least my 80s 440T4 transaxles anyway. Only thing is instead of all selections being on one stick, the 2 is put on a second stick, and the 1 is put on a third stick. Having used 2 and 1 many times for towing, steep hills, etc. I don’t see the benefit of three sticks, but I’ve never drag raced either.
It all sounds like a lot. I’m sure I’d enjoy shifting the Lightning Rods once I got the hang of it, partially out of the satisfaction of just mastery of doing so.
Fantastic shots, I love fog in the city.
As for the Hurst/Olds it’s a doomed concept because while the original 68-69s were much more notable for the 455 engines that were beyond GMs 400ci displacement cap at the time, but the 70 lost that cap and kind of immediately rendered them unremarkable. Beyond that Hurst olds represented what? Hurst shifters? Like just about every manual transmission muscle car under the sun was using in 69-73? Auto only hurst shifters so you cant row your own gears when that was still THE way for a good driver to get the fastest e/t? By the time of the G body versions it just seems like nostalgia bait, an unremarkable and ultimately forgettable soft reboot like so many ultimately forgettable Hollywood reboots these days.
That’s not to say it’s not a cool car but I don’t know if it being a Hurst/Olds or a 442 or even just a regular Cutlass Calais would make any difference to me, even knowing as a car guy it’s a rareish special edition. The only G bodies that really struck me as remarkable in performance are the Turbo Buicks and they’re ironically not dredging their past with name revivals like Gran Sport or GSX, but all new names like Grand National T-Type and GNX. Olds was known(or marketed to be) to be the engineering division at one time, but ironically stodgy conservative Buick was that, where Oldsmobile was looking to the past
Thanks, Matt! You mentioned the H/Os that came after the originals, and now I’m wondering (without actually knowing): how many were automatics vs. manual-shift? I can’t imagine that a ’79 Hurst/Olds had a manual transmission. (I’ll look it up online and watch… they’ll all be manual shift.)
All Hurst Olds’, starting with the original 1968 version, were automatics.
Olds may have initially touted one of the fours in “4-4-2” as 4-speed transmission, but this ended by 1967 when corporate advertising stopped mentioning it. Probably due to the increasing take rate on the Hydra-matic, which first exceeded 50% in 1967 and never trailed for the remainder of the 442 run.
I find the white and gold ’69 color scheme to be more memorable. A sighting of a
Hurst /Olds was the focus of conversation among the 7th. grade boys at lunch at St Jarlath’s.
Agreed on that color scheme. That big fuselage MOPAR comes to mind. Good looking car for a big boat.
Which got me looking for one of the iconic pictures of Miss Hurst Shifter on the rear deck of a giant white and gold Chrysler.
But instead, I found Miss Hurst Shifter on an Olds. This might be a better connection 🙂
Oh, ok, here’s Ms. Vaughn with the Chrysler.
Jeff, these are great. Thanks for posting them.
Using this beautiful and effective color scheme (as did even the ’79) would have been an effective way to incorporate some visual continuity with the early cars.
I always felt 442 was a great name for a muscle car, yes a lot of People were confused and thought it stood for cubic inches, wonder what they felt GTO stood for?.I wish that Olds would have stuck with 4 speed only with the 442 and perhaps called the automatic Cutlass S.
Great point – I can’t remember how old I was when I had learned that GTO was an acronym for Italian “Gran Turismo Omologato”. “442” has just the right amount of intrigue, especially when one learns that it has nothing to do with the engine’s displacement.
Excellent as always, Joseph! Here’s my question: In 1983, you had the Monte Carlo SS, the H/O, and the Regal T-Type. Why didn’t GM’s “Performance Division” want to play muscle car with it’s G-Body? And when they finally did something in ’86 with the bizarre GP 2+2, it didn’t even have the “High Output” V8.
Thanks, Adam! For the record, I did like the styling of the GP 2+2, but always knew its performance was off from what its exotic / unique bodywork seemed to promise.
George Hurst’s bread and butter and claim to fame were his excellent shifters, first for manual transmissions, then the famous ‘His and Hers’ Dual-Gates for automatics. Although GM was the first to install them at the factory in the GTO, followed by the Oldsmobile 442 (oddly, Chevrolet never got a Dual-Gate option), Chrysler began using the manual shifters in 1969 to replace the horrid Inland shifter, then came up with their own version of the Dual-Gate called ‘Slap-Stick’ for 1970.
But my favorite Hurst factory shifter installation was in the 1971 Mustang Mach 1 which used a Hurst-stamped shift lever but with Ford linkage underneath!
Hurst’s wholesale mods of entire cars came later. Not only was there the Hurst/Olds, it was Hurst that built the 1968 Hemi-Dart and ‘Cuda, amoung the most fierce Super Stock cars, ever.
With that said, my belief is that the Hurst ‘Lightning Rods’ were Hurst’s attempt to capitalize on the multiple levers shifter (each gear had it’s own lever) for the stout Lenco Pro Stock racing transmission of the early seventies.
The problem was how much of a gimmick the Lightning Rods turned out to be when installed in a street car. I vividly recall Car and Driver’s review of the 1984 Hurst Olds. They found the shifter goofy, and specifically mentioned that the transmission was most definitely ‘not’ in a manual mode with it shifting up to the next gear if the driver failed to do it himself. If that’s how it worked, what was the point?
Thank you for this. Reading through the comments and remembering some of the articles I had read while I was putting this together, I might start looking for a used book on Hurst Performance. It’s all interesting stuff.
An article on the life and career of George Hurst (1927-86) would certainly be an appropriate CC article.
Before the GM-sanctioned 1968 Hurst/Olds, his company, Hurst Performance, was responsible for building some well-known, unique exhibition drag cars like the 1965-69 Barracuda ‘Hemi Under Glass’ wheelstander that had a Hemi engine mounted underneath the rear compound window, and 1966-67 Hurst Hairy Olds that used both a FWD Toronado UPP as well as a mid-mounted V8 powering the rear wheels.
But Hurst’s most notable invention would likely be that of the ‘Jaws of Life’ hydraulic spreader to rapidly extract people trapped within crashed vehicles. I’m not certain he actually came up with the idea, but he was the first to market a workable, commercial version, circa 1971, which is still in use by first responders to this day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurst_Performance
Great catch with the photo! I am not sure I would have recognized that one as anything other than a nice Cutlass, but then I never paid that much attention to these when they were new.
Nobody has mentioned what a fragile transmission the THM 200-4R was, so I wonder how much use of that funky shifter the transmission would have been able to handle. And like most others, I fail to see the point. I do, however, see the point of the performance mods to the engine, and wish that version of the 307 had been in my larger Olds 98 from that year.
Thanks, JP! To be honest, I didn’t recognize it as a Hurst/Olds right off the bat. I had just deboarded the Red Line subway station and saw this thing coming. I might have thought it was a 442. I did, however, recognize it as an ’80s G-Body Cutlass, so it was click, click, click…
Oooh, the 1984 Hurst Olds. I wanted one very badly, but was commuting a lot in 1984, between work and university. A brand new Cutlass of any stripe would have been quite the stretch, much less a Hurst Olds. But, the car I was piloting at the time, my warmed over 1979 Pinto ESS (thank you Racer Brown), was eventually sold off to get my 1986 Mercury Capri 5.0L. It all worked out in the end.
Clearly not much of the alumni here is familiar with the Lenco trans. Part of my growing up years was spent around an 1/8 mile drag strip, learning a lot about setups and what equipment and techniques to use. I thought the Lightning Rods were a pretty cool differentiating feature vis-a-vis the MC SS and the turbo Regals. That the stodgy Cutlass was competitive with the 5.0L Mustangs and Camaro SS models (not just because of the Lightning Rods), was something of an eye opener for me.
Alas, an opportunity missed with the Hurst Olds… Good catch, Joe!
Thank you so much, Geozinger. Say, have you done a COAL series, yet? Please pardon if you I have and I just didn’t remember. What a cool thing for you to have had those experiences at the drag strip. That’s the kind of thing I’d be content just to observe with my mouth shut and ears open.
Joe, thanks for the compliment. I’ve not done a COAL series as I think my rides have not been that memorable. In some cases, I don’t have pictures of my actual cars any longer as we had a flood at a storage unit between moves some years ago. Besides who wants to hear about my escapades commuting in Atlanta traffic in the 90’s? In a couple of Yugos, no less? LOL!