When I ran across this ad in the February 1966 R&T I’m scanning, I was more than a bit shocked. What; they were still using this very dull and old-school style in 1966, to push their high performance GTO competitor to a young demographic? Seriously?
It already looked grossly out of date and dull back in 1964:
Don’t get me wrong: I love this ad, featuring a four door sedan 4-4-2 in police guise. But it might as well be an ad for a taxi cab version.
Meanwhile, Pontiac was doing this in 1964.
And this in 1966. No wonder the ’66 GTO outsold the 442 by over 5:1.
At least by 1966 they were making the car red and the background black & white. 🙂 “We are Oldsmobile. If you know what we build we don’t have to sell you on it. If you don’t know, then you wouldn’t understand anyway.”
And I have still yet to see a 4 door 4-4-2. And as one who spent 8 years growing up with a 64 Cutlass in the family, I would have noticed.
JPC – growing up in the sixties, I had a friend whose cousin lived nearby. His and and uncle had exactly that – a 4 door 4-4-2 in a light green color. Very sleeper look.
During the summer if the folks were away, the cousin would “tweak” the engine and drive it down to Raceway Park. I recall it was the first time I saw a gas line routed through an old coffee percolator filled with dry ice to cool down the fuel. He swore by the tech…and yes that car was fast…
I’m a big Oldsmobile 442 fan. As far as I’m aware, no one has EVER proved there was a 4dr 442. A few folks have said they thought the Lansing, MI police department may have been given 1 or 2 1964 4dr 442s to use, but no proof of that exists.
Your friends 4dr was probably a Cutlass with add-on badges.
Even Buick had better ads: This is one of my favorites…I have one on my wall most of the time. “A Howitzer with windshield wipers.” Expedient exaggeration? Maybe, but that’s all advertising is.
Not only are the ads dull, the agency’s copywriter used the possessive form in place of plural form in the copy:
“Fact is, 4-4-2 (like all Oldsmobile’s)…”
Pontiac had the advantage of having McManus, John and Adams as its ad agency, and perhaps more specifically, having Jim Wangers on the account.
Ouch! How did the editors (editor’s?) miss that?
Could it be a scanned image and related error?
There are other typos in posted ads that are surprising to have passed final inspection.
The car-less Pontiac ad is packed with goofs.
Those who never type “it’s” when it should have been “its” can throw stones. Those who don’t understand the difference shouldn’t. Those who rely on Spellcheck to get it right can go sit in the corner, wearing a dunce cap.
Ironically, autocorrect tried to substitute “it’s” when I typed “its ad agency” in my comment above (and it tried to substitute it yet again as I’m typing this comment).
As long as we’re picking the nits…
“language through 4-4-2s (exhaust)”
should’ve been “4-4-2’s” possessive.
Maybe in a rought draft is how “Old’s” went possessive?
Oh well its can happens to the bets of us.
I got stuck on speak as in 4-barrel carb speak a brand new language. While one person speaks English, it takes several people to speak English.
Add style screams 1944 rather than 1964. Olds seemed to be shy in properly promoting the car. “Buckle up for safety”. Perhaps appealing to Volvo drivers?. Lap belts never took of in the UK. We went from nothing to static 3 point belts.Lap belts are pretty useless as they don’t prevent heads from hitting the dash and cause abdominal injuries.
By 1969 they had figured it out… or they thought they had… but… ah…well…
If you jump off a cliff is it possible to jump too far? Cause, if it is possible that’s sure what Olds did with their advertising
Wow! That is poor. At least we know that Lurch and Uncle Fester were able to find work after The Addams Family.
Or 1969’s Youngmobile. Yeurgh.
Pontiac didn’t even need to show a car! The copy in this ad is pretty good…I like how they deify “big-engined Something.”
Nice find. What good car ads were all about…desire.
I read a story a long time ago about factory involvement in street racing, specifically along Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Chrysler’s Tom Hoover would loan out his personal ’66 Hemi Coronet, and the Ford guys had their CobraJets.
But the most interesting part of the story was that Jim Wangers would be there, but not in a GTO. He was a passenger with another driver in a 442. If true, the inference I got was that, by the late sixties, Wangers was at least involved with Oldsmobile’s musclecar program in some way. By 1968, Oldsmobile had definitely upped their performance offerings with stuff like the W-30 under front bumper air scoop package, W-31 ‘Ramrod’ 350, the 455 Hurst Olds, rear anti-sway bars, and the W-27 option, which was an aluminum rear axle housing.
So, maybe the whole, wild ‘Dr. Oldsmobile’ ad campaign, besides being an obvious response to Plymouth’s musclecar cartoon ads, was something that Wangers had dreamed up.
I’ve mentioned before that while the Pontiac GTO reigned as the musclecar king (at least in sales) from 1964-68, it lost the crown in 1969, slipping all the way down to number three, behind the Plymouth Road Runner and Chevelle SS396.
With that said, I wonder how the Oldsmobile 442 was doing in the musclecar sales wars. Word had obviously gotten out that the GTO had some serious competition and was most definitely ‘not’ the fastest musclecar, not by a long shot.
From my memory of the ’60’s and ’70’s I’m not sure Olds ever got a good footing in the muscle car market. By 1970 All GM muscle cars had their best “street cred”. 1st year for all of them to get the biggest engine their respective divisions offered, and before lowering compression to run on regular gasoline.
I was a grade school/middle school student at that time but became a car geek by then. I remember Chevys, Fords, Plymouths/Dodges were the “go to” muscle cars with Pontiac having some fans as well. Not sure where Mercurys fell. Olds, Buick, and AMC just never really caught on. Their cars had some performance cred, but had reputations as “geezer cars” even then. Olds and Buick muscle cars were seen as more expensive, heavier and slower than Chevies, Pontiacs, Fords or Mopars. Maybe or maybe not true.
I recall a previous commentator here mentioned buying an Olds 442 for street racing. The 1st thing he did was scrap the Olds engine for any number of different Chevy engines because the engines and aftermarket performance support parts were far more common and cheaper than Olds engines or parts.
Buick, Olds and AMC did make some potent cars and had their fans but never really caught on as I remember Chevys, Fords and Pontiacs and Mopars did.
I also think Chevrolet had an extra advantage with the Corvette that GM’s other divisions didn’t get. Since the Corvette was a corporate halo performance car, GM let Chevy build more potent engines for it, and some of those features filtered down to Chevelles, Camaros and Novas.
I’ll make a wild guess here – I’m not an expert on Olds advertising, but this ad looked familiar to me. I’m pretty sure that Olds had multiple ad agencies, and used a separate (much cheaper) agency for fleet sales ads, as did other manufacturers.
This 442 ad bears a lot of similarities to Olds fleet-sales ads from the same period… same type of background line drawings, and even the same red-colored cars (see the 1966 Jetstar ad below).
I’m thinking that maybe Olds felt the needed an ad quickly for enthusiast publications like R&T for their new 442, and felt it was better to get a low-production ad out in the magazines quickly rather than wait an extra month for more polished ads. So they contracted with their fleet ad agency for a quick, simple 442 ad. Just a guess.
Actually, the answer is quite simpler than that. Full color ads were considerably more expensive back then, due to the price of printing. These are just two color ads, and significantly cheaper. Olds obviously had both, and the two-color ads had a specific design approach that they maintained for several years.
Olds also had full-color ads for the 442, but they still were lacking in a certain “with it” style that Pontiac and others had by this time.
It looks like this ad and the first ad in the article (with the mountain background)
were done by a child who was pretty good with his Etch-a-Sketch.
Maybe his dad worked for the ad agency.
But did the next ad campaign really qualify as improved?
Well the graphics are right for the period. But, “Youngmobile”?
Was the “Old-” part of the brand name really perceived as that much of a liability, outside of the ad agency?
I’ve long wondered if it occurred to anyone to think “Ew, Oldsmobile has ‘old’ built into the name!” until protests-too-much slogans like “youngmobile”.
Was there a single person in the market for a 442 who cared about rear seat belts? What an odd non sequitur of a thing to mention in a headline and body copy for a muscle car.
It’s a double entendre. The “belt in the back” is primarily referring to the acceleration, but maybe the artist decided to play with the copy and make the rear seat belts highly visible, for just that reason.
Ah, that is not a turn of phrase I’m familiar with.
Yes, it’s become obsolete. Along with two color renderings for ads. 🙂
I would say it’s a triple entendre. It send to be fashionable for raincoats/trench coats to have a belt buckle on the backside, and you wrapped the ends (in the front) in a knot. So these coats were referred to a having a belt in the back, although it was really the buckle. As Dave Barry says, I’m not making this up.
And of course it tied in to Olds’ long-running familiar “out front” theme in advertising.
Just as bad as the post…these are so unbelievably bad it’s hard to imagine someone approved them. Not running the ad would have been better for the brand…they have negative value. You see the Buick and Pontiac ad in the same magazine, then you see the Olds ad, and you’re thinking “you know, I was planning to go to the Olds dealer to cross shop, but, no, I don’t think so”.
As it happens, CC-in-scale has this car, just not in red. 🙂
Like AMC, when the youth market exploded in 1964 it took Oldsmobile by surprise. Oldsmobile for all of its existence had been selling 88’s and 98’s to the more affluent members of Mr. and Mrs. America and was unsure of what course to take, hence the advertising that looked like it had stepped out of the 40’s. In 1968, apparently sensing the name Oldsmobile was a liability with younger buyers tried the “Youngmobiles from Oldsmobile” ads; I don’t think they were terribly effective. Then in 1969 it was “Dr. Oldsmobile” with characters from the Adams family thrown in-to me the ads looked like something promoting a carnival side show. I’m not surprised the GTO outsold the 442 5 to 1. Even Buick seemed to have more effective advertising.
Those who never type “it’s” when it should have been “its” can throw stones. Those who don’t understand the difference shouldn’t. Those who rely on Spellcheck to get it right can go sit in the corner, wearing a dunce cap.
Well hell ;
I like this car and think it looks fine .
I’m guessing anyone who says lap belts are worthless never had a serious collison whilst wearing one ~ I did and there’s no possible way my head could have hit the dashboard .
The light pole stopped when it met the firewall, the cops and tow truck driver were flabbergasted I survived .
Yes, I prefer three point safety belts but no using a lap belt is ridiculous .
-Nate
Well, guess I’m part of the old school, but I prefer this type of ad to current ones which seem only to poke at your emotions, like, if you buy this vehicle you will be transported to some level of ecstasy and so on, making it really hard to find its specifications. Of course, horsepower and such sells, but with today’s overdone engines, I find myself assuming that any car has sufficient and probably excessive power for my needs, but wanting to know the height of the seat cushion (and what material it is made of) instead.
A curmudgeon certainly I’ve become, but I also know that I’m no longer the target audience for these ads, so if try not to give them anymore money for their (dis) efforts at trying to court me as a buyer, I’m just reciprocating. Don’t like the feeling of being manipulated, I don’t get why more people don’t feel similarly.
Some ridiculously large percentage of people swear up and down they’re unaffected and not influenced by advertising. That’s why it’s a multi-gazillion-dollar-euro-yen-won-kronor-pound-yuan-forint industry, you see—because it has no effect. 🙄