1962 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Holiday Coupe: A Sharper-Edged Roof Squares Off The Bubbletop

Although they have a following today, the bigger Buick and Oldsmobile C-body versions of GM’s 1961 “bubbletop” two-door hardtop body style weren’t very popular at the time, and by 1962, GM had tried to square off the roofline, belatedly joining the trend towards more “formal” roof styling that had been kicked off by the Ford Thunderbird. Here’s how the 1962 Olds Ninety-Eight hardtop coupe compared with the 1961.

For 1961, all full-size Oldsmobiles were trimmed down and tidied up, shedding a few inches of length and width and adopting an all-new chassis. Where the 1959 cars had suffered from a lack of thematic unity, the 1961 were cluttered but cohesive — in two-door hardtop form, they made no secret of their desire to be jet fighters when they grew up.

As a quick primer for people who have trouble keeping track of the alphabet soup of automaker body codes, GM had two distinct body shells for full-size cars in this era: the B-body, shared by full-size Chevrolets; full-size Pontiacs; the Buick LeSabre and Invicta; and the Oldsmobile Dynamic 88, Super 88, and Starfire; and the larger C-body, shared by the Buick Electra, Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, and Cadillac. The Oldsmobile version of the C-body was about 6 inches longer than the Olds B-body, with a 3-inch-longer wheelbase and 3 inches more rear overhang.

When you say “bubbletop,” what people generally picture is the more graceful B-body hardtop, like this 1961 Olds Dynamic 88.

On the B-body, the trailing edge of the roof and the sail panels curved gently around the backlight, emphasizing the bubble-like shape of the back glass.

On the bigger C-body hardtop, the sail panels were straighter and more upright, forming a sharp kink where the C-pillar met the trailing edge of the roof.

The C-body backlight itself was a bit bigger than the one on the B-body, but the C-pillar shape tended to deemphasize its bubble-like curvature rather than accentuating it.

Personally, I find the C-body roof shape a little awkward, as the sail panel kink seemed at odds with the generally curvaceous shape of the roof and glass. Judging by the sales, buyers weren’t crazy about it either; only the Cadillac coupes sold well, and then probably more because they were Cadillacs than for any aesthetic reason. 1961 was a recession year, so most new car sales were down, but Olds and Buick combined sold only 8,695 cars in this body style (4,445 Olds 98s and 4,250 Electra 225s), which tends to suggest that it was out of step with contemporary tastes.

Over in Dearborn, Ford Motor Company had better captured the zeitgeist with its more upright formal roof, which featured a nearly flat roof “upper” (top roof panel) and blind rear quarters. Ford Division general manager Robert McNamara had taken a fancy to this roofline on a 1955 proposal for what became the 1958 Ford Thunderbird hardtop. (It was actually first introduced in production on the 1957 Skyliner retractable hardtop.) Eugene Bordinat, who became Ford Styling VP in the early ’60s, called it “schlocky” and dismissed McNamara’s reaction to it as “typical of the way the uninitiated view a car,” but the formal roof became a smash hit on both the T-Bird and later the Ford Galaxie.

The 1958–1960 “Square Bird” and the 1959 Galaxie were a generation before my time, so I can only make educated guesses as to why its roofline became such a sensation. While it wasn’t conducive to over-the-shoulder visibility, the formal roof did have some practical advantages: It didn’t compromise rear headroom as much as swoopier hardtop rooflines did, and in an era when fewer than half of new cars had air conditioning or even tinted glass, it was less prone to char-broiling rear seat passengers on hot sunny days.

However, I suspect much of it came down to style. A formal roof lent a certain adult sobriety even to the most fanciful designs, in the same way you can often get away with wearing a brightly colored shirt and a loud tie as long as you’re wearing them with a suit. The Square Bird was at least as overwrought and overdecorated as a 1959 Oldsmobile — as Bordinat said later, “it had enough design … for five automobiles” — but many Americans saw it as glamorous and elegant, which I think was due in large part to its roof.

Meanwhile, the 1961 GM cars, which still showed the influence of outgoing GM Styling VP Harley Earl, were still playing Buck Rogers. That might have been fine for an Impala or Pontiac Catalina, but in this price class — a 1961 Classic 98 two-door hardtop started at a sizeable $4,083 — buyers increasingly wanted styling that could be justified as “formal” glamour even if it was still fanciful in other respects. GM had seen the appeal of the Thunderbird’s buckets-and-console interior (which by this time was available in most GM lines, including the Oldsmobile Starfire), but they were slow to register the other aesthetic movements the T-Bird kicked off.

The 1961–1963 Thunderbird, nicknamed the “Bullet Bird,” also had a lot of rocketship flavor (maybe more than some buyers preferred, since it never quite matched the sales of the 1960 Square Bird), but it still had that formal roof, and it continued to sell briskly, becoming almost as potent an automotive fantasy object as a new Cadillac. If the T-Bird was still Flash Gordonish, it was Flash Gordon in a tuxedo, and that made it something middle-aged investment bankers and socialites could picture themselves in.

The Bullet Bird outsold the entire Olds Ninety-Eight line in this period — not just the two-door hardtop, but the whole model series — which seems to me further evidence that GM had been off-course when it came to the tastes of well-heeled middle-class buyers. Of course, a Ninety-Eight wasn’t intended to be the same kind of “personal car” as a Thunderbird, but they were similarly priced, and they had a lot of overlap in buyer demographics.

If Harley Earl hadn’t noticed which way the wind was blowing, his successor, Bill Mitchell, clearly did. For 1962, the C-body two-door hardtops got a revised roofline that added a note of clarifying formality. (This was not done in response to weak 1961 sales — tooling lead times meant that the ’62 cars were designed before the ’61s went on sale, as was customary for Detroit.)

I don’t suppose Mitchell would have acknowledged any impetus from Dearborn; his stated influences were usually posh and European, often from before WW2. If someone had asked him about the sharper-edged new direction for the C-body hardtop roofline, Mitchell would likely have pointed to some Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royce, not a current product of any direct GM rival. However, if nothing else, Ford had been ahead of the curve in this regard.

Stylistically, the 1962 C-body hardtop roofline was an evolutionary change. The C-pillars were approximately the same trapezoidal shape as before, but the sail panels were now wider, and there was now a lateral crease above the backlight reveal that intersected with the longitudinal ones above the side window garnishes, making the roof’s angularity feel more intentional. The C-body roof still wasn’t as formal as the Thunderbird roof, and it still had a bubble-like backlight, but it was certainly more formal than in 1961.

Combined with the squaring-off of the rear fenders and the deletion of the previous rear-fender skegs, the revised exterior styling made the 1962 Oldsmobile look a good deal soberer and more grown-up overall.

There was still some Jet Age paraphernalia — I think the way the grille was set into the front fenders was supposed to suggest the moving inlet of a supersonic aircraft engine, and there were now simulated vents on the doors — but the ’50s Buck Rogers flights of fancy had been brought down to earth.

Inside, the 1962 Olds made no radical departures from previous practice, but there was a revised dashboard with the fuel gauge and warning lights relocated to the instrument panel, and the clock moved to the center of the dash, below the radio. As before, power steering, power brakes, Hydra-Matic, a padded dash, and a clock were all standard on the Ninety-Eight, along with various minor convenience items like courtesy lamps and a red warning light on the pedal-operated parking brake. (The latter was optional on the Dynamic 88.)

At long last, a fresh-air heater/defroster was finally standard on GM cars for 1962. You could still delete it for a $97 credit, but only 0.2 percent of full-size Oldsmobile buyers (approximately 700) actually did so.

Almost 30 percent of buyers also ordered air conditioning, which listed for a hefty $430.40. Its controls were separate from the heater controls, on the opposite side of the steering column.

Power windows were standard on Ninety-Eight hardtops and convertibles.

For the time being, bucket seats were reserved for the Starfire, so the Ninety-Eight had a bench seat, which came with 2-way power adjustment; a 4- or 6-way power seat was optional. One bit of penny-pinching was evident on closer inspection: While the 1961 Classic 98 hardtops had used real leather for the seat bolsters, leather upholstery was limited to the Ninety-Eight convertible and Starfire for 1962, leaving the hardtops with cheaper Morroceen expanded vinyl. (Leather would be available again on the 1963 Ninety-Eight Custom Sports Coupe.)

Unlike the Pontiac Star Chief and Bonneville, which used a stretched B-body whose longer wheelbase and tail did nothing to benefit passenger space, the longer wheelbase of the C-body Ninety-Eight netted an additional 2.6 inches of legroom for rear-seat passengers.

In all, other than some bits of cowhide and the wretched 3-speed Hydra-Matic that was still the only available transmission, a Ninety-Eight hardtop compared very well with a Cadillac Coupe de Ville in size, power, and luxury, and it listed for about $1,200 less.

If you felt that tail fins and fender skegs should have been left in the ’50s, the Oldsmobile was arguably the more tasteful of the two, and it again shared the same roofline as the more prestigious Cadillac coupes. Lacking the Cadillac name, the Ninety-Eight Holiday Sports Coupe didn’t sell nearly as well as the Coupe de Ville, but production was up significantly from 1961, despite new competition from the similarly priced B-body Starfire coupe.

The two-door Ninety-Eighty never became a runaway hit — by the ’60s, buyers of full-size Oldsmobiles strongly preferred the four-door hardtop or later the pillared Luxury Sedan, and I don’t think GM ever quite got the Walter Mitty space cruiser vibe that had made the four-seat Thunderbird so special — but Oldsmobile found there was a decent-size market for a restrained, formal alternative to the Coupe de Ville at a lower price. The Ninety-Eight coupe remained a solid part of the full-size Oldsmobile lineup through 1974 in pillarless form and through 1987 as a pillared coupe.

 

Related Reading

Curbside Classics: 1961 Buick Electra And Oldsmobile 98 Hardtop Coupes – Big Beautiful Bubbletop Rarities (by Paul N)

Vintage Car Life Review: 1962 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Holiday Sports Sedan – “Silent Splendor” For $1,000 Less Than A Cadillac (by me)

1962 Oldsmobile Starfire Coupe Vs. 1962 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 Holiday Coupe – Thunderbird-Fighter Or Just A Fancier Olds? (by me)

Auction Classic: 1969 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Coupe – Long Green In Artificial Light (by me)