I’ve always had a weird relationship with the 1958 Oldsmobiles. Given that Oldsmobile had some of the least offensive styling of the 1950s, this Chrome slathered non sequitur was one of the greatest styling fumbles ever to come out of any manufacturer. But underneath, wasn’t it the same good Oldsmobile as everything that preceded (and followed)?
Oldsmobile was often the most conservatively styled of all General Motors cars (if not the whole American auto industry). Other than a slight lead sled stance and Flying Colors paint job the 1955 models were pleasant, but not arresting.
By 1957 Oldsmobile styling had basically become narcolepsy inducing compared to the flamboyant designs from Highland Park and Dearborn. Although the mild mannered overall competence of Oldsmobiles still garnered its fair share of sales (from the ultra flexible hydra matic, a newly enlarged and enlivened 371 Rocket with J-2 carburetion) something more that a tri-divided rear window was needed to set the sales charts alight.
Unfortunately we were in the waning years of Harley Earl’s magic era of General Motors styling. And like Virgil Exner’s flame out at Chrysler soon to follow, his stewardship of the 1958 General Motors cars was an inelegant finish to a remarkable career of developing the first major in house design studio of any car manufacturer.
It is a tad hilarious to see all of the 1958 Oldsmobile ads tout the slogan of Oldsmobility advertising what to most eyes looked like gilded bricks with wheels, especially in comparison with those fatally faulty Forward Look Chryslers and DeSotos in the same market bracket. The only way the Oldsmobiles could imply motion in their ads were by doing weird angle shots. Notice both coupes in the ads aim towards the sky, to perhaps suggest that good old rocket thrust was in this all new Oldsmobile Queen Mary 88. I mean Dynamic… Eighty Eight.
But in reality, underneath all of the new jewelry, an Oldsmobile was still an Oldsmobile. The 371 came in healthy servings of 265, 305 and 312 horsepower, and that delightfully flexible Hydra matic meant although it wasn’t as much of a big block bruiser as say a Mercury Park Lane or Edsel Citation, it was still able to keep pace in base trim (Car Life Clocked a Dynamic Eighty Eight at 10.2 seconds to 60) or outrun (Super Eighty Eights were good for high 8 second times) the competition.
And where it would lose in in a drag race, and a road race course for that matter (against a DeSoto or Chrysler) it would outlast. The quality woes of those graceful Forward Look cars were well known, and almost universally avoided during the mid price market collapse of 1958. Actually Oldsmobile acquitted itself quite well, settling in the #4 slot for 1958 and becoming the most popular of all 1958 medium priced cars with nearly 295,000 examples going out the door.
Nonetheless, the chrome slathering ways of Earl, and the lessons learned from Highland Park were renounced with sweeping changes to all 1959 General Motors cars save the Corvette. While all other GM cars went all out in flamboyance to end the oddly repressed decade, the 1959 Oldsmobiles looked ready for the stylish, swinging sixties refreshingly devoid of chrome, almost looking, especially in Holiday Hardtop form, like overgrown 1960 Corvairs.
In all of this storytelling I almost forgot I was going to personally defend the 1958 Oldsmobile in some way today too. I have to say, for years I’ve gone back and forth on whether this long derided for styling behemoth is actually attractive to me. And I realize that I’m forever drawn to this rump. Something about the sweetheart dip at the back of the (front) doors on the Coupes and Sedans, especially on the shorter deck Eighty Eights in solid colors, flowing into the signature Oldsmobile rocket tip tunnel tail lamps, works brilliantly.
This little buxom detail makes viewing this Oldsmobile actually quite sensual for me, despite the ridicule . In a lot of ways the same exotic curvature that makes the 1958 Chevrolets seem so rich and “Cadillac” like works here, even slathered in chrome. Admittedly the Oldsmobiles this year were graced with a more serious, almost forboding face. Which for me adds to the allure. This juxtaposition between sternness and sex appeal in what was a truly competent by 1958 standards car is purely intoxicating to think about.
So there it is, possibly the most tawdry confession ever to grace Curbside Classic. I have a torrid love for the looks of the 1958 Oldsmobile. I’m ready to face all of the judgement that will happen in the comment section below. Love is never rational ladies and gentlemen.
Note: A rerun of an older post.
Paul, et al, thanks for the reposts from Laurence. His photography and writing are always worth a re-see & re-read.
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Few people write about cars with such a balance of knowledge and emotion. Laurence always has seductive insights into the psychodrama that is/was 20th century autodom. 🙂
My first impression of this car involves the downward-facing trapezoids used for turn signals. It knits the Olds’ face in a perpetual scowl. Edsel wore a similar expression, but the softly arcing headlight pods of the E-car seemed more worried than upset. A bigger enigma is the twin drawer pulls on the decklid.
Was never a fan of this edition. For certain, darker colors do help though. That ‘intro pic”, color combo is interesting.
And that’s why we used to have choices folks .
This wasn’t my favorite but I can see how it was for some .
-Nate
Missed this first time around. Now while many have said they didn’t care for this car, and all the way to ugly, I can’t. I actually find very few cars to be ugly. How can one say that if one is truly into cars? I may find some where I think in my head “what we’re they thinking” in making this. That would be the Nissan Juke and Pontiac Aztek. The passage of time, however, definitely helps to round off the edges. So if I passed this car today I’d say “cool” and look at all that glistening chrome. Now let me drive it! Except the Juke or Aztek as you wouldn’t catch me dead in them.
Olds had enough loyalty and reputation that it wasn’t destroyed by this, and came back strong in the 60s and 70s. EVERYTHING was awful in ’58 except the Rambler American. Olds was the worst of an atrocious year, so it didn’t stand out as drastically as it would have a couple years earlier.
The 1958 Oldsmobile is often criticised but I actually like it too, even though it does feel somewhat blocky and that is due to the body’s heft below the beltline and not due to to chrome. However, I would argue that anything that GM released from the 1976 Seville and until the 1989 W-Bodies, with the exception of the C4 Corvette and the F-Bodies, is MUCH worse.
This Oldsmobile still has charm, sassyness and would turn heads even today, especially here in Europe where they are obviously very rare. If I were to see a late 1970s GM car I would ask myself “huh? Surely on a similar footprint a 1959 Biscayne would do the trick… Or a W126 Mercedes”
The 1958 GM cars were over the top with chrome and other doo dads. GM was castigated for it at the time, leading to Bruce McCall’s famous “Bulgemobile.” The 1958 GM lineup caused not a few people to buy more rationally sized cars, in particular imports.
Harley Earl retired in `58, and wanted the GM lineup to reflect ‘his best’. He loved chrome, but allowed designers to go overboard for GM’s 50th anniversary year. Add to this the recession that killed the car industry, it all worked against Earl’s intentions before he retired. I always found it hard to believe the beautiful `57 models and the `58 Oldsmobiles were of the same platform. Styling couldn’t have been more opposites!
Agree. I thought the ’57 was the most beautiful Olds ever to followed by this??
I don’t know if it’s true, but lore has it Olds designers were presenting various alternative chrome trim proposals to execs as a series of transparencies laid over an illustration of an unadorned ’58 body. Two of those transparencies happened to cling together, and before the presenter could catch and correct the mistake, a thrill ran across the execs who sat up and declared “That’s it!” much to the designers’ chagrin.
I never heard that one before, but it presents a good laugh!
Heres a question Ive had for a while. Did all the big manufacturers have in house chrome plating or was that outsourced to some Michigan company?
Loved them then and love them now. My own fairly recent ’58 Dynamic 88 was a staid white with green interior but had I kept it (didn’t like the lack of PS, can you imagine one of these without it? a wrestling match) it deserved to be painted like this, with vivid color “makeup” that matched it’s wildly expressive nature.
I heard a story that after these came out another designer (possibly Raymond Loewy?) poked fun of the Oldsmobile’s chrome strips on the rear sides of the car by producing a sketch of the ’58 Olds in which he added a music treble clef and music notes to the strips.
I love the Photoshop filters, Laurence applied to all his pics. Lent a fuzzy memory episode appearance. How TV shows, used to render flashbacks.
I doubt any stylists included the ’58 Oldsmobile Dynamic Eighty Eight on their resumes, beyond 1958. A design disgrace, really.
Now I see where Bruce McCall got his inspiration for the “58 Bulgemobiles.”
Makes me think of John Keats and “The Insolent Chariots.” First published in 1958.
I never thought of these as ugly, just overwrought. The basic shape is the same as the Classic ’55 Chevy and most other GM ’50’s cars. A brick with the corners rounded off and a pair of fins stuck on. Somehow the ’55 and ’56 Chevy escaped the fins. I’d like to see an image of this car without much of it’s chrome trim. The dip in the door is a detail that I have overlooked, it calls to mind the ’53 El Dorado, and unlike that years Caddys, every Oldsmobile has it! The photo of the black over maroon convertible, is probably the best representation of this car that I’ve ever seen. My Aunt had a ’55 Olds four door hardtop that she kept until she traded up to a new ’69 Pontiac Grand Prix. That old Olds, got new paint and a new interior, and I imagine whatever mechanical repairs it needed to last for fourteen years. That just goes to show the basic goodness that was baked into every loaf of Oldsmobile. And, they did kinda resemble a loaf of bread!
The front end is bad. The chrome trim surrounding the headlight bezels, then tapering across the front fenders is bad. Worse, however, and I don’t know any cars that did this – the chrome on chrome where the four rear fender lines cut into the chromed tail light towers. That’s just not good. The shape is OK, but the chrome trimming is bad.
My first car memory is my Mom’s 58 Olds 88 station wagon! The fuel fill was under the left rear fin! She drove that car to 180,000 miles, when the rear axle finally broke!! We affectionately called it “The Blue Bomb”!! That was a tank, and absolute BEAST!! 😁
I was obsessed with cars from a very early age. My sister’s boyfriend had a white over light blue 1958 Oldsmobile Super 88 four door hardtop. He would visit our house while courting my sister and park the Olds in our driveway. He never seemed to mind letting the 5 year old me sit behind the enormous steering wheel and pretend that I was driving that barge. I was so smitten with the gobs of chrome on the dashboard, and the incongruously delicate shift lever, along with the dip in the beltline and the gasoline filler hidden in the left rear tail light surround. It’s said that little ducks will imprint with people or other animals if exposed at a young age. That car was imprinted in my brain! I owned a classic car (a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air) but would much rather have owned a 1958 Oldsmobile Super 88. Unfortunately, I never found one in good enough condition to buy. I’m now within sight of 70 years of age, but when I see a ’58 Chromesmobile, I feel like a 5 year old and want to sit in the driver’s seat and pretend..