Here is a car recently brought to light - Sitting dead since 1970 around the corner from our old house. Check the tires - wow. Untouched factory paint so I hope this is a good example of correct stripes for the resto crowd. It's a good one, scoops, red wheel wells etc. Bought new, one owner now dead. At first glance it looks great but the underside and frame is solid brown potato chips, interior looks good but horrible mouse **** and mouse poop everywhere. Floor and trunk pans all soft. Part of what is seen on the garage floor is accumulated rat and mouse stuff. Smells so bad you cannot imagine.

That's the back story to the correct stripes

1968%20442_2.jpg

 

Is it for sale?

 

I was thinking same thing.

Nice photo of the factory stripe in relation to the emblems and fender. At first look I thought the 442 had standard lug covers, but it seems to have an unfamiliar looking full hub cap.

 

Yeah for sale but at the moment the family seems to be adrift in a B-J fog. Their original firm price implied you could air the tires and drive it off, in fact it hasn't moved under it's own power in 47 years. Some hard cash tow-it-away offers considering the future work involved have already been turned down. 16000 original miles I'm told. The crankshaft does move enough to know at least all pistons are not stuck.

I've seen those hub caps on big cars, not sure what the story is there.

 

i found this on the web..i believe its orig paint

 

There's a not-to-common page in the assembly manual that also addresses the W-36 stripe. See attached.

Sounds like an interesting restoration if it can be picked up at the right price. It's got all the neat stuff but it will take a lot of effort to replace the bad/rusted out parts.

Randy C.

 

All those years I never noticed, or possibly thought about, how the emblems were placed back further to get the stripe centered with the bottom of the fender. Probably if I owned a '68 with the fender stripe I would had noticed it. Always liked my friend's Ocean Turquoise '68 442 with black fender stripes and amber high beam lamps.

 

Hub Caps are correct for a 68. Have a set on my 68 442 my parents bought new

Surely strange to be on a W-30 though.
Would have expected a dog dish or rally wheel not an upscale hubcap
No white lettered tires in 68 so, maybe the wheels are not even original to the car

 

Just looked at Randy's avatar picture, but I cannot determine if the hub caps on his '68 442 are the same as the one partially seen in the photo. Are the hub caps on your 442 the same as the one seen in the photo?

I always thought the '68 442 hubcaps resembled the SS-IV/Exiter rims, with eight faux vents around the circumference - or were they optional hub caps.

 

1968 Oldsmobile A-body hub caps were STANDARD across the board - these are the OPTIONAL wheel covers

 

back on track - here's an original paint '68 W-30 I used to own

 

The wheel covers in anthonyp's photo are the PO2 option. The ones on my avatar are the PO1 option. I learned from Olds dealership mechanics back in the day didn't think highly of the PO1 covers - they used them for ash trays in the shop!

Standard issue was a basic hub cap - it just covered the center part of the wheel. That's what we now call poverty caps. Most cars came this way because the first thing that happened after the car was purchased was that a set of mag wheels replaced the stock steel wheels.

My car came originally with the N95 option - the wire wheel covers. I like the SSI wheel the best so that is what I have on my car now. Theoretically, the SSI wasn't even available for the '68 model year but it was used for awhile anyway because of production problems with the SSII.

Some people (even including a judge at the 2011 OCA Nationals in Reno) believe that the 4-4-2 came only with poverty caps or super stock wheels. Not true. All of the wheel cover options were available for the 4-4-2 model, as they were for the Cutlass and F-85 models.

Randy C.

 

Made a phone call, found out the tires were replaced, the flat tires now on the car have almost no use , the original spare is in trunk and it is a red line - Good call.

 

Follow up - This car was sold and included WITH THE HOUSE in a recent sale. Word I got was many guys from all over wanted the car and offered on it, family wouldn't go for any offered cash deal. House is a absolute hermit hoarders rodents wreck.

 

That's a shame, but maybe the new home owners will entertain offers for the car.

 

I'm guessing that the fact that "...many guys from all over wanted the car and offered on it...", coupled with watching cable auction shows, likely means that the new owners think they have something worth a million bucks.