Speaking of interesting Oldsmobiles at Russo an Steele, I was looking at this orange 71 442 and when I first started looking at it I thought "at least pick a real Olds color" then I started really looking at it and noticed the trim tag.

Maybe this is normal, but i had never seen this before. I know that special paint is usually the double dashes. And the B is black stripes. Never saw the word "Special" embossed in the tag before.

Or maybe this is what they did in 1971? The orange didn't quite look like 70 rally red. It was not a show car but solid.

Hung around a little but the owner wasn't around.

 

Shot of the car.

 

I would think the B means black top.

 

Saw special on a 67 trim tag. I dont think there was an orange color offered in 71 only the metallic copper called bittersweet. Maybe thats what is special.

 

First time I've seen a Lansing car with "SPECIAL" for the lower body paint. Usually they put -- -- to indicate 'special' or 'extra cost' paint changes. Really cool though.

 

There's at least one Rally Red '71 out there, so it would not be surprising to see another pop up.

 

Back in late 67 my wife and I traded in our 66 442 at KYO olds in chicago. I was not impressed with the overall color choices available. My salesman ( and I remember his name to this day ) Knudson told me I could order any color that GM had for a small added cost. We picked the color from buick as I remember it was called florentine gold.w/ the black fender side stripes. We had the car for 2 days and I took the car to a paint shop and had the stripes run over the top of the fender turned 90 degrees and run towards the front of the car.I can't remember if the color code was on the plate as I never looked at it. Bottom line I know for sure you could get almost any GM car painted any GM color in those days. I do miss both those cars but have replaced the 66 with a duplicate and doing a restore on as we speak.

 

The car referred to in the initial post was listed on ebay last fall. I was in contact with the owner because he referred to the color as Flame Orange, which was not used as a description until the 1972 model year. I saw the car in January and the paint definitely looked like Flame Orange as it had metalic in it and Rallye red did not. This car had a build date of May/71 and I am wondering if the Flame Orange paint had been released by then.
I have the other 71 Rally Red 442 and its a W30 convertible and it has -- on the cowl tag. Its a GM Canada delivered car and on the GM Canada Vintage Vehicle Services letter it refers to it as Special order Color Orange. My car was built First week of Feb 1971 and was a carry over order that could not be delivered in 1970.

 

In addition the 2 71 convertibles already mentioned, there is at least 1 hardtop 71 Rally Red. Also out of Canada:

 

Late to the game but I did look this car over at Tge auction. I have never seen Oldsmobile use " Special" on a 1970-72 Cutlass / 442. I have seen it used by other GM divisions but in the early 1960s.

Has anyone else seen a non common special order / one off color combo with the "special" designation?

 

I think Paul may be a good person to ask, as he has a special-order '71, but judging by his Facebook posts he's somewhere in Vietnam at the moment . . .