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Seeking Whereabouts of this Sterling Silver 1971 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 4-speed HT
I am posting this to see if any forum members might know the whereabouts of this car to satisfy my curiosity.
1971 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 hardtop. Sterling Silver with white W-30 stripes, black vinyl top, black bucket seat interior. Optioned with 4-speed manual transmission (M20), heavy duty clutch (W37), 3.42:1 rear axle with posi-traction (G80), full tinted glass, Super Stock I (SSI) wheels (P05), gauges, Custom-Sport steering wheel (N34), console (D55), 8-track player. No air conditioning, manual steering and brakes. Unfortunately, I do not have the VIN.
This car was purchased new by Cleveland Thurber III of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Cleveland owned the car for approximately 6 months before selling it for $3150 to William “Bill” Gilbert of Allen Park, Michigan (my father) in January 1972. Bill & Jeri Gilbert (my parents) used it a year-round daily driver from 1972 until 1976, when they traded this car plus $3000 cash to John Drew of Allen Park, Michigan in October 1976 for a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham coupe. My mother saw it around 1980 in Allen Park and spoke with its owner. Our family moved away from that area in 1983 and never saw it I again.
I am curious if this W-30 survived and what condition it is in now. It has a unique color combination and options which I hope “jogs the memory” of our members. Any leads are appreciated!
Last edited by Kaline; Sep 20, 2021 at 01:54 AM.
Reason: Correction
If you still have the vin try Googling it as if it's ever listed the ad may come up. Not sure if Michigan has a way to search out a car or to see if it might be registered, but can't hurt to ask the secretary of state.
After making my post, I decided to try to find John Drew (3rd owner) as my next step to find this car. I was able to find his contact information online. He was pleasantly surprised by me contacting him: he remembered the car well. He although he kept it less than two years, the car never left his circle of friends. He put me in touch with the current (5th) owner, who took the car off the road in the early 1980s to restore the body and detail the engine compartment as year-round driving on salty Michigan roads had taken its toll. The car has been off the road ever since. I met the current owner and visited the car this weekend: it is worthy project. I “planted the seed” that I am interested in purchasing it. I will update this post again if I become its 6th owner!
@otto72 I did take pictures but am not posting them to respect the privacy of the current owner. I'll certainly post pictures if I acquire the vehicle!
Good deal!!! wheres Jaunty? He needs to see one where the guy finds the car!
I only saw this now. He DID find the car, but by his own efforts in going through prior owners to the extent he had information on them. Good for him. Your best bet is to always do your own detective work. What NEVER works is someone coming on this site and asking for help in finding a car, and somebody just happens to have the car or know something about it.
On this same subject, sometimes it is recommended that someone searching for a car google the VIN. I used to say that that's not worth the trouble, but I've changed my mind. Last spring I bought a '73 Delta 88 convertible from a local car lot. I know that the seller had gotten the car at Spring Carlisle 2023. He was going to fix it up and sell it, but I bought it from him as his.
I had two good clues about prior owners in that the original owner's name and address were on some selling literature in the glovebox, and the receipt for the aftermarket radio installed in the car was in the box in the trunk. The name on the receipt was different from that of the original owner. So I had two names. Without going through all of the details of what I did, I determined that owner #1, a woman, bought the car new in Syracuse, New York on July 17, 1973 at Norm Rothschild Buick-Oldsmobile in Fulton, New York. She was 50 years old, married, and had two daughters. I found it interesting that a middle-aged housewife would buy a car like this. This owner, who died in 2013 at the age of 90 (I found her obituary online) sold the car in 1988 to the guy whose name was on the radio receipt. He had the radio installed in 1998. I was able find him by googling his name and concentrating on Syracuse connections. He is currently living in Arizona. I sent him a letter via an address I obtained via LinkedIn, and he responded by email right away. He said he bought the car "from a lady my father went to college with" and sold the car in about the year 2000 to "a guy from Pennsylvania," but he couldn't remember the buyer's name or anything else. "He had cash, and that's all I cared about." He also told me that he mostly "drove my daughter and her friends around in it." But at least I had owner information for the first 27 years of the car's existence. But I had no way to determine anything about the post-2000 owner.
So I DID google the car's VIN, and the search was fruitful. The car was not just sold at Carlisle, it was sold via the Carlisle AUCTION, not a private, seller-to-buyer transaction. As anyone who follows Mecum or Barrett-Jackson or any of the other auction houses will know, when cars are shown as being offered for sale at these auctions, they always include the VIN. So if a car you're searching for happens to have been sold at an auction sometime in the recent (20 years?) past, a VIN search might actually turn up info about the car as far as that auction is concerned. The car's VIN has been posted on the internet. It will thus never go away.
I found out that my car was sold from the "Robert Metzgar Collection." I couldn't find anything about this collection, but I did find that Mr. Metzgar is/was a well-known businessman in the Warren, Pennsylvania area and a major benefactor of Penn State University. I googled him and came up with an address and an age, and if I have him right, he's 86 now. I did send a letter to the address, but I heard nothing. For all I know, he's in a nursing home.
One other thing I learned is that Mr. Metzgar really did just treat it as a collectible. It was to be looked at, not driven. Owner #2 told me what the mileage was on the car when he sold it, and it was almost the exact same mileage when I got it (about 61,000). So he never drove it in the more than 20 years that he owned it.
Anyway, the car's ownership story is complete.
1973-1988 Harriet Walker, Syracuse, New York (died in 2013 at age 90)
1988-2000 Alan Hoxie (was in Syracuse at the time, but moved to Arizona in the mid-00s, age now around 75)
2000-2023 Robert Metzgar, Warren, Pennsylvania (now age 86)
April-May 2023 guy who bought it at Carlisle and who sold it to me
May 2023-present Me
Last edited by jaunty75; Jul 12, 2024 at 09:37 AM.
