Hey fellas, thought I would put a bid in on this puppy. Did the countdown thing and was high bidder but it didn't meet the reserve, shucky-durn.
I called the showroom and couldn't believe what the reserve was even after the reserve was lowered. Any guesses?
This one would have been my one and done. My shitbox 70 442 is looking better all the time, ha.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165210062121

 

The way that everyone has been overpaying on Oldsmobiles lately I will guess reserve was 60-75k....

 

I must have signed up for somthing with them so I get occasional emails from them. Im blown away by everything they sell..... My guess is 85

 

Gateway, like Streetside and others, is a broker and consignment dealer. You can make book they're getting 10-20% commission or more.

 

Yeah, I thought I might have been able to buy it for $42,442.99. Not even close, the reserve was dropped to 140K. I told the sales guy "Yeah, Uh, No."
Seems Olds is getting up there with the Mopars, geeze. An ugly Daytona or Superbird this ain't.

 

All I get is the "listing expired" notification. What was the car?

 

70 442 W-30, Burgundy Mist with a dual gate, A/C car and the spoiler. Has a built 455 and cut-outs with 3.42's. It was damn nice but not 140K nice.

 

n

 

Looks like they took off the vinyl top and filled in the holes for the moulding.

 

That's what I am going to do with mine if I decide to finish it. Vinyl looks good but what a moisture trap.

 

I always thought the vinyl top worked well with the formal roofline but never seemed to look good on the fastback roofs, especially the '68 to '72s. But just my opinion...

 

You won't be driving in the rain anyway. If you like the look of vinyl, I say go for it -- especially if it's original to the car.

 

Yikes! For $140,000 I can buy a newer Ferarri convertible.

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

No ****. Sick of the bullshirt... Yes Bullshirt.

Isn't worth half of 140. I love watching these dealers try and milk an already milked market. 140k reserve. 🌬️ Me. I see the Mopar fall hitting hard again...

 

I see it's back this morning with a buy it now price. Wow, that's a ton of $$.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/16521562354...2Cchnl%3Dmkcid

 

Attention to details, please...

another of my pet peeves...there is no reason that the "442" on the front fenders need to be placed as if Stevie Wonder was punching the holes. There are templates now that should put them in perfect alignment. But NOOOooo. Once again, throw spaghetti on the wall and see if it sticks. And FFS, can anyone stripe these cars worth a damn? The trunk stripe should be the easiest out of all of them. Can't even get that right. They may try some polishing and finishing compound on the paint. Looks like they drug a dirty diaper across the paint.

Also, I could be wrong here, but wasn't W-30, A/C, and 3.42 not available on the same window sticker in 1970? Seems I recall several discussions that 70 W-30 with 3.42 wasn't available with A/C. Or has there been evidence supporting that?? Or is this one of those 1 of none cars?

If they were asking 40-50K for the car, I'd not be so critical. But for 125K-ish??? Get it right bungholes. Get it right.

 

Lots of nits on that one, Adam. Thanks to their superb set of pictures, there would be no surprises there!

I am always amazed at the number of obvious problems that would have been zero cost to get right (like the W-30 stripes). And, when you see a Moroney (window) sticker that looks to have been crumpled into a ball at one time, it is almost certainly bogus. As 69HO43 alluded, C60 (air conditioning) with a 3.23 axle ratio would not have appeared on a original Moroney sticker for any Cutlass.

Nice thing about your project car is you can do it right the first time. AND it has proper documentation.

Gary

 

How many times have we discussed sketchy cars from gateway ? Over and over.

 

Thanks Gary. I had thought 3.42's were wrong on a W with air also. Moroney widow sticker, good one, ha.

 

Hell, makes me think I got a better deal all the time on my H/O back in 20.

 

Are you tempted to put it on E-bay for double what you paid?

 

You're my bud, so I'll tell you....I AM tempted.

 

Perfectly aligned and perfectly spaced 442 numerals are a sure sign of restoration excess. Factory hole punching was not a perfect art.

 

We'll just disagree on this point. Obviously, nothing is ever perfect. Stripes aside, misaligned emblems of this magnitude are a sure sign of what I consider not paying attention to details. The factory punched all the emblem holes at the same time, so there should be an expectation that the emblems come out straighter than this car's fender emblems. The car presents well, but for this kind of price expectation, I would also expect the items to be correct. And several things aren't. The trunk lid and hood emblems happen to be straight and perfect, leading me to believe they restored the car with the original trunk lid and likely front tooth.

I've never seen a factory installed 70-72 W-30 emblem that wasn't centered under the 442 emblems, but in this example, the W-30 emblem on the driver side seems ok on its position, but the passenger fender it seems off since the W lines up directly under the first 4. The factory QC may have sucked, but it didn't suck that much. I'm not buying that it's still within tolerances.

Again, it's a nice car, but it underwhelms when it comes to the details and expectations of asking price. If you're willing to settle, then it's fine I guess. But I'd pass. At this point we don't even know for sure if it's a real W-30.

 

A/C cars got 3.23 rear axles
D35 mirrors are included in the w30 package
PK5 SS I rims 14"(of course, thats all that was offered/)

That window sticker is a fake


Maybe we should all make offers, keep them busy turning down a couple hundred lowball offers

 

If they did it like modern methods, that fender would have entered a stamping press as a flat blank and gone into a draw die to make it, then got moved via an arm to a trim die that would have cut all the offal off. The third die might have been a flanging die to make all the right angled bolt up flanges, then the last die would have been piercing. Here's where it gets tricky, and I don't know this as my company uses stick on logos, but I wonder if they had swap out piercers in that die for different cars, then would make a couple pallets of W-30 fenders once every week, and use the same dies with different parts for Cutlasses. I am fairly certain they were machine pierced. Now, Lansing did not assemble the cars in weld, the hood and fenders got painted separately and hung in final assembly, so I wonder when the piercing would have happened if not in stamping.

 

I spent 40+ years in the automotive industry beginning at Ford Motor Company Chicago Assembly Plant in 1973 as well as various automotive stamping plants with 11 years doing body stamping. Your description of the fender stamping process is quite accurate. Fender lines in the 1970"s were typically a 5-6 die lineup with piercing being the final die(s). The pierce dies did often have interchangeability built into them so that you could pierce various patterns in the part but that was due primarily because of model year differences. At Ford the body was built in the body shop less the doghouse. Typical assembly plant consists of 4 departments, Body-Paint-Trim-Chassis. The doghouse was built, painted and assembled in the chassis department. My recollection is that in the chassis department we did pierce some very low volume hole patterns using what were known back then as BTM units. They were C-Frame pierce units that were relatively small, portable and cost effective but were not usually fixtured to the fender as precisely as a stamping die and thus were subject to greater variation.

 

The fact that people cannot get the simple things right. Especially on a quote high dollar car. Do your homework. Act like you care. It can be an expensive screw up to fix. Very expensive.