1970f85

I have a 1970 F85 project car and was wondering if anyone knew how many they made. Mine is a 2 door post...I believe all 1970 F85 were posts??? Wondering how many were made? My son put it on YouTube I got the car with a title for $1500
Trim tag 33277LAN TRIM 902 PT 45 10

jaunty75

Correct. All 1970 F-85s were post coupes, called a Sports Coupe by Oldsmobile. Production is only broken down by engine type. Production of the six-cylinder models was 2,836 and of the 8-cylinder models was 8,274. These numbers are miniscule compared to the total number of the various flavors of Cutlass that were made that year. You have a rare car which was rare even when new. Very cool.

Your trim tag has more information on it than you show (it will at least also have a code indicating the date it was built), but we can decode what you have as follows.

3 = Oldsmobile
32 = F-85 V-8
77 = Sports Coupe
LAN = Lansing assembly plant
TR 902 = green vinyl bench seat
PNT 45 = Aspen Green lower body color
PNT 10 = Classic White upper body or vinyl top color

From the presence of the chrome trim just behind the rear side windows, it looks like your car once had a vinyl top.

marxjunk

id say painted top since paint code...if vinyl prob would have a letter like a b or c..at least thats what ive seen around here..and it used the same trim as a VT as a paint breaker,,and since the top isnt rusted away it makes me believe it even more..just my opinion

aspen green and a painted white top is common and when its all fresh, very good looking combination

love post cars..i have a building full of them..lol

1970f85

I bought a pair of F85 emblems off eBay for $60, they are in excellent condition. I do need a rear seat for the car...wonder if post cars had different rear seat/ than coupes?

1970f85

I bought it last year off Craigslist...couldn't pass it up for $1500! So, now I'm doing research on the car...finding out lots of things on this forum, thanks! It may take me 5-10 years to complete the cars restoration, but it will be fun and I really do love post cars. Years ago I had a 1969 Chevelle 300 deluxe 2 door post, that was such a cool car, I wish I still had it!

joe_padavano

A couple of things. For the 1970 model year (only), the F-85 was only offered on the 2dr Sport coupe body style. This varied from year-to-year. For example, the only F-85 body style offered in the 1971 model year was the four door Town Sedan.

Second, the F-85 was the loss leader. Relatively few were sold because they were undesirable. They were stripped-out and served primarily to lure buyer in to the showroom with a low price, at which point they were upsold to a Cutlass or some other, better-optioned vehicle. Once again, "rare" does not necessarily equate to "valuable".

Third, I certainly don't consider 11,000 cars to be "rare". We're not talking Camaro production numbers here, but to me, "rare" would be manual trans Oldsmobiles, or H/Os, or W-31s. Heck, Olds sold considerably more 1970 F-85s than they did my 1962 wagons.

Finally, keep in mind that we're 45 years after the production date. Average survival rate this far out is a small fraction of 1% of total production. Obviously desirable cars like 442s have a higher survival rate (or get faked...). That means that less desirable cars like more-doors and bottom feeders must have a much lower survival rate if the average is, in fact, correct. That's why they are rare today - no one felt they were worth preserving (or, they've all become W-31 or Rallye 350 clones).

1970f85

If 11,000 were made, and lets say 1% are still around, then only around 100..give or take, of them would be left. I was able to get it for $1500, not sure if I was going to keep it or resell it...but it has grown on me and I think I'm going to fix it up...I just love post cars.

joe_padavano

That's probably the right ballpark.

Stefano

I don't know where the 1% survival statistic comes from, but my gut-meter says that would not be an accurate guesstimate. I do agree that many have been cloned into something they were not originally or used to rebody wrecked or rusty cars.

Sound like a fun and unique project car, good luck with it.

jaunty75

The U.S. government. More specifically, the U.S. Federal Reserve.

This article is all about scrappage of vehicles in the U.S. It dates from 1996, which actually makes it more relevant to cars of the era we're talking about here than more modern cars, which are being kept on the road longer than at any previous point in U.S. automotive history.

There's lots of math and statistics in this article, but the relevant figure is on page 33. It shows that, for 1960 model year cars, between 10 and 15% were still on the road after 15 years. After 25 years, that figure tends to level out at about 1%, give or take, as anything still left is likely being preserved for one reason or another.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/f.../199640pap.pdf

Magna86

I'd build a nice strong motor and do a 4spd swap on the car while keeping teh bench seat. Best part of these less desirable models is you dont have to worry about changing colors or drivetrain and hurting a resale value. For $1500 unless there is a ton of hidden rust you did real good.

Diego

The value in this car is for someone who wants to build a W-31 clone. If you don't wish to keep it, don't think you simply have an undesirable car - it is in demand to the right segment.

I also wouldn't call two-tone A-bodies common, although I feel they tended to be built at a higher rate in the cheaper car lines like the F-85 compared to the Cutlass S.

Tom442

To the ranks of the F85. I think your color combo with a white painted top will be really cool. I can't wait to see it!

rocketboy

I have a f-85 rallye 350, where 1020 where built, going by the 1 percent idea does that mean my car shouldn't be hear now?

Diego

It means you need to go back to math class. ;-)

FWIW, I don't believe any rule of thumb regarding old cars. But let's assume the 1% is true - it should apply to an aggregate, not a specific car.

jaunty75

Correct. If you actually have this car, I'd get rid of it.

joe_padavano

English class also...

First, the "1% rule" isn't a rule of thumb. As Jaunty presented in the link above, that's DATA from historical averages for cars 25 years out from date of manufacture.

Second, since it's an average, that means that there are highs and lows around the average. The percentage of highly desirable cars that survive is considerably greater than the percentage of less desirable cars.

Third, the data is for survival 25 years out. We're talking 45-50 years out on the cars we care about. The number is a fraction of a percent ON AVERAGE, which is what I said back up on Dec 6.

jaunty75

That statistic has always applied to the aggregate. Usually by model year. "One percent of all 1970 model year cars..." Of course it's a very round number, but it gives you something to start with.

One percent of 1020 is about 10. Is that how many are left? Who knows? It could be 20. It could be 50. It could be 5. But the point is, it's not likely to be in the hundreds, or even 100. That would be a 10% survival rate, which would be huge.

We like to think today that these cars which we think are so cool and so valuable now would have been seen that way back in the day and therefore kept in unusually large numbers, but that's just not likely to be true to any great extent. As has been pointed out many times on this site, in 1980, a '70 442 was seen as simply a used car.

Convertibles tend to survive in larger numbers probably both because they were seen as something of value back in the day and because they did tend to be treated with kid gloves when new simply because they were convertibles. They had more fragile tops. They had complex mechanisms that needed maintenance. They cost more to begin with.

oldspackrat

If you need a rear seat I have one for your car. There are 3 different widths for the Olds. A body. The narrowest for the convertibles, middle size for the non post coupes & the widest for the post coupes.

Stefano

The study/article posted does not directly apply to collector cars / our hobby and it was not intended to. Taking that data and applying it to collector cars, special interest cars, enthusiasts cars would not be appropriate.

The article tends to focus on "registrations", and that is fine for the majority of cars / trucks that were used for basic transportation. Once the basic transportation vehicles are used up, the majority get scrapped and never officially resurrected.

Many collector cars do not get officially registered or plated, for a multitude of reasons. Also, not many of us are pulling scrapped, 4 door, full sized cars out of salvage yards. Conversely not many would pass up a W-30 Rag Top in a scrap yard, no matter the condition............so many of the "special" cars have been brought back to life.

I was just talking to a guy who purchased a big block Camaro from the original owner in 1972. It has been off the road and not "registered" since 1977. Its been sitting in his garage with an occasional outing at the local race track. Turns out the Camaro is a Yenko Super Camaro and another one to add to the growing list.

Just because the Federal Government does know about a car doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

joe_padavano

Yes, because unfortunately that's the only data that is publicly available. My stash of currently unregistered cars probably skews the numbers a lot.

The registration data is the only data we have. One can guesstimate what that means for unregistered cars, but it would just be a guess. Bottom line is that 1% is probably the right order of magnitude, unless we're talking W-30s.

In that case the number is more like 110%...

Rallye469

Actually your car isn't here now...or any longer I should say.

Go check your garage.



-pete

rocketboy

Lol if you where to go see it in my garage you would probably be upset that's where I keep my 74 Mazda rx4, the rallye, I keep that sucker hid, I've had it going on 11 years so far, and will never sell it, for any amount of money. However I have just recently sold my cutlass s w-31, really wish I had not done that. I figured oh one day I'll get another one, now that it's actually gone I'm starting to realize I'll probably never have another one.

jaunty75

Baloney. The data in that article don't distinguish between collector cars, which is a nebulous definition anyway, and any other type of car. It just refers to cars in the aggregate.

By the time we get around to deciding that any particular car is collectible, decades have elapsed, and the "1% are left after 25 years" has already happened. We can't undo the scrappage that has already occurred.

orange442

I have 2 70 F-85's one is a runner and one is a parts car. One of my W-31's is also an F-85. I know of a few others, at least 5, I can think of and one of them was parted and cut up. I also have bought parts from 1 or 2 more.

oldsmobiledave

Devon aka Rocketdevo has a very nice white 1970 F-85. It's a 350 2V car converted to 4V with factory a/c. Nice car.

Diego

If that's true, why are you doing the below?

That's not aggregate.

Stefano

Some are Wizards at it.

junior supercar

I have a rear seat from a 70 F-85. It needs to be recovered. And it probably won't be cheap to ship because of size, but I have no use for it. PM me if interested.