TexasMagnus

Wanted to know how to find out how many 61 olds 88 dynamic or starfire still are around/ registerd. Got a convertible dynamic myself . Supposed to be only 2600 or so made.

jaunty75

This type of question gets asked about once a week on here, and the answer is always the same. There is no single source of information like this. No central agency or authority collects registration information. We'd all love to know this kind of information, but there's just no way to get it. The best you can do is go by historic vehicle scrappage rates which you can get from the Department of Transportation's website.

Very roughly speaking, about 1% of a typical car's production is still on the road after 25 years. Things level off at that number because there are always some cars being kept as collector cars, so it never goes to zero. It'll be higher than this percentage for more desirable cars, like convertibles, and probably less than this percentage for cars that tended not to be seen as long-term collectible when they were new and thus were more likely to be used up, like station wagons and pickup trucks.

Your production number estimate is low. According to Setting the Pace, there were 9,049 Dynamic 88 convertibles made in 1961. The base price was $3,284. With that production number, and taking the 1% value for survival, you would expect there to be about 90 cars like yours still around. Of course, I would estimate higher because it's a convertible. Maybe 200? Maybe 300? You can probably never know for sure. But I doubt very much it would be as high as, say, 1,000.

By the way, your 2,600 number is much closer to the actual value for 1961 Super 88 convertibles. Only 2,624 of those were made. That's so close to your guess of 2,600 that I'll bet whoever gave you that number got the two mixed up. As far as 1961 Starfire convertibles, there were 7,600 of those made.

You car sounds nice. You should post some photos.

TexasMagnus

You are right my tag says style 61 ,body la 4443 which I think is the actual cars number trim 325 paint c acc604
Got the info from www.nkvd.com/Oldsmobile/stats.HTML
By the way have the original sales reciept the car sold for$3537,55 in what looks like
Millers town, pa
Photos should be easy but haven't figured it out yet( think I have to ask the kids to help me) thanks

jaunty75

That's what kids are for! This, and programming the VCR (does anyone still do that anymore?)


It's cool that you have the original sales receipt. Going by that base price, your car has about $250 worth of options. I'm guessing that's a lot of options as $250 went a long way back in 1961.


By the way, that nkvd link DOES have the data wrong. It shows the same production number (2,624) for both Super 88 and Dynamic 88 convertibles for 1961. No way would they would be the exact same number. The correct value for the Dynamic 88's is what I gave earlier, 9,049.

TexasMagnus

Radio$88.77 heater $75.32 wheel disc$16.62 and what looks like jetaway $231.34?color sandal wood
trim 319? Some inconsistencies here?

jaunty75

Not necessarily. I shouldn't have assumed that the difference between your car's selling price and the base price would exactly equal the price of the options. Cars are almost always sold at a discount off the sticker price. The total of the options you list is about $400, but if you add that to the base price, you get a value higher than your car sold for. The difference was probably a dealer discount.

By the way, I can get that nkvd website to work only if everything is in lowercase letters:

http://www.nkvd.com/oldsmobile/stats.html

TexasMagnus

I was referring to the two different trim 325 vs 319

jaunty75

I don't know much about the trim codes. Are you saying the body cowl tag says trim 325 but the sales receipt says trim 319 and that the color is called sandalwood? I would guess that the body cowl tag is more likely to be correct as that's applied at the factory whereas anyone can mis-type a number on a sales receipt.

Is the color of your car actually sandalwood? What you need to find out is what the trim codes on your tag actually translate to and then see if those colors and other features are what's actually on your car. If, for instance, the cowl tag says your car should have a bench seat and be painted red, and your car actually has bucket seats and is painted sandalwood, then your car obviously must have been repainted, etc., somewhere along the way.

TexasMagnus

Car is currently red with white bench seats. And it is hard to look for the original color since they did a very thorough job when painting this car, i would gues ten years ago along with new tuck and roll interior and a 73 455 engine and a 400 turbo. Loving this car more every day. Bought it in dec 2010 came across it by accident. That when I decided to step out of world of cars that everyone else have. A bit of challenge for parts etc, but I am up for the task. And the attention this car is price less.