A gent at our church drives a 62 Starfire from time to time. He also has a 57 Thunderbird, a late model Jaguar, and a late model Mercedes convertible. Of course, my favorite is the Oldsmobile.






He says that the Slim Jim Rotohydramatic was swapped out already when he bought it. Eventually I'll have to check it out underneath the hood. It does have immaculate OE black interior with bucket seats and a floor shifter (I tried to take pics but they didn't turn out). Easily a high #2 if it's been engine/transmission swapped.

 

Nice. I hope to have mine done someday

 

Very nice. Definitely an overlooked cool cool car.

 

62 Starfires are one of my favorite Oldsmobiles. This is a really nice one. With this and a 57 Bird, he has a couple nice cars.Thanks for posting Jessee.

 

I like the color, Sunset mist

 

I too like that color, I think it would look good on both the smaller cars and the bigger cars.

 

Sweet. Such a time period color, eh?

 

Interesting that he parks it on the street rather than in the church parking lot. I guess he figures door dings from careless adjacent parked church goers is a greater threat than getting run into by someone passing it on the street.

It's rather well away from the curb, too. If he'd park it closer to the curb (a parking job like that and I would have failed my driver's license test!), there'd be less chance of it getting hit, especially if two cars going in opposite directions happen to pass it at the same time.

 

I think it's arbitrary where he parks. I've seen his Thunderbird parked in the parking lot before and it's as immaculate as the Starfire. I've also seen him park his Jaguar on the street and it's probably the lowliest of his cars.

Personally I'd never park my Oldsmobile or any of my vehicles beneath a tree. Too much risk for dropping sap and debris.

 

Maybe he just parked it like that to take a picture

 

He drove it to church again this week. It has the OE 394 with retrofitted AC. Dual exhaust; of course, and no evidence of the Slim Jim Rotohydramatic throttle valve on the driver's side of the engine
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The trunk is immaculate as well. It has a 8.5x14 bias ply tire as a spare. He thinks it might be original, but I think the car has 15" tires on it. He commented that he thought the original color of the car was blue because there's blue in the wheel covers. I thought Oldsmobile only color coordinated wheels for the SSIIIs.

 

Jesse, the car has original wheel covers on it which means it has 14' tires. These are wheel covers and not wheels and they were color matched to the car.

 

Interesting. Then either the wheel covers came from a different car, or the paint was masterfully redone. I saw no evidence of a repaint.

 

Could have found a nicer set of 62 spinners and just switched them out without painting them. Normal practice was to match the wheelcovers to lower body color. Silver, black and white were approved for all colors.

Oldsmobile color-matched their Deluxe wheelcovers from 1958-1963 and then again in the 70s on Salons and Delta Royales.

One of the essential dealer tools from 58 thru 63 was a brass mask to paint those wheelcovers. I know of one for 1963 whose owner lent it out. It went all over the country and always returned home cleaned and in good condition.

 

On that nice of a car you should not see evidence of a repaint. That would be sloppy and that does not appear to be a sloppy restoration.

 

Here's his 57 Thunderbird. He says it has a Ford 312 V8 in it. I thought that was interesting. Weren't the first generation Corvettes a straight 6? Definitely a #1 category car since it still has the OE engine and transmission.






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I really like that T-Bird. The 53 and 54 Corvettes were all 6-cylingers with powerglides. The 265 V8 came out in 55 and the Corvette became a V8. I have read reports that there were like three 6-cylinder models made but nobody has ever seen them.

 

Now if that T-Bird is a 3-speed manual and with either the E-Code (dual 4-bbl Holleys), or the F-Code (Supercharger) he's got a fine Bird.

 

He said it's an automatic with a single 4 barrel carburetor. Not as cool as the Oldsmobile, but still bad@$$! 😎

 

What would the available engines on C-1 Corvettes have to do with how a '57 Thunderbird was equipped? FWIW, in '57 the base engine was the 292/2 bbl. The 312 was optional. No 1st-gen T-Bird ever came with a 6.

And I believe a collector car needs more than its original drivetrain to qualify for #1 status.

 

Of course it needs more than the original drivetrain but the original drivetrain is a huge part of #1 status.

 

I mentioned the Corvette because he and I brought it up in our conversation. I know that Thunderbirds were available with a supercharged V6 starting in 1994. I didn't know that the first generation Thunderbirds were only available with a V8.