442much

I was watching "Cities of the Underworld" and they were talking about what's under San Francisco. They showed the different ex-military installations in and around the city. One place housed Nike Hercules nuclear missles that have been decommissioned but still show how they worked with restored (no payload) weapons.

Had Soviets or Chinese bombers approached the city in the 60's these missles would fly up and then drop down among the bombers and explode. The bombers would be destroyed but the fallout would kill about 80,000 San Franciscans in a few weeks...which I thought was kinda crazy.

Anyway... the host said to the guide "Most of this missle is a nuke right?" The guide said, "Yes, from that red line back is the W thirty... one nuclear warhead." Or he said "Yes, from that red line back is the W thirty one nuclear warhead."

Could it be that Oldsmobile used the W30 or W31 as a name for the performance options on their muscle cars? Or perhaps it was just a coincidence. Probably a coincidence, but you never know. I thought it was pretty cool anyway.

w-30dreamin

Interesting,I have an old Nike missle base about 10 miles from my house,it's been abandoned for many,many years.I never thought about the effects of fallout from these things.

I think the w-30 reference is just a coincidence.You are right though,you never know.

joe_padavano

Considering that W-30, 31, etc are just RPO codes (and there are LOTS of others), I guarantee that the Nike issue is unrelated, especially since the the warhead designations were probably classified at the time.

alsip455

they did call olds w30 a rocket or they would say that olds runs like it had a missle straped to it so who knows maybe doc watson was into something bigger lol

joe_padavano

Every Olds-sourced V8 since 1949 was called "rocket". The exception was the Buick-sourced aluminum V8 from 1961-63, which was called the "rockette".

No, I am not making this up.

Cameo White

They used to have some Nike missile sites along the lake here. One or two are still around, I think. A little bit of fallout for the general population was probably not on anyone's mind at the time--they were too busy trying to figure out how to win at total thermonuclear destruction. They didn't call it MAD (mutually assured destruction) for nothing.

oldsonharmont

It's probably more GM nomenclature than anything else. Chevy used Z codes for option packages (Z-28, Z-71 etc.), Olds used W-30, W-31... so I wonder where they got Y-79 for the Cutlass SX package?

Getting back to your theory, do you think the military would really let a carmaker get away with that if it were true?