Does anyone know if the Olds Dealerships ever installed or converted cars over from bench to buckets or buckets/console. I was talking to an old timer today who worked at several gm dealerships in the 60's and 70's and he said that it was not common but was done in the 60's and 70's especially since the buckets and console were still produced by GM. My argument was why would the customer simply not order the car to their liking and his counter was that sometimes people did not have enough money to order the console/buckets or after they drove the car for a couple of years, then they decided to have them converted/upgraded. Does anyone know of this, Joe your opinion would be great along with anyone who may have knowledge. I am simply curious and this Old timer seems to have really peaked my interest as I have never heard of this before. I am sure it must have been an expensive upgrade back then.

 

Im sure just about anything was possible....

However- correctly installing the seats & console requires welding to the floor pan- and those brackes have to be in exactly the right spot or things don't work right.

I seriously doubt dealerships were interested in doing that kind of upgrade- due to the effort & hassle of doing it right.

Besides, back in those days dealers had no problem special ordering a car for someone exactly the way they wanted. They did not have the giant lots filled with cars like they do now. Sure there were ones out on the lot- but many more people custom ordered their cars than they do now.

I've spoken to the original owner of my car, and he special ordered it with black buckets, and no console.

He said all the silver cars (car was oriignally silver) on the lot had red bench seat interiors and he thought they were too guady. He also didn't want to pay the extra for the console thats why it was deleted from the order.

 

I don't know for sure, but I think it's highly unlikely that a dealership would get that involved in such a swap. I've heard that, for instance, dealerships would swap out a regular passenger bucket seat for a reclining bucket seat, particularly in the '69 A body cars, since the seat material was the same and it was a simple unbolt and bolt process. In this case, both buckets would have to be changed since the operating mechanisms for the buckets was different from '68 to '69. But, even if someone wanted to change from a regular seat to a power seat, I believe it's highly unlikely that a dealership would get directly involved in that because of the different brackets and the welding and so forth. Unless, of course, the dealership would farm it out to a local body shop....then it might of happened. Just speculating.

Randy C.

 

Anythings possible, but the most like scenario, is a dealer having a dog car sitting on the lot he wanted to move, and had buyer if it had buckets. The dealer would've surely lost money on a deal like that, but if you've gotta move it, you've gotta move it.

 

Think about the total cost of that swap in the context of ordering every individual part it would take to do it, then add in the labor cost. The bill would be astronomical. Remember, none of those pieces (seats, console, shifter, etc.) are sold as a complete assembly.

Just for perspective: Before I bought it, my wife's mint '91 Mustang GT convertible was stolen and the leather seats & door panels were missing when it was recovered. The cost of replacing the interior parts piece-by-piece was more than the dollar threshold for a total, so the insurance company declared it a total loss and would have scrapped it if the owner (at the time) hadn't bought it back and hunted down a used interior. It's now considered a "salvaged" vehicle.

 

interesting topic....seems highly unlikely for the reasons pointed out, but why would the guy be making that up ? Sure he's older and his memory possibly failing, but you'd think something that specific wouldn't be remebered wrong.

 

I don't know...Roger Clemens isn't that old and he "misremembered" alot!

 

If a dealer has a good customer and the customer is willing to pay a reasonable amount, why wouldn't a dealer modify the car for the customer -- regardless of whether the customer had already taken delivery or it was a car sitting on the lot. An easy example is tires; some customers have preferences in tire mandufacturer, but you don't know what brand tires you car will come with until it arrives. So dealers are willing to swap brands. And it wasn't too long ago that many air conditioning systems were dealer-installed, not factory.

You're right that more cars were custom ordered back then rather than bought out of dealer inventory, but one scenario I bet was common was a customer-ordered car coming in different than the customer wanted. Some of these might have been mistakes at the factory, but I bet most were because the customer (and possibly the salesman) didn't understand what was standard and what was optional. Or they simply forgot to check certain boxes. Even with all our documnetation today we still have lots of misconceptions as to whether bucket seats, sport mirrors, gauges, sport steering wheels, etc were included in the 442 or W-30 package. If I ordered a brand new car back in '70 thinking it was coming with buckets and instead it had a bench, you can bet I would've asked the dealer to make it right (even if I had to pay for some of it myself).

 

I know that $$ was important factor in deciding what to order. According to the 72 SPECS for Oldsmobile, A51 (bucket seat option) was only 67.00 D55 console required the A51 option and added another 59.00 to the price tag. But it also included the lockable map case and instrument panel courtesy and map lamps, plus the rear console lamp. Not mentioned, but included as well was the speedo without the PRNDSL shift indicator.

Personally I think it would have been cheaper to order it from the factory. According to my GM Parts book it would have cost a fortune to buy all the parts and install them.

 

Is it possible? Yes.... Is it probable? I doubt it. Back in the 1960's it wasn't uncommon to head to the local salvage yard, and buy the interiors out of cars, and change your car to what you wanted. I knew of a few people that installed bucket seats into bench seat cars. Adding a console with the shifter was a different story, because then you would need a lot of other parts, and usually those were no longer with the car, since the engine and transmission were usually the first things that were pulled for wrecks. As I said in another post, I have done A/C transplants, and many other types of transplants in 1960's cars, but I never converted a automatic transmission column to a console shift, because of the complexity of getting all the parts necessary. It wouldn't have been impossible, but I would need a donor car that was not molested to find every little part.

 

As recently as 1998 a buddy bought a new Z28, Red with a grey cloth interior. he got a good price on it, but it originally had a white leahter interior, the dealer could not sell it, changed it to grey cloth and dropped the price. The difference was charged back to GM.

 

Great advice. Also a guarantee you'd have the right parts.

 

People who restore these cars frequently change bench seat to buckets, so yes, dealers may have done this when the cars were relatively new. If anything, this would have been done if the car had be spec-ordered by the dealership with a bench and the customer wanted that car now (as opposed to waiting for one to be built). It was rare to be able to order complete buckets through the parts network since GM sold the seats in parts, but swapping with another car or using parts from a wrecked car would be possible.

It's hard to believe, but in the mid-1970s, the Chrysler "wing" cars (Daytona and Superbird) sat on dealer lots and dealers often removed the wing and pointy nose and installed chrome bumpers to get the cars sold. Same for Rallye 350s.

 

Back in 1977, I rolled through the local Dodge/Plymouth dealers lot in my '70 SX, the sales guy say's "you want to take that for a drive" referring to a '70 Superbird....uh NO! tsk, it's a Dodge. I was there looking at a '71 442 convert.