I know the Rallye 350 started out as a Hurst proposal. Was the Hurst proposal yellow or did Olds switch to yellow after they decided not to do a Hurst? What were the differences between the Hurst proposal and the Rallye 350?

 

That is a couple of interesting questions. I doubt you are going to get anything but speculation since it would probably take somebody that was at Oldsmobile and involved with the project to give a good answer.

 

From what I have read posted by Olds employees of the time, is there was going to be a Hurst 70, then Hurst backed out or there was a disagreement. Olds then wanted to go it alone, and there were 4 concept cars, red, green, purple, and yellow meant to rival Mopar's craziness. All but the yellow got cancelled, and it was only for the one year. I believe it got cancelled because of changing trends, technical issues with the urethane bumpers, and low selling of the car, the yellow bumpers were not met with universal acclaim. Some Rallye 350s were refitted with chrome bumpers to move them by their dealers.

This is to the best of my knowledge, I was not there. Feel free to add/correct.

 

All of the other colored Rallye's were 69's correct? I have never seen any pictures of the other colored cars.

 

There were no 69 Rallye's and no other colors. I always thought it would be cool to make a Rallye 350 convertible or wagon.

 

Yes there actually were. They were released to certain Oldsmobile whoever's to get public opinion from what I have read.

 

Do you believe everything you read? That is quite possible but I don't believe any were ever sold to the public.

 

No they were not sold to the public. Yes I do believe what I read about them.

 

You know what they say about the internet, they couldn't put it on there if it wasn't true.

 

The 69's were not Rallye 350s. Just S models painted the test colors and distributed to a few dealers to parade around to see if there was any desire by customers. There wasnt enough interest, so the 3 other colors were dropped from the plans for the 70 Rallye

 

As the late great Paul Harvey used to say, "now you know the rest of the story".

 

Exactly.

PS: I grew up with Paul Harvey. Loved him. His Dad was obviously the man also.

 

The stories about them sitting on the lots unsold is true.

I know a guy here in Paris Ontario who traded in his one year old Ford Maverick for a rallye that has been sitting on the GM lot…brand new

even trade!! Funny … he hated that Maverick .

he ended keeping the rallye until a few years ago